"Not Jordan Peterson" reciting the first verse of "Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend," posted here -- if this works -- because it's still funny (and because it got deleted/disabled from SoundCloud.) You can read about it here (scroll down.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2019 01:22 PM
Well, folks, I must admit defeat. I had intended to keep up at least a tally here, a list of links, noting in this space all my posts in all the various places that I post things. That's ideally how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2018 04:13 PM
"There shouldn't be a rock and roll Hall of Fame." Agreed. That acknowledged, Bill (not that Bill Wyman) Wyman has a go at ranking the Rock Hall "inductees", with capsule summations of each act interleaved with a surprisingly absorbing account...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 04:14 PM
Minor secrets of "Our Love Will Last Forever and Ever" -- praise Odin! I hope your Wodensdaeg proceeds apace, if apace means what I think it does. This has never been regarded as one of the "top tunes" in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 12:33 AM
A re-telling / re-posting of the story of how the Mr. T Experience almost died in a blizzard in North Carolina on the Yesterday Rules tour....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 12:30 AM
The Count Dankula sentence and various other news item sparked some free speech blather of the sort I tend to emit from time to time, and I aggregated them here, adding some relevant grafs from an old essay sparked by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 12:26 AM
Let things slide with keeping the updates going here. Here's a round-up of last week's links. Here's the round-up post of the previous week's links, just in case. All this courtesy of "on google", which allows important celebrities like me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 12:21 AM
Gesælig Wodensdaeg to ēow, once again. Minor secrets! "At Gilman Street"! Reveal'd!!! Today's video is the second of two music videos made by Byron's neighbor (that's literally all I know about him, and it); the other one, for "Surfin'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2018 05:43 PM
Professor Josh Blackman was heckled by protesters at CUNY. 'A student shouted out “Fuck the law.” This comment stunned me. I replied, “Fuck the law? That’s a very odd thing. You are all in law school...' If any of these...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2018 12:24 AM
It's Woden's day, and the sched calls for video so... "Cingular Wireless (Worse than Hitler)" - what a song. It was never officially recorded or released, but it proved weirdly popular when I played it solo and remains one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2018 11:04 PM
Risking the image upload because it's a new thing... Available Wednesday 4/11. All details are here. UPDATE: orders are live now. Here's the link for cassette, player, shirt, pin, sticker, and... ?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2018 09:38 PM
Despite my intention to cross post everything here as they come up, I let things slide a bit over the past week. Sorry. So by way of catching up quickly, I'm going to post links here. -- Minor Secrets of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2018 09:21 PM
I'm doing three solo shows in June with Even in Blackouts and Mikey Erg, and the band is playing in May with the Smoking Popes and in June with Screeching Weasel. More dates will be announced soon but in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2018 01:20 PM
Time for another "minor secrets" post, for Odin, for Darkness, for Humanity. As I've noted before in various spots, this tune, conceived as a "theme song" for my third novel King Dork Approximately, more or less accidentally sparked the launch...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2018 01:12 PM
A song for Oðinsdagr once again. And it's back to Southampton, UK, Summer of 1992. This is a Partridge Family cover that we played in most every set in those days, and was one of the songs on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2018 07:35 PM
"There’s something weird about saying you value and would like to resurrect a state of profound ignorance but, you know, I kind of do..." My latest post on Mediumis an expanded version of this old What's-It post (with added pics...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2018 07:29 PM
"Caravaggio was a murderer, and maybe even a bad person. But I only want to look at some paintings, not marry the guy..." I am interviewed by Articulate....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2018 11:23 PM
"Surfin' Cows" was one of three cow-themed (or rather, cow-named) surfy instrumentals from Jon von's old Boston band the Sacred Cows, brought with him when he headed out to California after college. The others were "Skatin' Cows" (which wound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2018 06:26 PM
"Virtual media’s greatest strength is also its biggest flaw: you can’t trip over it. Easily stored, easily forgotten." I teased this tweet out into a sort of essay about Show Business, records, music blogs, Platforms, archaeology, and "virtuality."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2018 06:24 PM
I did a brief informal poll about which song to "minor secrets of" today, and it was close but this beat "Surfin' Cows" by two votes. "Surfin' Cows" will have to wait for another Wodensdaeg. So now it's back...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2018 11:42 PM
I used to be a pretty scrupulously youtube-only guy, but, well, there's been some trouble in the relationship (long story, faults on both sides, etc.) and while we're not breaking up, I'm not getting any younger and in the absence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2018 06:25 PM
The second aggregation of videos and song write-ups, re-edited with links and pics as before, may be found here. #1 is here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2018 06:20 PM
And the Poles really get no respect in this country. I went into this place and ordered a Polish sausage, and the guy said: "oh, you must be Polish." And I was a little offended at that. I mean, just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2018 07:58 PM
[A version of this post that includes the pictures referenced may be viewed here. While this blog limps along and I'm trying to organize a solution for the future, I'm still attempting to register significant posts here so I can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2018 04:16 PM
Every so often I attempt a finger-picking arrangement of one of my old songs. I’m not the greatest picker in the world, and there’s nothing particularly fancy or difficult about the arrangements, but it is really quite a challenge...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2018 10:05 PM
Some decades ago there was a society-wide spasm of utter madness in which obviously innocent people were accused of being Satanists, rounded up, and imprisoned by the hundreds. Some of these people still rot in prison to this day, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2018 07:22 PM
According to my phone, the convoluted route I have to take around the neighborhood to avoid all the people I don't want to stop and talk to increases my step count threefold on average. Fitness through social anxiety and misanthropy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2018 01:04 AM
So, I've recently started trying to stick to a rough schedule in all my posts to various places, something that makes more sense than my previous randomly-determined model. (e.g. seventeen posts in a row on a night of insomnia, followed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2018 09:44 PM
"The kind of girl I dig, some of her was big, but part of her was petite..." Mikill Wotan! Here I am doing "Coffee, Tea, or Me?" with the Smugglers at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2018 08:46 PM
The subject is "dirty jokes" through a child's eyes, and it's a story I've told before. But here I am telling it again, so that if everything here disappears it will still be there....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2018 08:41 PM
You may have noticed this blog has been ailing and limping along for some time, and a bit more than previously since December 2017. A lack of allocated disk space, that apparently cannot be increased, has recently prevented me from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2018 09:03 PM
Gesælig æsc Wodensdaeg to þe! Gonna shift away from Southampton '92 to Hamburg '92, because it's Valentine's Day and "Love American Style" is an appropriate song for the occasion. Sort of. (LAS was in that Southampton set but the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2018 03:51 AM
... and posted it, sharing many examples....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2018 03:48 AM
Another song (for Odin) from that 1992 show in Southampton. Rich Levene was there and says his diary indicates there were 60 people at the show, which sounds/looks about right. They really were a wild, exuberant bunch. They shouted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2018 04:58 AM
New post with pictures and such over at Medium. One day I'll sort things out here, but till then farming them out and linking is how it must be done....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2018 02:16 PM
A song for Woden. Happy Wednesday. This is from a show in Southampton, England, July 8th 1992, where we played in front a few dozen wild, shouting, vibrating teenagers, one of whom happened to have a running camcorder in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2018 09:36 PM
In response to requests, I have aggregated and re-edited all the "minor secrets of..." the songs in the Seattle '98 set into one handy post with links and pics....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2018 03:16 PM
I've already posted 15 of the 16 songs on this set individually. The remaining one is the set opener, "I Just Wanna Do It with You," and since the tape starts somewhere during the front bit of it, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2018 12:57 AM
Pawing through the archives for Monday's post. An essay about The Catcher in the Rye as an icon of conventional rebellion and "angst therapy". (A version of this self-promoting obituary of J. D. Salinger, if “obituary” means what I think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2018 03:34 PM
The future of this rickety old blog is a bit uncertain at the moment, though I'd like to keep it going if I can. (I've been doing it for 16 years or so, and it can be a useful reference,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2018 05:32 PM
Praise Odin, a video for Wednesday. (Okay it's Saturday now, but I originally posted this in all the places on Wednesday, in keeping with my alleged new schedule of posting video to my youtube channel each Wednesday, in honor of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2018 04:32 PM
I have told this story before, but here I am telling it again, on Medium as posting here is increasingly unpredictable if not untenable....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2018 04:56 PM
Are they really shouting "oi" during "You're the Only One"? It sounds like it. Though it's meant to be an acoustic song, dragging out an acoustic guitar is often impractical and I used to do it this way, turning...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2018 04:36 PM
A guy who had seen a 1980 show in NYC commented on the original essay posted on Medium. Here is the one and only unique thing I remember that everybody else seems to have forgotten or not noticed. During opening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2018 03:17 PM
Pawing through the archives, I came across this old post documenting my unlikely participation in a star-studded televised awards show banquet. The most significant part was meeting the delightful Judy Blume for the first time (and our risqué banter that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2018 03:14 PM
In October of 1979, this guy Mike and I made a pilgrimage to see the Clash at Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. I had just turned fifteen, and I had thought of myself as “punk,” sort of, for at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2018 09:30 PM
Here's yet another song from that 11/13/98 show, making twelve out of fifteen songs now posted. I already did a "minor secrets of" write-up about "... and I Will Be with You" when I recently posted the music video...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2018 09:27 PM
In psychological terms, it will be easy enough to trace back to this habit of mind a certain poverty in our basic religious sense—a lack of pietas, a shrivelled sense of creaturely awe before the numinous. Given that situation,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2017 05:58 PM
Signature tune, I suppose, and all that that entails. The amp going out in the middle of the song was a fairly typical mid-tour event. Those amplifiers, God love 'em, were exceedingly fragile and not necessarily soldered together all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2017 05:36 PM
I was raised Catholic, but it was a hippie-dippie California kind of Free to Be You and Me Public Television Catholicism without much content, so I first heard about the Slaughter of the Innocents from this Scott Corbett book, quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2017 04:55 PM
Here's another (the only other) song from that found tape that also had the Munsters Theme on it, "Just Your Way of Saying No," one of Jon's best tunes. '85 or '86. We played it too fast, like everything...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2017 01:39 AM
I am unable to post pictures to this blog at present, but you're interested in seeing an early 15th Century manuscript illuminated to depict John the Apostle and Evangelist at the moment of receiving the Revelation you can view it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2017 04:46 PM
There was an image posted here but I've deleted it in an attempt to save the archives here. You may view it here if you like. From this point on in time and up the page, by the way, all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2017 06:09 PM
There was an image of the stoning St. Stephen posted here but I've deleted it in an attempt to save the archives here. You may view it here if you like....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2017 05:07 PM
Image from Bethlehem deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2017 05:14 PM
Image of girl by white tree deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2017 02:58 AM
Image of cat creche crash deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2017 05:57 PM
Image of child with scary Santa mask, bell, and baby deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2017 09:34 PM
Image of St. Victoria reliquary deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2017 03:01 PM
Image of Mylene Demongeot decorated for Christmas deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2017 02:40 AM
My buddy Will found this on a VHS tape (all it had on it was two MTX songs from this same performance and the Quincy punk episode.) If it's not obvious, the method of transfer was his taking a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2017 12:21 AM
Visitation image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2017 09:45 PM
Was surprised to come across this vid of me attempting Del McCoury's "Queen Anne's Lace" at Stefan Tijs's place in Rotterdam in 2012. I must have been pretty drunk. That's Kepi's guitar, before United Airlines got their hands on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2017 07:13 PM
Image of Dr. Frank ornament deleted, viewable here. And buyable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2017 12:13 AM
The Creatrix - Mark Ryden Image of The Creatrix by Mark Ryden deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2017 12:02 AM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2017 08:34 PM
Rhymes with "infamous" if you take out the "n." Ed Masley put KDATA on his Best Albums of 2017 list. Yes!!! And I'll be pulling these quotes: 'a title track that sounds like the mid-'60s Kinks doing country' and '“High...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2017 06:33 PM
... we could re-animate Philip Larkin so we could see what "High Windows 2017" would look like. Also just generally....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2017 06:22 PM
When you make a sacrifice you're supposed to get a wish... another one of these from '98. T he kernel of this song was just the idea of playing around with metaphors for love and loss and such, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2017 05:14 PM
Image of Yvonne Craig in a Santa outfit in sleigh deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2017 08:22 PM
This is a pin, available jointly and severally from Sounds Radical....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2017 03:38 PM
Image of pin-up girl putting gun in stocking deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2017 03:20 PM
And these are ships that I can't board... If I am remembering correctly, this was one of two Love Is Dead tracks that we more or less threw together while mixing at Hyde Street, because we'd run out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2017 05:38 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2017 05:35 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2017 06:27 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2017 05:41 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2017 12:44 AM
Another song (the eighth one so far) from that 1998 Seattle show I've been posting bit by bit. Why? Well, why does anyone do anything? I think it's an interesting, and unusually clear and distinct, "snapshot" of the way...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2017 08:11 PM
Image of St. Lucy deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2017 03:01 PM
Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2017 09:08 PM
Tuesday read: a post-mortem on Evergreen College, though the corpse is still twitching and its spirit lives on apparently. It is quite a tale, of which I'd only heard bits and pieces before now. This quote from Allan Bloom's Closing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2017 08:00 PM
Yet another bit of that '98 RKCNDY show, for my sins. This was an "orphaned" song from that great big chunk of material that was whittled down into Love Is Dead, released on the Joe Queer-curated comp More Bounce...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2017 05:28 PM
Gearing up for some Dr. Frank releases in the next year and kicking it off with a limited "pop up" Christmas package from Sounds Rad. All your Christmas shopping sorted, right here. Only 50 available so now's the time....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2017 12:46 AM
Manuscript page of St. Jerome's letter to Pop Damasus deleted, viewable ....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2017 04:37 PM
Image of John the Baptist in prison deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2017 05:34 PM
Individually and in the co-ordinated and purposive groups which constitute a healthy society, men and women display a certain capacity for rational thought and free choice in the light of ethical principles. Herded into mobs, the same men and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2017 07:02 PM
Image of the relics of St. Ambrose deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2017 07:29 PM
Here's another one of these from that 1998 RKCNDY show. It took some doing to come up with an undone take on "us against the world" but I think this one does it. It was one of a handful...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2017 05:50 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2017 02:43 PM
I remember this song being received with skepticism and a decided lack of enthusiasm by band and producer... someone (I can't remember who) tried to nudge me toward ditching it by saying it resembled something the Mentors might do....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2017 01:33 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2017 03:18 PM
Another one of these from Seattle, '98. I was quite surprised to see this song in the set. It was not often performed, that I recall, by any line-up. (Maybe it was a request that we tried to "wing"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2017 05:18 PM
For a brief period we used to close our sets with this Austin Powers / “Ming Tea” song. It was fun, trust me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2017 03:11 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2017 03:07 PM
"Okay, I'm gonna make a deal with you: I'm gonna try to sing all the words to every song. Unless you knock the microphone away from me, then I'm not gonna be able to do it. So the choice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2017 03:31 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 11:57 PM
Since Lauberdemont’s time, evil has made some progress. Under Communist dictators, those who come to trial before a People’s Court invariably confess the crimes of which they have been accused—confess them even when they are imaginary. In the past,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 06:58 PM
This video is from a November '98 show at Seattle's RKCNDY, via Amy Yambor who used to work there and who handed me a DVD transfer of it when we played NYC a couple weeks ago. Pretty good set,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 03:28 AM
Image of St. Saturninus being dragged by the bull deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 02:23 AM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2017 11:30 PM
I've always liked this unassuming little song, but I'm a bit surprised at how popular it is. (Maybe it's because of the nutty video?) The recording, as with many songs on Revenge Is Sweet but possibly most of all,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2017 06:37 PM
Image of the martyrdom of St. James Intercisus deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2017 04:40 PM
Image of St. Catherine of Alexandria deleted, viewable here. ... an engel ne com, wið feorliche afluhte fleoninde aduneward, and draf þerto dun riht as a þunres dune; and duste hit a swuch dunt, þæt hit bigon to clateren al...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2017 07:52 PM
And Montaigne concludes with one of those golden sentences which deserve to be inscribed over the altar of every church, above the bench of every magistrate, on the walls of every lecture hall, every senate and parliament, every government...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2017 07:00 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2017 03:16 PM
Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding-- more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it hard to feel very proud of their activities. But partisanship is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2017 04:37 PM
Image of Burne-Jones's Cecilia in stained glass deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2017 03:24 PM
Sometimes a song will come to you almost fully-formed in an instant and it just clicks, and that was pretty much sort of the case with this one. (Though because I'm weird, that only meant agonizing over the lyrics...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2017 03:13 PM
I've written a bit about this song qua song recently (when I posted the solo guitar version.) I've always thought the video, by my old pal Jennifer Kaufman, transcended the song and turned it into a sort of work...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2017 11:55 PM
So last night I posted about discovering a stack of Big Black Bugs 10"s I didn't know I had and got a few orders from folks who wanted them. (And thanks!) As long as I'm boxing stuff up to send...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2017 03:28 PM
The basic verse melody had been kicking around in my head literally for decades till finally getting used for this KDATA song; the A part of the verse is meant to evoke a sort of "school song", while the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2017 01:30 PM
The bare bones of this song had been kicking around for quite some years before I decided tack them together and incorporate them into King Dork Approximately, the novel. We may even have tried to play some rudimentary version...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2017 11:08 PM
The latest resurrection of the Mtx began with this song/book. Was meant to be only a one-off digital single, turned into shows, and a "balbum", and we were suddenly a band again....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2017 04:25 PM
For whatever reason I started up an new MTX twitter account: https://twitter.com/mtxforever Small and no doubt destined to remain so, but I am going to be posting stuff there till I get tired of it, so if that's the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2017 04:19 PM
Dibs are closed, for real ordering has begun (purple vinyl, shirt, pin, sticker, cool box, etc). (digital here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2017 06:55 PM
Mable Syndrome noticed this in a library book:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2017 02:16 PM
Hey 'monheads. Here's a PUNKEMON update: We are nearing the PUNKEMON release and here are the important dates: -- Thursday November 9th - Saturday November 11th: a number of the super limited pink copies will be available at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2017 11:06 PM
You can already see the gathering outrage storm twitch hunt in the offing, but this looks like the greatest Woody Allen movie you've never seen and if you tell me to be mad at it it it's just going...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2017 08:08 PM
It sounds a little weird, I know, but squinting past all the gender politics stuff that is in the foreground, this piece by Emily Fox Gordon on "a writer's detachment" and the concomitant disinclination to join up with movements and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2017 03:07 PM
Image of Léonard of Noblac deleted, viewable here. "The story is told that Léonard was a 5th century devout who lived in the town of Nobiliac and that he wished to emulate the sanctity of Saint Remi, who was granted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2017 02:44 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2017 03:28 PM
(Can't bring myself to delete this one, it's just too beautiful.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2017 11:54 PM
This looks like a very interesting book, and I know this feeling well: O’Gorman’s interest in the deconstruction of historical memory was stirred when he visited Mycenae with his girlfriend and looked at what was advertised as the grave of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2017 01:19 PM
(Cross-posted at Medium, with photos.) Earlier today, mostly because I had seen an article that mentioned cupcakes, I started thinking about cupcakes, and social media'd these lyrics: ...and you're my cute little melon ball, my Lawry's Season Salt, you're my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2017 02:14 AM
(This is cross-posted, by the way on Medium.com with more pictures if you'd care to look.) I’m not sure exactly what Chris Appelgren had in mind back in 1999 when he approached me with the idea of participating in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2017 06:18 PM
Fortunately his resources were considerable and his brain sufficiently astute to make good, in most years, the inroads which the tax gatherers made upon them. After him, of course, the Deluge, as he very fully recognised, but with reasonable...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2017 03:49 PM
Came across this photo while looking for something else. That's Kevin Army's grandma's guitar, I believe. If the camera time stamp date is correct, this is from the month before we started recording Revenge Is Sweet. There's a set...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2017 03:07 AM
But afterwards at the command of the exorcist, he putteth on a humane shape very Beautifull, Inflaming Men with womens Love, and women with mens love, and causeth them to shew themselves Naked, if it be desired, &c. Happy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2017 09:13 PM
Aha! Sequenced safety of the Lookout 222 DAT master. Thought it was lost, but it was hiding in box of old photos:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2017 07:08 PM
Lots to learn in this great interview with John Golden by old comrade Ian Brennan in the latest Tape Op....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2017 05:37 PM
Image of the cover of Natalie Babbitt's Devil's Storybook deleted, viewable here. Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2017 05:29 PM
In my personal universe, the observed Hallowe'en season traditionally begins on 9/22 (the day after my birthday) and extends through All Souls Day (11/2.) That's just the way we do it around here. This year's project is to watch...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2017 06:18 PM
I'm currently kind of "curating" this old Martin ('49 O-15 if I'm reading the serial number etc. right). Needs a bit of maintenance and set-up but it's really satisfying to play even as is. I've been playing it non...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2017 05:17 PM
"Shipped in an unbelievably cool custom shipping box for this release based on the original King Dork Approximately design created by legendary graphic designer, Frank Kozik." The album is on discogs, which somehow makes it seem more real. (Matrix...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2017 05:42 PM
-- Today is (finally!) the official release date of the LP and CD of King Dork Approximately the Album. (I know that way back we said there were no plans to do a CD of this release, and there...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2017 05:09 PM
Watching this great documentary on free speech and comedy. It's free on Amazon Prime at the moment. Lenny Bruce's story plays a big role. They say (and it's hard to disagree) that Lenny Bruce wouldn't stand a chance on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2017 09:27 PM
So yeah, like it says, we're bringing the MTX machine to Philly and NYC w/ Kepi in November. A good time will be had. 11/10- Philadelphia, PA at Kung Fu Necktie 11/11- Brooklyn, NY at Saint Vitus Tix on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2017 04:39 PM
This is a mid-70s SG Standard that I hardly ever play because it currently lives at my friend Jen's house. Because there are just too many damn guitars in my tiny apartment, plus I think she plays it sometimes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2017 03:46 PM
Fantastico cover by my Italian friends:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2017 03:22 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2017 03:17 PM
So, the tl;dr of this is: if you're not going to be in Italy for the Dr. Frank shows in July, you can still get the shirt via Sounds Rad. Details are below, but you can sign up here:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2017 03:31 PM
Morning read: all the Beatles songs ranked. Ranking shmanking, I don't really care about that, but unlike whoever wrote that Rolling Stones list a ways back, Bill Wyman (not *that* BW) has interesting things to say in the capsule reviews...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2017 04:59 PM
Like so many of the things we've done over the years, the "Mr T Experience? Nein Danke!" shirt design was a bit of a misfire. A parody of a seemingly ubiquitous anti-nuclear power campaign logo, it seemed funny, slightly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2017 08:58 PM
I've been re-reading The Maltese Falcon (the same Vintage paperback edition I read as a teenager, as it happens.) I noticed a minor, slightly screwy detail that bothered me a whole lot more (I'm sure) than it would bother most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2017 08:48 PM
The Shards 1+2 pins are in and they are cool. Sounds Rad is sending them out to those who've already ordered the digital albums. New orders get them too, while supplies last. They're limited though. Order here. Notes: Volume...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2017 11:58 PM
Dork Gallery here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2017 04:00 PM
Morning read. I dug up this old, much re-read Paul Berman article because of a discussion on Facebook, and instantly got sucked into it again. It's something close to the Platonic ideal of the cultural-political-historical critical essay and it basically...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2017 05:13 PM
Dork Gallery. "Balbum"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2017 10:03 PM
I posted this on the Facebook thing: When a public university incorporates the "rioters' veto" into its de facto policy on doling out selective permission to speak on campus, it amounts to viewpoint discrimination that seems impossible to square with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2017 02:20 PM
BBC wheels out Erica Jong to riff on Girls, and this is one of the things she says, of the characters: Her heroines have been seen as ‘unlikeable’ – does anybody ever find a male hero ‘unlikeable’? Never! Whether it’s...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2017 10:40 PM
My brother spotted this kinda funny genre description on google play and gave it a genuinely funny caption: Psalms about Girls. I assumed at first that it was our mistake, that we just forgot to change the genre field...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2017 03:34 PM
Yesterday was the release day for MTX Shards Volume 2. This 2nd volume of the Shards compilation completes the extant MTX digital catalog, volume 1 and 2 containing all the released tracks that were "orphaned" when we re-configured the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2017 02:41 PM
From here. And speaking of which: ...and on the covers playlist (which is pretty well stocked with "Hitlers" at present) it goes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2017 09:48 PM
So, our four shows with Teenage Bottlerocket and Nobodys went great and I had a lot of fun doing them. As always, I really enjoyed talking to all the "lifers," i.e. longtime MTX fans, each of whom shared detailed accounts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2017 05:34 PM
It's a bit strange to hear people laughing at these lines, as I've played this song thousands of times, but usually in front of audiences who have already heard, memorized, and tattooed these lyrics on their hearts and souls....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2017 07:15 PM
"Hell of" vs. "hella" pops up again, in Language Log. The KQED article cited in the comments, btw, misquotes me slightly. I don't claim the "debate", such as it is/was, dates to 1983, only that that is when I first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2017 05:52 PM
I started a playlist of people covering my songs, found on the internet. I get a kick out of this sort of thing. If you've got one, send it my way......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2017 03:11 PM
I get lots of questions about the song "Thinking of You", how it was recorded, played, etc. Well, I used one of these:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2017 04:46 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2017 05:39 PM
As you can see below, I am reading the Mortdecai books. Stupendous writing. Why was I not informed of this before? It's a "slow read" but not for the usual reasons: it's slow because I keep having to pause to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2017 02:54 PM
This is so depressing. I weep for the future. @jordanbpeterson at @McMasterU. cc: @joerogan @SamHarrisOrg @RubinReport pic.twitter.com/s3lkEDnd8N— Lalo Dagach (@LaloDagach) March 17, 2017 When you guys see stuff like this, do you think back to your college years and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2017 02:47 AM
Bed is the only place for protracted telephoning. It is also excellently suited to reading, sleeping and listening to canaries. It is not at all a good place for sex: sex should take place in armchairs, or in bathrooms,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2017 07:44 PM
That "sneak peek" thing is out of date (I actually took this photo at the Gilman "Lookouting" show in January where we had these handbills in advance of the shows' announcement.) Still, it's a show. More shows listed here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2017 07:44 PM
Michele is playing Marisa's guitar....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2017 01:19 PM
There was a time when I had managed to collect almost the entire Chiswick Records catalog, leaving out duplicates and re-presses, with only a few missing items. I would say about half of this collection remains in my possession. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2017 01:06 PM
Show update... the (only) new thing at the moment, as you can see, is that we're doing one of the club shows at this year's Punk Rock Bowling fest in Las Vegas. Maybe more to come, we'll see. Cool...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2017 08:21 PM
Except that starting today (Feb. 28, '17) King Dork Approximately the Album is available in general digital release. That means the sound files are officially decoupled from the book for those who want them decoupled, and are available to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2017 04:42 PM
Thanks to everyone who came out the shows in Houston and San Antonio over the weekend. As with most of the cities we've been visiting here and there over the past couple of years, these were both places we...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2017 01:09 AM
"You read the magazines?" I said. "So do I," Sally Reine informed me. "My old man gets heaps of them from the States. I like the detective-story ones, where the characters aren't allowed to swear, and the Chicago gangster...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2017 10:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2017 05:23 PM
Dave from the Four Eyes!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2017 09:08 PM
Here's the current show list again, updated with buy links for tickets. Thurs. Feb. 9: Books & Brews II. Dr. Frank solo/acoustic, with Kepi, and DJ Sid Presley. "Daly City’s Department of Library and Recreation Services presents Books &...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2017 06:00 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2017 04:28 PM
So these Valentine cards were created as extras to go along with Sounds Radical's limited edition Love Is Dead shirt/hoodie. The shirts and hoodies are, I understand, pretty much all sold out. But if you want the cards, you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2017 10:28 PM
This is the next thing coming up: me, Kepi, DJ Sid Presley, beer, and German food on Thurs. 2/9, 6PM at Cafe Doelger, 101 Lake Merced Blvd, Daly City, California 94015. $25, free for non-drinkers, all ages welcome. Also,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2017 06:08 PM
Free with limited edition Love Is Dead shirt or hoodie order from Sounds Rad. Get 'em while you can....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2017 10:05 PM
Hey how's it going? How've you been? Oh, that's nice or too bad, depending. Another show list. I haven't listed any of this stuff here before, though the truly new ones are the shows in April with Teenage Bottlerocket...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2017 06:26 PM
As usual, I'm posting this updated little list of upcoming shows a bit tardily, and mostly as a way of making sure I know what I'm doing. If I'm missing anything (which is quite possible) someone let me know. We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2016 08:44 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2016 05:45 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2016 02:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2016 06:54 PM
I get a surprising number of messages asking when and if KDATA will be available CD. I thought CDs were dead. Anyway, the answer is, there are no plans to manufacture CDs, though there will be a really nice vinyl...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2016 03:58 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2016 05:39 PM
(You can buy this digital album direct from Sounds Rad, or from Amazon or iTunes if you prefer.) 1. King Dork Long before it was a book, it was a song. The basic tracks for this one were recorded...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2016 09:39 PM
The track listing for MTX Shards vol. 1 is: King Dork / How I Made a Million in a Punk Rock Band / Sackcloth and Ashes / Whistle Bait / Itching Powder in the Sleeping Bags / Boredom Zone /...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2016 08:21 PM
So the tl;dr of this is: we just put up a new, MTX digital album on iTunes/Amazon/etc. It is volume one of what will be a two volume set containing all the extra songs that have appeared on various...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2016 03:29 PM
@frankportman Needed KDA, decided that I might as well order the full set! :D pic.twitter.com/l7T8Jwi8C3— Spoopy Dingo (@JohnDingoFromIA) October 30, 2016...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2016 04:10 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2016 05:20 PM
The New York Review of Books jazzes up its assessment of Brian Wilson's latest memoir with some fashionable nonsense: But time and social change have been rough on the Beach Boys. Their best-known hits (say, “California Girls,” “Help Me, Rhonda,”...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2016 02:49 PM
This is Dan Potthast of the band MU330 among others. Dude writes great songs....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2016 02:04 PM
No new listings from the last time I posted the list. I just deleted the Las Vegas shows which already happened. They were fun. I hope to be able to announce more dates soon. Sat- Nov 12th- Santa Ana,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2016 01:54 PM
(Here she is ten years ago, btw. Glad she stuck with it.) If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2016 07:18 PM
Steven Bickmore is a professor of English at the UNLV College of Education (formerly of Louisiana State University) and a specialist in Young Adult literature. He pretty much singlehandedly forced King Dork into academic legitimacy through his graduate program...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2016 05:59 PM
Ed Masley of the Arizona Republic posts the video and puts "High School Is the Penalty..." on a list of 10 songs you need to hear right now. And if Ed or anyone who has read this were in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2016 04:37 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2016 03:35 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 02:29 PM
(This was also posted on the Sounds Radical blog.) Frank Kozik is one of the greatest poster artists in the history of rock and roll. His work revolutionized the "rock concert" poster in a fundamental way, and whether you realize...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 01:04 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 02:41 AM
Just a quick show update here. The new things are (a) the kind of last minute Las Vegas evening show on the flier at the Golden Tiki, and the "Lookouting" at Gilman. (Advance tickets for the Saturday night at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2016 02:38 PM
It took some doing, but this nearly 60 year old guitar is finally resurrected and back in my arms again. The guy who sold it to me 25 years ago told me its previous owner had been Johnny Guitar...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2016 08:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2016 06:13 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2016 01:22 AM
Just a few links from the past week. --This review (by Julie River) of King Dork Approximately the Album appeared on the punknews.org site. I've been covered in one way or another by quite a few big, important publications...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2016 08:00 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2016 03:31 PM
I met Kat at our show at the Blue Lamp in Sacramento over the weekend. Fun girl. If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2016 04:25 PM
It is ridiculously expensive to ship the physical book (which is the "gateway" to the album download) but you can buy the Amazon Kindle version and access the album from it. (I believe it will work with any form...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2016 03:33 PM
Bradley Skaught is a true blue singer-songwriter and rock and roller, something that is pretty hard to sustain long-term in this day and age. I first became aware of him because my old bandmate Aaron plays bass in his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2016 03:30 AM
I met Alana at a public library visit in Nashville last year along with her dad and brother. Cool kid, looks good with a book. Her dad is a writer and does the band Vista Blue, who did this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2016 07:12 PM
Michele (with one L) is the regular co-host of the great rock and roll podcast Long Gone Loser and is a top gal and all around good egg. Only met her just recently but she's already one of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2016 12:54 AM
Kevin Seconds is the best example I can think of of a punk rock guy transitioning successfully and elegantly to an authentic, credible role as a singer-songwriter qua singer-songwriter. (Not that he's left the punk rock behind, necessarily --...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2016 05:44 PM
I was on KPFA today with my old pal (and "retired punk rock mailman") Last Will and the legendary Kris Welch. I'm used to a very casual, shambolic, deliberately sloppy approach from years of college radio, which is a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2016 04:55 AM
I thought I had everything already, but I just got another surprise grab bag bin of MTX master tapes from Alex Botkin via Corbett Redford (who was presumably hanging on to them for use in the Green Day / East...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2016 01:39 AM
Take a pic and send it to me if you want....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2016 03:08 PM
For ten years I've been collecting photos of people pretending to read my books, a tradition that was started by my old comrade Leah when she sent this pic: Soon everyone was doing it, and I wound up with hundreds...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2016 01:13 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2016 04:04 AM
This is Chris Appelgren, former owner of Lookout Records, old friend and tireless supporter of me and my stuff. Without his help King Dork Approximately the Album would have struggled much more in its bid for real world existence,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2016 03:49 PM
This song begins side 2 of King Dork Approximately the Album, and we released it as a digital single to accompany the video (essentially a short film with the song as soundtrack, directed by our own up-and-coming filmmaker Jonathan...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2016 02:11 PM
(You can get one just like it from Sounds Rad.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2016 11:42 PM
It has been released. What that means is, you can download the full King Dork Approximately the Album when you get hold of a copy of King Dork Approximately the Paperback. The quickest way to do that is to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2016 01:40 PM
About how King Dork Approximately the Album and King Dork Approximately the Paperback Edition of the Novel came about, and explaining the mechanics of the procedure for acquiring the aforementioned. (Posted on Medium.com to make it seem special and look...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2016 09:27 PM
Okay so I'm updating the show list, as much for my benefit as yours. Lots going on in my world these days, and it's easy to get confused. Fri- Oct 7th- San Francisco at the DNA Lounge, with Captain...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2016 03:24 PM
It's weird to do the math on stuff like this, but it turns out I've known Last Will for over thirty years. (He was my mailman, used to listen to KALX on his route, realized I was on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2016 01:26 PM
By Matt K. Shrugg....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2016 03:26 AM
I have noticed that even very smart, quite thoughtful people who have been around the block can have trouble distinguishing fiction from reality when it comes to assessing art. e.g. it can be surprisingly difficult for people to get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2016 06:32 PM
-- longtime friend of MTX Ed Masley says "Cinthya (with a Y)" is one of "15 songs you need to hear right now. I became aware of "Gwladys" by means of P. G. Wodehouse. It all checks out. -- Sweet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2016 05:34 PM
"Cinthya (with a Y)" is now (finally) up on Amazon digital, 99 cents (cheap)....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2016 02:44 PM
This is my band's new single. I'm not saying it's rock and roll, necessarily, but it does appear to be intentional: Nice write up, Paper Mag!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2016 10:37 PM
I recently did an interview (via twitter direct messages) that formed the basis for this Love Is Dead "retrospective". There was a question about songwriting, and this is what I dashed off: 1. Have a clear topic and “conceit” (usually...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2016 02:21 PM
Strange to think how large this image looms in my life. Chris Appelgren and I used to go to the junk store up the street from Lookout to mine old magazines for art fodder. It was a good time...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2016 02:02 PM
It's a tradition!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2016 12:46 AM
The video for the forthcoming single "Cinthya (with a Y)" was created by our own Augustus Rachels, who made this video as a school project last year: Very talented guy. Going places. He's also been a lifelong MTX fan from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2016 03:24 PM
There will soon (I hope) be a comprehensive one stop web location for links to buy the new stuff and the old stuff, basically all or most of the stuff. Watch this space for that announcement. In the meantime, this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2016 12:36 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2016 11:52 PM
So, I'm not planning to kill myself scrounging, scheming, and pleading for the PTNC this time around. (As I have certainly done in the past.) I don't have time for it and it never really works that well. Maybe this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2016 03:49 PM
So as I've been banging on about, the new album comes out Oct. 4 as a download with the paperback edition of the book. You can pre-order (though the download itself won't be "up" till day of.) Or come...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2016 05:40 PM
Remember when everyone thought it was the height of evil and a betrayal of "punk" to put UPC codes on records? Down with commercialism (in the context of this product we are trying to sell you)! We were all a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2016 07:12 PM
Thanks to everyone for buying stuff in this last record sale, and for bidding on that Love Is Dead test pressing, which wound up going for $405 -- a record, I'm sure, so to speak. (And cheers, Brian.) I'll probably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2016 03:23 PM
Ages ago, asked to write a bio for my band, I came up with a timeline type thing that went something like: 1985: band forms; 1986-7: band releases two long-playing short-selling records; 1989: band releases new e.p., driving record label...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2016 10:50 PM
UPDATE, 08.03.16: So the Revenge Is Sweets and Alcatrazes are all gone. I still have a small number of Milk Milk Lemonades, and plenty of the others. (I'm not sure, but I strongly suspect that that's the end of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2016 06:23 PM
Album artwork (front side) here. Seems like some folks are confused by this whole set up, especially by the fact that I keep talking about an MTX album when the image available heretofore has been of a book written...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2016 04:39 PM
One of the things I found in a recent excavation of a box of my old stuff that was in my mom's garage was a photo envelope containing some fuzzy snapshots I took of the Clash at this daytime show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2016 01:49 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2016 12:05 AM
This is by way of a progress report on King Dork Approximately the Album. The recording for the KDATA is almost completely done. It's coming out great, I think, best stuff we've ever done in many ways. Its exceeding my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2016 03:31 PM
The peace sign is suddenly a lot more interesting once you learn that its designer intended it to depict "an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2016 03:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2016 09:35 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2016 12:23 AM
One of the many theoretical irons I have in the theoretical fire these days is an idea that dates back to a few years ago when I came across all my old lyrics notebooks that I'd stopped using when I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2016 03:23 PM
Here's the kickstarter for that Creem Magazine documentary you may have been hearing about. Believe it or not, this photo appeared in the September 1988 issue of Creem magazine: Rod Stewart was on the cover....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2016 10:15 PM
Almost forgot how good this is:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2016 05:41 PM
From Freddie deBoer: ...Meanwhile, the grubby masses, lacking access to the kind of private liberal arts colleges where one learns these Byzantine codes, now can add political and moral poverty to their economic and social poverty. This is the next...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2016 05:19 PM
Artist Evan Dorkin managed to slip quite a few "shout outs" to unlikely bands into this and other comics. (This was found on Instagram but I remember it well because it made me feel like a big shot at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2016 02:49 PM
From Thoughts on the Sociology of Brexit by Will Davies: What was so clever about the language of the Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment, then promised to eradicate it. The promise...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2016 04:00 PM
From facebook: Q: Hey Frank I was just listening to revenge is sweet (my personal favorite from your catalog) and I've always noticed the guitar on that album is a bit crunchier and distinctly different from any of your other...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2016 02:49 PM
As I've mentioned before, my old, ailing Les Paul Jr. has been in the rehabilitation process for some time now, but it seems that now the end is in sight. The latest is that we're leaving it strung for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2016 03:43 PM
So, I only ever meant to keep this "up" temporarily, and I figure pretty much everyone who would want it already has it, but just in case here's a heads up that this will be going away soon so now...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2016 10:50 PM
Liz Suburbia drew this great picture of Andromeda Klein:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2016 01:04 AM
This turned up on twitter and I dutifully reposted it (insofar as my duty, sad as it may be, requires vague, ineffectual attempts to amplify each and every mention of myself and my works, no matter how trivial.) A surprising...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2016 04:58 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2016 04:57 PM
"They want penance, for themselves as for others, but deprived of religion and knowing no means of describing or imposing it, have re-imagined the sacrament in a crude, child-like, and rather vicious form." --Something said by the smartest person I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2016 07:16 PM
So... this may well be one of those nutty ideas that won't come to anything, but I was listening to some rough mixes today and thought it could be cool to incorporate some audio of people reading little bits from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2016 09:18 PM
A swell gal named Valerie posted this on the facebook thing today: My favorite thing about Facebook, is that occasionally Dr. Frank posts status updates that are just MTX lyrics and it's the best and it totally makes my day....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2016 06:12 PM
Took the little piece of duct tape off the laptop camera hole to take the photo, but it was only quick. (Pre-order my book/album.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2016 04:34 PM
Sat. 5/14, 8PM, Uptown, 128 Telegraph, Oakland w/Zack Bateman and the Coal Minds, The Wastedeads, and Toxic Shock Syndrome....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2016 03:14 PM
Mikey Erg posted this on his Instagram because this week's Chris Gerhard Show has a prom theme and this is what he went to instead of his own prom. I believe I stated home for Love Boat/Fantasy Island on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2016 06:41 PM
Here's Mike Nesmith on a Facebook post, working his way towards explaining why he doesn't feel he has or can have a useful or interesting opinion on whether or not the Monkees or anyone else should be in the "Rock...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2016 03:01 PM
They were lying around next to the board at the Static Room where I did vox last night, and it seemed... auspicious....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2016 05:28 PM
Hard to imagine a more dim-witted piece of criticism than this, as a (perhaps surprising) 100% of Stranger commenters avow. I don't care too much about that (though it's fun when snark like "hey there's this thing called the internet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2016 09:17 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2016 07:27 PM
UPDATE 4/5/16: So this thing is winding down, though I still have the non-crossed-out stuff listed below. I'm going to leave this up here and in the sidebar (at this link) for anyone who wants to check in the future,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2016 03:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2016 04:39 PM
Hey, this is what the cover of the paperback of King Dork Approximately will look like. It is coming out October 4th and can now be pre-ordered. It's going to come with a free download of King Dork Approximately...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2016 04:44 PM
Freddie deBoer on the sublime narcissism of getting offended on other people's behalf. I posted this link on facebook without comment (in that pass-agg way I sometimes have of posting things without comment just to see what people will say,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2016 05:39 PM
(via a link in this essay placing the Monkees in the context of the "LA Scene.")...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2016 03:28 PM
So my buddy Chuck Prophet and I are doing a show at Armando's in Martinez on March 20th. If I have ever set foot in Martinez before in my life I am unaware of it, so, well, yeah, mark...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2016 06:41 PM
As a teenager I dreamed of being Pete Townshend and/or Shelley, Ray Davies, Jonathan Richman, et al., but also this guy:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2016 01:29 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2016 06:52 PM
Wow....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2015 12:47 PM
(Photo by Dawn Wilson from this gallery.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2015 11:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2015 08:46 PM
It is tempting to imagine that a simple idea in the minds of simple people decades past and thousands of miles away can explain a complex event. The notion that local east European antisemitism killed the Jews of eastern...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2015 07:05 PM
So I guess that vinyl sale was a success, in that I have hardly any of the LPs left. Thanks very much folks. I may well do it again next time I find myself with some time and some product...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2015 11:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2015 04:15 PM
I have twin aunts who are only four years older than me. When I was a kid they would sometimes babysit me, in concert or, more often, singly, but always with their respective complement of friends. I vividly remember...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2015 03:45 PM
UPDATE: as of now, unless I'm miscounting, all the Love Is Deads are gone, as are most of the other LPs. I Still have some Night Shift, Making Things with Light, and Big Black Bugs, along with the 7"s and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2015 08:32 PM
You can get a digital version of this here if you want one. I put it together as a CDR to sell on a solo acoustic tour of Europe that I did with Kepi in the Fall of 2012....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2015 09:13 PM
JoAnn Wypijewski in the Nation, addressing the strange paradox of putative liberals' calls for greater state power as a way of addressing state abuses of power: Now, so drilled are we in the language of crime and punishment that any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2015 10:20 PM
So the new stuff here is the details for the Oct 10 daytime YA convention and the Casper WY show on 11/20. More to come. Saturday, Oct. 10 Two things happening. First: I will be speaking (and probably doing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2015 06:49 PM
The attempt to get my old Les Paul Jr. (the white one) into playing condition had hit a major snag a ways back because one of the bridge posts seems to have been epoxied in at some point and wouldn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2015 03:40 PM
You know, Uber rides often make me feel pretty good about America. Last night's driver was Egyptian and we had a very interesting conversation about authoritarian governments, media spin, history, and Egyptian politics. He said his family and friends back...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2015 07:13 PM
Paul Berman talks Popes and Catholicism: It is sometimes said of Chateaubriand, the author of The Genius of Christianity in 1800, that he was drawn to every aspect of the Catholic Church except its Christianity; and I find this understandable....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2015 03:26 PM
So I reached under the bed and pulled out another guitar. This is the second electric guitar I ever owned and was the main guitar for a stretch in the late '80s. I've never been able to identify it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2015 02:18 AM
The thing I've never been able to understand about campaigns to have this or that bit of art or culture suppressed or bowdlerized is: if your ideological worldview is such that the thing in question depicts an evil important and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2015 11:37 PM
Upcoming things are listed here. (There are more as-yet-unannounceable shows to fill in when the time comes and I'll try to update the list as soon as they become announceable.) First off, as I've mentioned here and there, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2015 06:35 PM
I've often thought, and probably written a time or two, that as so much of my "serious reading" was done many years ago when I was young and stupid, my opinions on these books are unreliable and not to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2015 03:14 PM
Hey folks, I'm going to be visiting Last Will on his show on KPFA tomorrow at 11 AM. (Yeah, he's back on the air, which is good news in itself of course.) John of Vktms SF is going to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 13, 2015 07:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2015 03:44 PM
So, continuing to rummage through the junk under the bed -- see below --I pulled this out. It's a Les Paul Custom I acquired sometime in the late '80s. According to the Guitar dater serial number lookup thing, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2015 09:13 PM
The Battle of Waterloo, according to the famous saying, was won on the playing fields of Eton. (The meaning is clear, whether or not Wellington ever actually said it.) Well now the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf casts a light on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2015 04:22 PM
I almost forgot I had this thing. According to the serial # it's from 1960 Kalamazoo. Seems like at one point it was a sunburst finish? Now like many of my guitars it most resembles a barn door. Pretty...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2015 01:12 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2015 05:32 PM
The rogue poet who managed to smuggle one of his poems into an (apparently) prestigious anthology simply by adopting the name Yi Fen-Chou reminds me of the fascinating case of Rahila Khan. The New Criterion article in which Theodore Dalrymple...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2015 04:29 PM
So this is what's happening this weekend, two Dr. Frank shows. There has been a change of venue for Saturday: this show is now at the Hideout (which is apparently just down the road from the Soda Bar.) See ya...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2015 04:35 PM
The Minor Thread guy posted this one today. This was and remains a very popular design and I get many requests to re-issue it. Who knows, it could happen. But if it does, no scientists allowed....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2015 12:21 AM
Patrick tracked this down and sent it to me to sign. For what it's worth, there is only one other such signed item in existence....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2015 09:23 PM
"Why does contemporary culture so often seem indistinguishable from a Puritan society where everyone is constantly sticking their noses in everyone else’s business?" This is Freddie de Boer's question in an interesting essay in the Observer. Contemporary culture, in this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2015 09:50 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2015 05:56 PM
Unless this is some sort of Onion-style joke or something, Suey Park appears to have repented: I so very much regret contributing to a culture in which knee jerk reactions and call-outs became synonymous with social justice education.— Suey Park...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2015 03:35 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2015 08:24 PM
...for Labor Day weekend. Saturday, Sept 5 Awesomefest 9, Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon, San Diego CA. Time TBA. So, like it says, I'm playing at Awesomefest 9 in San Diego along with a whole mess of other folks, including...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2015 03:57 PM
(Chris Gethard in background!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2015 09:42 PM
From Anne Rice's facebook page: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2015 03:43 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2015 04:51 PM
There were a lot of things I hated about the '80s: the drum sounds, the identity politics, cultural Marxism, the post-structuralist war on clear writing and thinking, illiberalism from everyone including self-identifying "liberals", the moral panic/witch hunts, political correctness, censorship...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2015 04:39 PM
Punk = an haute couture fashion movement from 1970s London. Punk rock = a species of rock and roll. Hardcore punk = punk rock played too fast with the rock and roll surgically removed from it and the subject matter...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 7, 2015 02:22 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2015 03:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2015 01:00 AM
The most obtuse journey of discovery you'll read all day. Oh, that quaint Italian logic with its confusing expectation that words be used to refer to those things to which they actually refer....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2015 10:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2015 03:58 PM
Andrea Janov reviews the NYC Webster Hall Weasel/Queers/MTX show. "They also played a new song, that he ties in with his King Dork book series, which was super catchy and awesome (a new MTX record would be pretty sweet if...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2015 02:06 PM
So this is Brigid, whose dad sent me a bunch of books and records to autograph for her. I think I signed the book she's holding in the picture "for Brigid, when she's ready" because she's only seven and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 11:00 PM
You might think you'd want your office thermostat policy to minimize the chances of the most likely to break into a sweat breaking into that sweat, for the sake of everyone involved. But as it turns out true equality depends...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 09:44 PM
My uncle Bill introduced me to the Pentangle in the mid 70s when I was around 10 and it all was still kind of current, but to me at the time 1968 seemed quite ancient, as did the music...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 04:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 02:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 01:27 PM
That's Yvonne Prinz, whose forthcoming book If You're Lucky I'm in the middle of reading and it's great. If you want King Dork Approximately, I hear they still have some copies left....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2015 06:51 PM
I came across this drawing on the internet somewhere and saved it and unfortunately I can no longer find who drew it (if you did draw it and you notice this let me know so I can credit you....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2015 05:41 PM
My agent and friend Steve Malk texted me this photo alerting me to the headline: My first thought, being the paranoid narcissist that I am, was the extremely unlikely and rather alarming one that Barbara Ehrenreich had written an article...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2015 04:53 PM
Looking through old lyrics notebooks and noticing how much time and effort I had to have put into trying to be a one man punk rock tin pan alley to nowhere in the 90s, all these closely-written pages of intricate,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2015 11:32 PM
Like, I imagine, a lot of writers/musicians/artists I often get messages from very nice people interested in helping me out, asking how best to go about it. For any writer, the answer is going to be: go to a store...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2015 05:01 PM
Word on the street is my songwriting is "too literary." (Or, as in the title, "to literary" as the most recent one spelt it.) At least I've been seeing this pop up on the internet here and there all of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2015 07:45 PM
They've been making an effort to improve the traffic light system in my neck of the woods (North Oakland/Temescal.) And by "improve" I mean, gradually making it more and more complicated. They keep adding new lights and varying the pattern...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2015 04:29 PM
So PEN is going to give a "freedom of expression courage award" to Charlie Hebdo, to be accepted by one of the few CH staff left alive. Six writers, including the novelists Peter Carey and Francine Prose, have withdrawn from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2015 06:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2015 05:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2015 12:06 AM
A few links of the day, on a general "careful what you wish for" theme. Proponents of greater state control in a good cause never seem to consider the quite likely possibility that these instruments of enforcement might well be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2015 06:02 PM
But he doesn't have any money. So, we just give him some money, then have him give it right back to us, wouldn't that work? I don't know, that might make it look kind of implausible that's he's at fault,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2015 06:24 PM
A revolving metal cylinder containing a sacred text, the Tibetan prayer wheel is set in motion by the turn of a human hand. The result is an automated form of prayer, which the votary believes may secure good fortune and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2015 04:23 PM
This is evidently a school project -- I've linked to this guy's videos of "Sackcloth and Ashes" and "Love is Dead" before. Anyway, nice job, Gus....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2015 06:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2015 09:40 PM
Mostly just random: -- At the end of a run of joyful riffing on the manifold absurdities of Treacherous Love by Beatrice Sparks (of Go Ask Alice fame) the host of this podcast has nice things to say about King...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2015 08:56 PM
Here be my shows update. Some are book things (where I usually play songs) and some are MTX etc. rock and roll shows. See if there's anything you like. Thurday, March 12 Indigo Literacy Night, Frost Elementary, 530 Gettysburg Dr,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2015 04:18 PM
Post-structuralism has destroyed two generations of graduate students, who were forced to mouth its ugly jargon and empty platitudes for their foolish faculty elders. And the end result is that humanities departments everywhere, having abandoned their proper mission of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 09:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 06:46 PM
If you're not aware that the word "liberal" in contemporary American understanding means in many respects something close to the exact opposite of its literal/historical/actual meaning, this debate will be largely incomprehensible. Nevertheless, as even those on the opposing side...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 05:50 PM
Well, this is a show update I probably should have posted a bit sooner, but these things have a way of sneaking up on a person. Anyway, come to these. Friday, January 23 Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2015 06:39 PM
Here's a bunch of links I would have posted earlier if the book release, Christmas, New Years, and Second Christmas (Feast of Kings) hadn't got in the way. -- Photographer (and great all around gal) Julie Pavlowski Green took...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2015 12:17 AM
Most correspondence I get these days is of course electronic, but every now and again I'll get an envelope from my publisher containing physical mail sent to their address in New York. These are almost always the result of write-a-letter-to-an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2015 06:15 PM
Just reminding you all that my thing at Moe's in Berkeley is tonight. (Tues. Jan. 6, 7:30PM, free.) I just learned last night that one of the events co-ordinators happens to be my upstairs neighbor. Basically what that means is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2015 07:53 PM
Well, Christmas, New Years, and Second Christmas (Feast of Kings) always come all in a row and it's weird how that always seems to come as a surprise. Hope you all had a great one. I have quite a bit...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2015 07:07 PM
(Here she is with AK from a ways back.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2015 06:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2014 04:10 PM
So my custom Dr. Frank guitar was built mostly to the specs of the Martin OM/OO, but is considerably deeper than the standard. This made finding a case for it challenging (I actually had to have one of those...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2014 05:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2014 08:03 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2014 09:14 PM
So I went to see Judas Priest in San Jose a ways back. I love Judas Priest. The last time I saw them was some time in the early 90s I believe, and before that in the mid 80s....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2014 07:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2014 05:19 PM
Was asked last night whether I'd ever consider writing "adult" books. My inclination, as usual, is to dispute the premise of the question, as I don't see the same unbridgeable chasm between "adult" and "teen" fiction that others seem so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2014 08:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2014 04:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2014 06:32 PM
Beth pointed out this paragraph that closes Dickens's "preface to the first cheap edition" of Nicholas Nickleby: There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer a remark. If Nicholas be not always found to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2014 06:07 PM
-- Check out Nathan Pensky's review of King Dork Approximately over at the AV Club. (It got an A!) -- Alex Scordelis interviewed me for Vice/Noisey and this cool piece was the result. -- I did two songs on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2014 05:26 PM
Hey, so I made the Reason Holiday Book Guide. Or, my book did, rather. ...The narrator, Tom Henderson, is simply one of the greatest voices of adolescent angst ever. I was turned on to King Dork by my then-teenaged son,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2014 04:04 PM
Got a box of the KDA audiobooks yesterday. The reader is Lincoln Hoppe, who did such a great job on the first book. I'm still working my way up to listening to it myself, though, because hearing someone else...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2014 03:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2014 08:43 PM
Here are things that happened: -- I feel like I've been listening to KQED's Cy Musiker and Dave Wiegand talk about where to go and what to do for years and years but this is, I'm pretty sure, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2014 08:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2014 05:45 PM
Interpunk has KDA shirts now....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2014 07:46 PM
More here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2014 07:27 PM
Here are some links to consider when working on your Christmas list. Suggestion: keep it simple. KDA for everybody. -- Hiya Swanhuyser wrote this piece about me and my bloodshot eye for SF Weekly. -- Posh Deluxe of Forever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2014 08:04 PM
So the theme song to the new book "King Dork Approximately" is now out as a digital thing and the song and video are being hosted by the AV Club today. You can get it on iTunes, too, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2014 06:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2014 05:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2014 04:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2014 09:38 PM
Here. She's going to be appearing at the King Dork Approximately event thing in NYC on December 9. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2014 03:49 PM
So just the other day I wound up on the front page of the Tribune and all those other east bay papers courtesy of Jim "the critic" Harrington. Very much appreciate the coverage, so thanks Jim. Several folks have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2014 12:30 PM
Hey, did I mention I'm gonna be on the Chris Gethard Show on Dec. 10? Well, I am. This is still the current show list. Pre-order the book!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2014 11:57 AM
Conor Friedersdorf on the recent, precipitous erosion of British liberty. Our government routinely ignores our constitution too, but at least we've got a written basis on which to complain when it does, which seems somehow better though practically speaking, considering...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2014 05:13 PM
Leah single-handedly started the tradition of the King Dork reader photo way back in 2006 by sending this picture. I posted it and people followed suit and began sending in their own portraits of themselves pretending to read the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2014 12:56 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2014 12:57 AM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2014 08:34 PM
So we're now one month away from the release of the stuff (new book plus a bit of music.) It seemed like it was taking forever, and now all of sudden it's happening imminently, too soon to do like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2014 07:05 PM
...but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2014 04:22 PM
So as you can see -- and you can click on the banner for a larger version of the flier -- the book release show at 1-2-3-4 Go Records on Sunday December 7 is shaping up to be quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2014 11:39 PM
When I re-posted that photo of Mick Jones reading King Dork last week, it became clear that a whole lot of folks had missed it the first time around, so I'm taking this opportunity also to repost what I still...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2014 06:16 PM
New York City Arrests, Prosecutes, Eventually Settles with Legal Knife Owner If NYC law is as described it's insane, but even worse, obviously, is that fact that even these abstruse, irrational criteria seem to be ignored when it comes to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2014 02:46 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2014 06:05 PM
So that new Buzzcocks song is deceptively catchy in a way that many of Pete Shelley's songs have been for me. There are those that just knock you over the head on first listen, of course, but there are also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2014 05:03 AM
Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2014 02:54 PM
...so watch this space if massive show updates are the kind of thing you really like to see....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2014 02:49 PM
That's Mick Jones of the Clash. (Gallery.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2014 02:06 AM
Came across this article by Sarah Burnes in the Paris Review via Bookshelves of Doom's roundup of recent YA "thinkpieces". Though I obviously agree with the basic thrust of the classic "don't feel bad about reading/writing teen fiction" essay, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2014 06:34 PM
My publisher is Random house, whose logo is a picture of house. Recently they merged with Penguin, whose logo is a picture of a penguin, and the merged company now officially (I think) goes by the name "Penguin Random House"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2014 05:02 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2014 03:49 PM
Came across this great illustration (by the comic artist Minna Sundberg) of the Indo-European language "tree" via Bookshelves of Doom. (See it full size here.) After that I spent much of tonight's insomnia perusing Sundberg's rather amazing Nordic post-apocalyptic...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2014 12:55 PM
The government assumes that depositing amounts over $10,000 in a bank account is inherently suspect and must be documented and investigated to ensure that the money was not obtained illegally. The law against "structuring" is premised on the idea that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2014 12:03 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2014 08:58 PM
Matt Yglesias on the important role played by editors in the publishing industry: Transforming a writer's words into a readable e-book product can be done with a combination of software and a minimal amount of training. Book publishers do not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2014 08:16 AM
So yes, Interpunk has re-issued the "Sam Hellerman is a Genius" shirts from way back. I get requests for these all the time, so anyone who wants one, now's your chance. Order here. King Dork Approximately shirts coming soon,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2014 07:24 PM
So I'm not sure what I expect to get from this, but I thought it could be worth trying so bear with me while I explain what it is. You know how you (probably) used to devote a great deal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2014 06:28 PM
I did one of those Amazon list things for King Dork way back when, and I did another one for King Dork Approximately just now. It's called the King Dork Approximately Music List and it's basically a list of music...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2014 04:00 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2014 01:05 AM
Wonderful, if bittersweet, news: the ninth and final series of Peep Show will air sometime next year. I am going to miss these characters (all of them, including the writers) but of course all of those involved will continue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2014 04:33 AM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2014 06:45 PM
Tiffany seems to have had a good time at the Texas Teen Book Festival, and here's her re-cap of the day, which includes this photo: The jam in question is "Cinthya with a Y", which she incidentally gave the best...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2014 06:10 PM
My friend Tristin described this collection of allegedly real text message screen shots as "MTX songs come to life" and I can see why!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2014 05:56 PM
(Gallery.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2014 06:50 PM
So TX Teen Book thing was good. Mostly hung out with the core “team” of music-y YA writers from that previous Anderson’s conference (Len Vlahos, Kevin Emerson, Joelle Charbonneau) but also kind of “bonded” over shared friends and music, past...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2014 06:40 PM
So YA etc. author Kathryn Williams interviewed me about King Dork Approximately for Sparknotes as part of their "Teen Read Week" and the result can be read here. I reveal my most-hated childhood nickname, which of my characters I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2014 08:23 PM
I have managed to time each of my books to coincide with the birth of each of Katrina's three children, more or less. (cf. here, and here.) (And yes, that's the "stunt book" but a photo-op is a photo-op.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2014 05:50 PM
So, Porchlight was fun. I played "King Dork Approximately" and "Cinthya with a Y" and everyone seemed to have a pretty good time during it, from what I could tell. (It's hard under the bright lights. You can't see...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2014 05:21 PM
Was chatting with my old pal Beth Lisick about this and that she asked if I felt like doing a "sneak peek song" at the Porchlight Litquake show this Monday, and I was all, "yeah I can't see why not."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2014 09:02 PM
Dusting off the old beast: (btw, I am, they say, a notable user.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2014 08:18 PM
This is a "show" update, the same list posted below, but I added the details for the Portland Barnes & Noble thing on October 2nd. It's funny that after all the frantic guitar upgrading I did in the past year's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2014 11:19 PM
The linked reassessment of the film American Beauty is pretty silly, but the metafilter commentary on it was interesting enough to spur me to spend some of last night's insomnia watching that movie for the second time. First time around,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2014 07:21 PM
A few things coming up. Wednesday, September 24th, 6:00 PM University Book Store, 990 102nd Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 Saturday, September 27th/28th Anderson's YA Conference, Hotel Arista, 2139 City Gate Lane, Naperville, IL 60563 Monday, September 29th 7:00 PM...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 10:37 PM
Seth Christenfeld of guyslitwire revisits King Dork and has lots of nice things to say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 09:33 PM
Lexington Green of Chicagoboyz turns up this gorgeous demo of "Pleasant Valley Sunday"... ...and links to my old "Monkees Derangement Syndrome" essay....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 04:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 04:56 PM
The Booklist review of King Dork Approximately can be viewed by subscribers only, but you can read it here, and here: How do you survive high school without succumbing to institutionalized “Normalism”? That is one question asked by self-professed loser...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2014 02:53 PM
Posh Deluxe of Forever Young Adult previews stuff, including King Dork Approximately: (Pre-order here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2014 04:03 PM
It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing. I now mostly associate that public face with danger, with an endless list of things that you can’t...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2014 03:06 AM
So there's a new (ish) Judas Priest album and it's pretty darn good. At least one probable enduring classic ("Halls of Vahalla") and many other strong contenders, a good mix of heavy and melodic with a good dose of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2014 08:45 PM
"A murderer is rather like a peer: he pays more because of his title. One tries to travel incognito, but it usually comes out." -- Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2014 10:34 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2014 05:23 PM
Lately, as you may have noticed, I've been fascinated/horrified by the increasingly prevalent "likeability" standard as the primary criterion for assessing the value of literary works. (James Wood addressed it here; and here's Dan Handler, Brendan Halpin, and me, most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2014 08:22 PM
So apparently we are now arresting, jailing, and breaking up the families of parents for letting their kids do stuff that was totally normal when most of us were growing up, like going to the park, waiting in the car,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2014 05:03 PM
Came across a copy of the 1967 Rosemary's Baby hardcover at a used bookstore and got it because it felt like I should probably have one. It is inscribed with the name of a former owner, a pentagram, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2014 06:57 PM
Very impressed with Ti West's House of the Devil (currently on Netflix, and super cheap on Amazon.) I've never seen a better, more effective attempt at re-creating and re-imagining a retro style in film, right down to the feel of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2014 05:23 PM
The New Republic says "we told you so" about The Catcher in the Rye, but this critique ("Holden Caulfield isn't as clever or perceptive as he thinks he is") is rather embarrassingly obtuse. That's what's *good* about it. It's like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2014 04:26 AM
I think this may have been our first show at Gilman. Photo by Ian Harper....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2014 02:08 AM
This kid just thought it would be funny to pose with the book because of the title (I assume) and indicated in a subsequent tweet that he wasn’t too interested in the book and didn’t buy it, but it’s...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2014 06:21 PM
So, today is the official publication date of the new edition of King Dork. It features a new full color frontispiece (if frontispiece means what I think it does) -- basically it's the full view, in color, of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2014 04:33 PM
This article/interview is kind of a blast from the past that wound up on my google alert-o-sphere because someone seems to be archiving the Kitchen Sink at the moment. To my surprise, there’s a bit in there that fairly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2014 11:32 PM
One of the charges here is that the Joyce estate connived with the editors of the 1986 "corrected" edition of Ulysses to make enough changes to justify extending the copyright as though it were a new work. Did this (and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2014 11:15 PM
Reading Ulysses for the first time since I was a teenager. (I know, weird, not to say crazy, thing to do.) In high school the flash and gimmickry and Tristram Shandyness loomed far larger for me, and I suppose I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2014 08:04 PM
Came across this photo while looking for something else. (It appears to have been taken on the same day as this one.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2014 04:41 PM
I mean, sure. I really don't get this (apparently quite common) fear that someone is going to notice what you're reading and blame you for it. There are lots of genuinely embarrassing things a person can do and be blamed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2014 02:28 AM
Whenever some misfortune befalls me, a minor setback, a major triumph by an enemy or rival, a significant failure, or an insignificant one, I will often note the occasion with this phrase, cryptic only to those unfamiliar with Rosemary’s Baby:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2014 06:47 PM
Vice hate-blurbs a handful of books by celebrities for your amusement and sense of intellectual superiority. Notes: (a) the Tyra Banks book mentioned here is legendary and has been on my "say I'm planning to read it" list ever since...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2014 05:33 PM
"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” I believe most people who have never written novels themselves tend to over-estimate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2014 04:32 PM
So, this be the cover of my new book: Whitney Matheson over at USA Today's Popcandy revealed it today, and there's a Q&A with me at that link as well. Cheers, Whit! You can pre-order the book here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2014 05:07 PM
This person recommends Andromeda Klein's strategy for saving library books from being weeded: People who feel strongly about retaining books in libraries have a simple way to combat the removal of treasured volumes. Since every system of elimination is based,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2014 03:19 AM
If you'd like to read a chunk of King Dork Approximately, you can find one amongst the twenty excerpts from 2014 YA novels in this free download. The Amazon link is here. (Also, pre-order the book, if you like.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2014 06:15 PM
There is a problem with the way people read novels now, most obvious in Amazon reviews, in which readers consistently confuse whether or not a novel is good with whether or not they “like” the characters. Generally, readers imagine that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2014 09:47 PM
Because I'm a shameless narcissist, I have google alerts on all my "stuff" and this yields some surreally inapt things sometimes. One common one is that I will get alerted to young Christian women who proclaim things like "why yes,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2014 08:24 PM
So I just discovered that the Dr. Frank / Bye Bye Backbirds "Hitler" / "Population: Us" single is now available as a digital download on Amazon and on iTunes. (Also on spotify if you'd prefer to snatch the food...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2014 06:28 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2014 10:22 PM
Of all the rhymed couplets in the world, there is none more personally irritating to me than: "Our whole universe was in a hot dense state / then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait." The whole song is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2014 05:43 PM
I took this buzzfeed quiz, via Althouse, (because insomnia) to determine how "privileged" I am, and the result was: 42% "privileged". That's a whole lot less "privileged" than I actually am, I'm sure, if such a thing really is quantifiable....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2014 03:01 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2014 01:49 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2014 12:51 AM
Very interested in how inaccurate lyrics on the internet get started and take on a life of their own. I've noticed it with my own songs when I've looked them up to try to remember how they go (no it's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2014 03:48 AM
If you talk about anything too much, if you spend too much time defining what you do, or telling people that you're free, or being defensive about your freedom obviously you're not free. Any time you have to push things...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2014 05:27 PM
...brace yourself for the reality that a surprising # of readers will be unable or disinclined to distinguish you from your characters and will blame you personally for their flaws and failings, because internet....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2014 03:56 AM
Don’t bother trying to make your cultural references contemporary. No matter how hard you try they will be out of date by the time your book is published two years after you submit your manuscript. And five years later when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2014 03:25 AM
Well that was no help at all. The only writing advice I’ve ever found genuinely helpful is the one from Roald Dahl about stopping in the middle of a section while you’re on a roll so that when you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2014 03:17 AM
Finishing up the edits on the King Dork Approximately appendices and keep remembering my favorite negative review of the first book. It's my favorite because it contained this line: "the sarcastic humor will appeal only to mature teens with an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2014 06:00 PM
If I ever included a flier like this in one of my books, I'd be accused of double plus un-verisimilitudinousness: (via Reason.com/blog.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2014 02:22 PM
So here's how to buy that Dr. Frank and the Bye Bye Blackbirds 7" from Good Land Records: On clear vinyl. On bone, purple, and black splattered vinyl. On black vinyl. This all resulted from a show where I shared...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2014 03:01 PM
More later....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2014 01:55 AM
Throughout the day and night, amateur rappers walk by my apartment, honing their craft. I hear only brief snatches as they pass by my window with no indication of what went before or came next. The most recent of these...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2014 03:28 PM
I’ve been annoyed for quite awhile by the right side panel displayed on the latest versions of Mac OS Pages, the annoying thing being figuring out how to make it go away when you want. It’s useful when you need...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2014 05:46 PM
Currently reviewing the second pass proofread of the text of King Dork Approximately and finding very few further corrections to make, which feels either very good or very bad, somehow. (The result of this is going to be the final...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2014 02:51 AM
As difficult as it is to imagine the Who without Keith Moon, it's even harder to imagine them this way: [original drummer]Doug was deeply hurt by [being asked to leave the band], especially because, unknown to me, he had defended...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2014 11:47 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2014 12:57 AM
Just replaced another of those missing, possibly ex-girlfriend-confiscated LPs, and it's a big deal. This is a great day. (The vinyl is as NM as it's possible to be and, judging from a name written on the label, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2014 09:27 PM
Here. (Pre-order it!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2014 03:45 PM
J.D. Salinger... F. Portman... goal!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2014 03:43 AM
(via Instapundit.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2014 02:02 PM
According to this, the phrase "no worries" means "you're welcome" and it "infected" American English through Crocodile Dundee and the Lion King. I've been saying "no worries" for as long as I can remember, though I never say it to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2014 07:04 PM
According to the largeheartedboy link I clicked on to get to it, this article is a "defense" of P. G. Wodehouse, which seems unnecessary. It's actually more like a carping, petulant "appreciation." Probably not all that far off per se,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2014 03:46 PM
Brendan Halpin on the "likeability trap" and YA fiction. This apparently increasing phenomenon -- character "likeability" as the central, most important criterion for assessing literary merit -- is one of my least favorite things about the democratization of criticism enabled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2014 05:13 PM
I've been told that they'll never do this with guitars, but... ...apparently all it takes is an agency's "order" to ban the import of all ivory regardless of age or context, such that an antique upright piano is now stuck...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2014 03:17 PM
Just got a few galleys of King Dork Approximately in the mail. (That's not what the actual cover is going to be, so it says "cover to come!" on it.) Call me old fashioned, but a book you can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2014 10:05 PM
When I was a kid just getting started on my future career as a pretend rock star, one of the first things I came up with was an arrangement of the Beatles' "Yesterday" with the lyrics of the Spiderman theme...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2014 04:54 PM
Paul and George had a quota of anecdotes from these early days of a strengthening friendship, like the time they heard how someone had a copy of the Coasters' "Searchin'" and made a long bus journey to Bootle or Kirkby...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2014 02:39 AM
Closed for renovation, unfortunately, but basically still recognizable through the window screens....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2014 06:24 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2014 06:17 PM
(Full sized photo here. The best part about this is not just the stereotypical "girl writing" but also the fact that these were both orders obviously placed over the phone with the same florist. These phone calls as they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2014 05:41 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2014 08:50 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2014 05:10 PM
Found on Instagram....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2014 03:08 AM
So my system has been as slow-moving as John Banville's The Sea, with continual beach balls and freeze-ups and inexplicable delays where what I type gets displayed what seems like hours after I hit the keys. Checking the logs I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2014 08:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2014 04:55 PM
Interview with yours truly in Audio Ammunition web-zine....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2014 04:05 AM
Every now and then I'll receive an angry message from someone who thinks the most interesting thing to say about King Dork is to note that it strains credibility to imagine a contemporary teenager who has an opinion on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2014 04:28 PM
As you may know, I've been posting pictures showing the progress of the custom acoustic guitar that Jason Ingrodi has been building for me over the past few months. This wasn't something I'd ever expected to do, especially since...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2014 10:19 PM
So apparently King Dork Approximately is on the 2014 BEA Buzz Books list. Whatever that is, I can't help but think it's got to be good. (You can pre-order it here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2014 12:34 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2014 02:23 AM
(From here, via Kristina.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2014 06:24 PM
I have this fanciful notion that I am in some kind of club with songwriters who have written songs with the same titles as mine. (Wrote a bit about this here. There are now twenty-one Another Yesterdays, not just eight,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2014 07:49 PM
So the release date (Sept. 9) is quite a ways away but apparently they distributed some bound typescript manuscripts of King Dork Approximately at the ALA thing, resulting in the first review posted on Goodreads. Fortunately, it says it "definitely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2014 06:44 PM
Someone made this shirt and presented it to me at some point. I don't remember who it was or what the circumstances were, but I just stumbled across it in the T shirt archives so I wanted to say:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2014 06:17 PM
girl at cafe: What are you writing? me: Oh, this and that. girl: [noticing my T shirt] oh my god the Undertones! me: [nods] girl: Are they the ones who do that lobster song? me: Lobster song? girl: [gets...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2014 06:42 PM
Just realized it is now possible to pre-order King Dork Approximately from Amazon....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2014 04:58 PM
When a friend of mine has written something, I'm grateful for the word "fantastic," which can either mean "really great" or "out of touch with reality" and you don't have to say which you mean....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2014 09:13 PM
The main thing that stands out for me in this story about an ID theft victim who spent 222 days in prison for the crimes committed against himself by another, is that no one in charge seems to care all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2014 03:52 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2014 02:04 AM
More here from Radley Balko....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2014 06:39 PM
The Washington Post has now absorbed two of the blogosphere's most important, long-standing libertarian-ish voices, Radley Balko and the Volokh Conspiracy. I haven't read any commentary on this (though I'm sure it's out there) but it's obviously reason enough to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2014 05:16 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2014 10:38 PM
Ah, finally figured out how to turn off the thing in Pages where it changes "--" to an m-dash (or something) and miniaturizes "..." It's "Substitutions" in the edit menu. I wrote a whole book being helplessly incensed by that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2014 07:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2014 04:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2014 04:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2014 07:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2014 03:04 PM
Satanic Temple unveils 7-foot goat-headed Baphomet statue for Oklahoma Capitol:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2014 12:23 AM
Parts 2 and 3 here. (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2014 09:50 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2014 05:22 PM
Boujemaa Razgui, a flute virtuoso who lives in New York and works with many US ensembles, was returning to base over the holiday when Customs officials at Kennedy Airport asked to see his instruments. Bourjemaa carries a variety of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2013 10:54 PM
Fascinating post by Scott Greenfield on the cavalier origins of the Supreme Court decision that ultimately authorized the NSA's invasion of your privacy 30+ years later....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2013 03:44 PM
Originally I had a link here to Jason Ingrodi's Guitar Shop's photo album of pics of this guitar, but I can't seem to make the link work. Super weird how certain links will work on other platforms like tumblr...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 09:04 PM
Andromeda’s father suspected the government of spying on American citizens by implanting surveillance devices in electronic products. All the manufacturers and the governments and the corporations that control them were in on it. He had several boxes of extracted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 07:13 PM
So I watched that duck show, which I'd never heard of before the ginned-up controversy, for the first time last night. I don't know why I expected any different but I found it utterly boring. In fact, I felt baited...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 04:06 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 01:00 AM
This has "caught" me on more than one occasion....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2013 05:39 PM
Just got to see a few typeset pages from King Dork Approximately. Seems so much more real now....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2013 01:30 AM
Megan McArdle explains why she tries not to write bad reviews these days. I can see both points of view in the “snark vs. smarm” argument, but she’s right that mean-spirited reviews, fun as they may be to write, don’t...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2013 07:13 PM
I played this song (whose actual title is "Have I Got a Present for You") at a solo show around Christmas time last year and my impression was that not one of those in attendance realized it was a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2013 06:14 PM
I noted this case a ways back (here and here) and now the decision is in, the court reaching, as far as I can tell, the conclusion that always seemed the obvious one to me: Adultery, including adulterous cohabitation, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2013 06:56 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2013 12:32 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2013 04:08 PM
A blast-from-the-past type thing posted by Patrick who writes: "I was 10-years old in 1988, so I missed the tour, but I picked this poster up at the Homewood Record Swap in the south suburbs of Chicago sometime in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2013 03:25 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2013 04:10 PM
"wombmyn". Discuss. Except you can't here because the comments are broken. So, here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2013 03:58 PM
The story of the guy who claims police threatened to shoot his dog if he didn’t allow them to search his house without a warrant has been making the rounds, and Volokh has a post on it today. So, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2013 08:59 PM
Police shoot at, and miss, unarmed man, who is then charged with "assaulting" the bystanders hit by their stray bullets....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2013 11:36 PM
From the notes to a US “dialect map” that is making the rounds, on “San Francisco Urban”: Unlike the rest of California, which in the early twentieth century saw an influx of people from the South and other parts of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2013 03:59 PM
Penguin Teen asked for "funniest book ever read” on the facebook thing. I answered but realized in writing my list that for the most part everything I like enough to remember is from long, long ago. (I guess I'd include...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2013 03:31 AM
The New Statesman comes out against “Movember,” one of those things where people grow mustaches to raise awareness of something or other. Turns out it’s racist....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2013 02:47 PM
It's kinky, man. Kinky....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2013 04:33 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2013 10:02 PM
He learned to walk that spring, and I would stand there at the fence and watch that durn little critter out there in the middle of the furrow, trying his best to keep up with Jackson, until Jackson would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2013 03:17 PM
Here's how Jason Ingrodi's Dr. Frank guitar is shaping up: More here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2013 07:48 PM
Here is a link to something important. So, from what I can tell it was only the previous entry that was haunted. Dominus vobiscum, spooks....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2013 01:34 AM
EW announces its intention to ask: “what’s the best YA novel of all time?” The comments already have a decidedly what-is-punk flavor and tempers are fraying. When the list is published on Monday, get ready to see your pet peeves...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2013 12:02 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2013 02:50 PM
I used to have this massive Hallowe’en playlist of 3000+ (good) songs, but it got eaten in one of those periodic iTunes library corruption episodes. Maybe I’ll reassemble it one of these days, but in the meantime this list...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2013 04:57 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2013 04:16 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2013 04:07 PM
Mickey Kaus got the Velvet Underground to play at his high school in 1968. (via Instapundit.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2013 02:04 PM
via instagram....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2013 01:16 PM
I went over to his blog to check on what he had to say about Lou Reed and was shocked to learn that Norm Geras has passed away. It is a great loss for the "blogosphere" and certainly a great...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2013 12:57 PM
The Guardian's reading group gives Edgar Allen Poe the goodreads treatment. A generous one star, and that's only because it's amazing he managed to get this stuff published at all....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2013 07:05 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2013 07:58 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2013 05:31 PM
I don't know if other people do it this way, but for me the final few passes of revision always involve reading the entire manuscript aloud. Losing my voice here......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2013 07:18 PM
The Dr. Frank guitar is looking pretty nice: More here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2013 06:37 PM
I made the sensible pledge to myself to refrain from acquiring Civ V till I had finished and turned in my book, for obvious reasons. But to commemorate finishing the book, and as a reward to myself, I got the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2013 03:39 PM
I don't mind the government shutdown but since we pay taxes for the government to do horrible things to us for 365 days a year, shouldn't we at least get a rebate for the days they miss?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2013 06:35 PM
The feeling of the morning after the night before is not a sensation endured by the dissolute only: every morning, for every human being, is in some sort a morning after the night before: the dissolute only experience it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2013 06:43 PM
Richard's old Revenge is Sweet and so Are You shirt:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2013 04:03 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2013 03:50 PM
Was looking for my glasses prescription, which I'd "organized" out of existence a few months back. So I didn't find that. What I did find, however, is this autograph from David Cassidy:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2013 07:16 PM
The current state of the in-progress Dr. Frank guitar: More photos here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2013 07:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2013 12:10 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2013 11:28 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2013 03:10 AM
Jason Ingrodi is making me a guitar, and this is the bracing, purfling, and binding. The proof is in the purfling, that’s a saying isn’t it?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2013 06:55 PM
Well, I'm feeling a little guilty that I forgot my cat's birthday, but I had a show last night and show business is my life. I'll make it up to you G. K. Chesterton, somehow. How about some chicken McNuggets?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2013 04:10 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2013 08:27 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2013 04:31 AM
Came across this wearisome recapitulation of the doctrinaire belittlement of Lovecraft as a "bad writer," a racist, etc. via Andrew Sullivan's blog. Seeking to assess the "badness" of writing as a discrete quality unrelated to the ideas expressed or whatever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2013 06:30 PM
I'm sure many of you have noticed that the "tabs" (meaning chords, pretty much) that appear on the internet tend to be wildly inaccurate. So much is this the case that it strains credibility to imagine anyone with any familiarity...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2013 06:06 PM
Advice on doing revisions, among a great many other how-to-get-published tips from Delilah S. Dawson: Don’t read it like it’s your precious perfect baby darling. Read it like it’s your worst enemy’s magnum opus and your job is to expose...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2013 04:37 PM
If someone publishes a book, some of the money from sales of the book should be paid to the author, right? Not so fast, say the commenters on this Atlantic article: paying authors has really gotten out of hand. Example:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2013 08:18 PM
If I sound cynical about dating, it's because I've never really understood it. But then I was never introduced to it properly. At a formative age, nobody ever told me that it was something you were supposed to do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2013 03:38 PM
(from Reason.com.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2013 07:09 PM
So, as I've mentioned before, I'm always quite nervous when I see someone reading one of my books in public. I feel like I really shouldn't be there, or, alternately, like I really should say a few solemn inspiring words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2013 03:56 PM
Looks like I'm going to be a judge at the US Air Guitar Semifinals once again. Saturday, August 3 at the Independent in San Francisco. Should be a good time. Also: (Here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2013 04:19 AM
Remember when the DEA left that college kid to die in a locked room for five days? A ways back I was wondering what ever happened to him and his case, and the consensus of facebook comments was that there...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2013 02:36 AM
Never noticed this before. But it's still missing links to the music, as outlined here. They need to "globalize" the product content, or at least extend it beyond books, for this to be truly useful....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2013 05:32 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2013 04:10 PM
King Dork is on this Buzzfeed list of "15 books every punk should read," so of course I am powerless to resist linking to it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 08:10 PM
I think this was probably King Dork's finest hour:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 06:48 PM
Getting a small start on re-organizing the Dr. Frank internet in advance of the new book, and I came across this guy: The strangest thing about this is that he's obviously been around for quite some time, yet not one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 05:00 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 03:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2013 06:02 PM
So the Porchlight thing happened and it happened to go pretty well. I've realized that the easiest audience in the world is a slightly drunk, PBS-y, "arts and leisure" population used to listening to writers trying to be funny, because...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2013 04:52 PM
Piedmont....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2013 07:34 PM
--Friday, July 26: Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St., SF. Porchlight Story Telling Series 11th Anniversary Show 8 PM. w/ Anthony Bedard, Hai Ning Luan, April Sinclair, Dominic Riley, Michelle Tea, Arline Klatte, Beth Lisick. Gonna talk and play a song...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2013 06:40 PM
Found in Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2013 05:40 PM
You may be surprised to learn that King Dork is one of the nine most "transformative books" of the last 45 years, but Reason magazine says it is, so it must be so. Cheers, guys!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2013 02:41 PM
Found in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2013 01:01 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2013 01:55 PM
Because of a question about where to buy MTX / Dr. Frank stuff on line, I took a look at the iTunes store's MTX page and found the sentence that is the title of this post in the band bio....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2013 10:26 PM
Flipside's old review of Love is Dead, via face-thing post:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2013 04:50 PM
Chimo: Canada's attempt at a new national greeting....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2013 01:54 AM
Nerd Appeal puts King Dork on a list with David Sedaris, Paul Feig, and Chuck Klosterman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2013 01:28 AM
When I first got this album, I had no idea who Eva Braun was, or even that it was the name of a real person rather than a made-up name. Eventually, though, I looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2013 10:46 PM
Sweet new "next generation" line two handed sword from Albion, available for pre-order....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2013 01:49 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2013 12:11 AM
When I first bought the Rolling Stones' Some Girls back in 1978, the sales guy at Musicland at the Tanforan Park shopping center said "heyyyy" like the Fonz and I felt validated in spite of not wanting to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2013 06:54 PM
Don't actually have this record but I'd like to get it one day if I win the lottery or something:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2013 05:20 PM
As I've mentioned before, I'm engaged in this OCD-ish project of gradually sorting through my records to try to determine what's there and what's missing and put them in a bit of order for the first time ever. The OCD...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2013 05:12 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2013 01:23 AM
Try to use this information for good rather than evil: I'm on the bill of this Porchlight Storytelling Series show at the Verdi Club on June 17, along with Jack Boulware, Stacy Bond, Maura Finkelstein, Mike Keegan, and Steve Mavromihalis....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 03:30 PM
Joyce Carol Oates wrote this in form of seven reverse order tweets today and it was easier to read copied and pasted: The issue of "creativity" could be translated into plainer terms: hours spent in work. It requires many hours...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 03:20 PM
From Julian Sanchez: We might imagine a system of compulsory cameras installed in homes, activated only by warrant, being used with scrupulous respect for the law over many years. The problem is that such an architecture of surveillance, once established,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 12:18 PM
and this is it: From The Plan, one of the most interesting concept albums of its time and a surprisingly apt companion to Master of Reality....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 01:37 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2013 06:22 PM
This girl I used to be pretty friendly with off and on once sent me a photo of herself with the title "Hatred." I was taken aback by this, and it kind of bugged me in a vague way for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2013 04:07 PM
Three prisoners are in the yard at Guantanamo, and the topic turns to the reason for their imprisonment. "I defended Glenn Greenwald, so they data mined me and found out about some unauthorized lobsters and threw the book at me,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2013 08:29 PM
NSA Wiretapping Public Service Announcement -...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2013 01:24 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2013 12:01 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2013 03:19 PM
Sir Crichton Davey's study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2013 02:24 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2013 12:12 AM
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2013 12:08 AM
Try to use this information for good rather than evil: I'm on the bill of this Porchlight Storytelling Series show at the Verdi Club on June 17, along with Jack Boulware, Stacy Bond, Maura Finkelstein, Mike Keegan, and Steve Mavromihalis....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2013 11:01 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2013 03:38 PM
List: Classic Books Annotated by Famous Authors. Here's the Unabomber's copy of Anne of Green Gables: One day, after I'm dead, my Platonis Opera: III with ...and the Women Who Love Them lyrics in the margins could be included in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2013 03:08 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2013 04:02 PM
Drunk-posted this little tale on the face thing last night, and the comments wound up being funny enough that I'm posting it here for the edification of anyone who still reads stuff on this blog. So, some time ago when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2013 03:44 PM
I remembered it pretty good, mostly:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2013 04:43 PM
Pizza demo lady at Costco freaks out over dwindling pizza supply; employees call cops; police arrive and shoot her dead. Now, it does sound as though this woman's behavior was strange and evidently it was disturbing enough to spur fellow...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2013 04:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2013 05:05 PM
Dan Brown reveals the message that told him the door to the Lodge is open......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2013 02:48 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2013 01:45 AM
Hey, King Dork turns up on Whitney Matheson's list of her favorite twenty-five books from the last twenty-five years. Thanks, Whit!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2013 12:57 PM
From Flavorwire, a fascinating collection of charts and outlines used by famous authors for their books. Here's the one for Catch-22: I used iCal for all three of my books, which obviously wouldn't be at all suitable for framing like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2013 11:49 PM
A collection of great quotations on writing drawn from Raymond Chandler's letters, including: I am having a hard time with the book. Have enough paper written to make it complete, but must do all over again. I just didn’t know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2013 03:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2013 08:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2013 02:06 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2013 10:23 PM
Patrick (who used to comment here as Cpt. I believe) passes on this photo of a seldom-seen Our Bodies Our Selves poster. His is probably the only one I've ever encountered "in the wild":...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2013 01:47 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2013 04:28 PM
Andromeda Klein gets some love from Kellie (of The Re-Shelf) guest posting on Nova Ren Suma's blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2013 05:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2013 02:55 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2013 08:15 PM
Google alerted me to this list because King Dork is on it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2013 04:20 PM
On the subject of North Korea, sort of: one of these days I'll type up an account of my roommate in the dorms at Cal, who was living there using a stolen ID/reg card and thieving from all the students....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2013 05:06 PM
(Here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2013 03:57 AM
Found in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2013 05:22 PM
I don't find the mild hypocrisy outlined in this A. Barton Hinkle article on "cognitive dissonance" and gun control to be all that remarkable, or at all surprising. And I'm not even sure it qualifies as hypocrisy -- there's nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2013 09:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2013 11:48 PM
The comments have been broken on this blog for some time now, and I find it really inhibits my posting. Posting mainly happens when I have some lengthy comment to make on something, or when I want to post something...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2013 03:01 PM
Hey, remember when the Queers had this T shirt that was just a picture of Joe's phone bill, and it said "Blabbermouth"? I just found one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2013 02:45 PM
From Ann Althouse. NB: it's actually a review of the "op-ed" promoting the book, but it's still pretty much the most withering book review I think I've ever read....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2013 05:12 PM
Sweet new Museum Line sword from Albion/Peter Johnsson:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2013 03:34 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2013 09:03 PM
James Goodale, chief counsel to the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers affair, on President Obama and press freedom....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2013 03:02 PM
Really can't believe this movie actually got made. My teenaged record collection inspired fantasy world come to life. Looks so good:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2013 03:43 AM
Glenn Greenwald analyzes this fascinatingly constructed NYT article on the alleged process by which Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted and killed by a drone strike in September, 2011, and concludes that the article is little more than a narrowly tailored news-ified...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2013 09:24 PM
Not this, evidently. According to this, two of the three officers involved in this kid's beating are still on the police force (the third was fired for a different, unrelated, beating.) Careful out there, Denver....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2013 06:50 PM
This Florida bill requiring a search warrant for police use of surveillance drones has a gaping hole in it, to wit, an exception for "imminent danger to a life or serious danger to a property." In a world where words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 09:48 PM
Back on the face thing, I had this comment to the comments: I have an inchoate thought that I'm not sure I'll express well enough. There are all sorts of valid criticisms of various positions and views of Rand Paul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 05:04 PM
Rand Paul filibuster leaves Senate Democrats struggling to explain absence…...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 02:52 AM
"I admire libertarians, but I think Rand Paul's filibuster in many ways is very much what libertarians do, they make these very symbolic gestures, standing for some extreme position." -- John Yoo...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 12:45 AM
I said this about it on the twitface: Everyone in my demographic (i.e. most people on here, I imagine) is culture-bound to despise and deride Rand Paul as a matter of identity, but I found yesterday inspiring, and, regardless of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 12:41 AM
The artist is Billy Capgun and the text says "hey dude it'll be okay."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2013 02:23 PM
(via Dave.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2013 02:52 PM
Ordinary Injustice results when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them. There are times when an alarming miscarriage of justice does come to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 04:26 PM
Drawn from life much more literally than I'd realized: In the late 1920s, a peculiar confluence of fashion and fascism came together in England. The Men's Dress Reform Party, an outgrowth of the eugenics movement, agitated for men to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 02:30 AM
I had no idea it ended like this: After soaring, Sherman’s career un-soared, starting down hill in 1965. But those first two or three years, Allan Sherman later got summed up by Joe Smith as “he was The Moment. Even...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 01:55 AM
Eric Holder and Prison Guard Unions Agree: Sequestration Would Do Too Much Harm to the Prison Industrial Complex....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2013 09:49 PM
This video montage of people refusing to cooperate with DHS "requests" at non-border checkpoints has been popping up hither and yon lately: The message is, I gather: that you're not actually obligated to obey the agents' directives and if you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2013 05:52 PM
Two Americans, lurking at a corner, spoke to her invitingly, calling her "sister". She walked on, conscious of having let them off -- of having spared them the chill embarrassment which would have fallen upon them had they realised...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2013 06:50 PM
Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2013 07:49 PM
From Gawker....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2013 03:00 PM
Regarding those questions about what happens when a police officer is found to have lied on a police report, and what it would take for anything at all to happen, here's an (as far as I can see) rare instance...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2013 11:32 PM
Another Balko "raid of the day": Known around the neighborhood as "Pops," 80-year-old Isaac Singletary moved into his high-crime Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood in 1987 to care for and protect his sister and mother, both of whom were sick at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2013 08:06 PM
Supreme Court backs "search warrants on leashes" 9-0. added: on that, read this....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2013 08:23 PM
Movie theater employees call police for help in persuading a young man with Down Syndrome to vacate his seat after the movie is over; police arrive, kill the guy. The officers have "exercised their rights under the Law Enforcement Officers'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2013 02:36 PM
(Here)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2013 04:56 PM
So as I face-twitted last night, I've been hearing Al Gore's quaaluded H R Pufnstuf "sad voice" on the various media over the past week. One phrase he always uses when discussing the kinda controversial Al Jazeera / Current TV...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2013 04:06 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2013 11:09 PM
(via Wes.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2013 12:32 AM
Seems like a good time to re-read Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. Because of this, I mean....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2013 03:47 PM
Not commenting on the issue at hand (though I happen to agree with Jacob Sullum) but rather on the use of the word "paranoid" by the Huffington Post's interviewer. She seems to be using it as a synonym for "worried"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2013 04:22 AM
These sentences occur in a post about the strange origin of that strange trillion dollar platinum coin idea, and I'm highlighting them because the meaning of the analogy eludes me. A commenter describes them as "the greatest sentence I've read...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2013 10:24 PM
She's quite a something:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2013 06:27 PM
Hey, maybe you want to come see me, Kevin Seconds and Kepi at 1234 Go Records in Oakland tomorrow? If so, details are here. Merry Christmas....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2012 06:34 PM
Got a couple of solo shows coming up, week of Christmas: -- Monday 12/17/12, The Nightlight, 311 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94607, 9PM with the Moore Brothers and DJs Andy, Chris & TheoKing -- Sunday 12/23/12 at 1234 Go! Records,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2012 11:46 PM
So I played with the Smoking Popes last night at Slim's. I don't think I've been there since my band last played there eight years ago or so, but we used to play there a lot, way back. I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2012 06:46 PM
(Here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2012 04:30 AM
Landlord calls 911 to report drugs he found hidden in the walls while cleaning up a vandalized, vacant rental unit -- police promptly arrest him and his wife and threaten to take their son away from them as well. They're...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2012 05:21 PM
So, as I mentioned before, I'm doing this on Wed. Nov. 7th: And this on Friday, Nov. 9th. Playing first on Wednesday, 8:30 PM, so get there early if you don't want to miss me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2012 04:32 PM
Liz Suburbia drew this great picture of Andromeda Klein:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2012 11:49 PM
So I still have a few Kepi / Dr. Frank shirts left, in the following sizes: M, S, and Ladies M. The M is around 25" from collar to the bottom and 19" across when laying flat; the S...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2012 08:16 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2012 06:04 PM
Got introduced to these guys while in Italy last month. Good stuff....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2012 09:57 PM
Dirk found this carved into the bar at an establishment in Quincy, MA: I would have taken a picture of it, too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2012 09:05 PM
Alithea remembers me, the Go-Nuts, "You're My Hostess Cupcake," and the Cupcake Royale....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2012 05:56 PM
Prepare to be infuriated: As a white guy who almost never leaves the house, I'm not much of a target for this kind of street terror myself, but the fact that it happens to anyone is deeply disturbing; the fact...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 11:52 PM
Wrong or right, and for whatever reason, the Rolling Stones effectively ended for me around halfway through Tattoo You, ca. 1982; though I was aware of stuff they did after that, and even probably heard some of it here and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 10:57 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 08:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 06:09 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 04:55 PM
Welcome back, Ken Layne. The linked essay examines Andrew Sullivan's mid- and post-debate meltdown in reverse chronology. In re. the meltdown: I can't say I haven't enjoyed it a bit. After years of relentless, monotonous, hero-worshipping triumphalism, it came as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 06:48 PM
I realized I never got around to including a side-panel link to the Interpunk re-creation of the MTX "…and the women who love them" T-shirt, so I did it and it's there now. (When it says "Women" at the link...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 05:48 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 03:44 PM
I don't know how many people have noticed that I've been a bit missing in action and even more reclusive than usual until pretty recently. It's a long story, really, and never mind about that. But early this year I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 01:32 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2012 05:54 PM
Only dimwits and pedants found communism attractive on account of its economic theory; its magnetism lay in the promise to fulfill a secular hope: a rationalist apocalypse of justice, even 'spiritual' joy in a selfless mass. -- Tobias Churton,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2012 04:20 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2012 08:43 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2012 07:36 PM
I had been planning to write some kind of post-mortem of the Euro Art Tour that I just returned from, and I may yet do one, but I don't really have it in me at the moment. In lieu of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2012 06:09 PM
I'm heading out the door for the trek to Europe -- first stop, Rotterdam, tour dates here -- and I thought I'd mention quickly while I'm still on the American wifi that the digital verison of the MTX cover...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2012 11:27 PM
You can still order this 7" from Interpunk in the US, or direct from Surfin' KI Records in Europe. But it's a very limited pressing so... I heard the mixed version of Kepi's "Two Minute Itch" for the first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2012 11:17 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2012 05:36 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2012 08:55 PM
Jim Testa posted this video on facebook with the following tale: Back in 1978, Robert Christgau wrote a piece in the Voice saying that punk rockers who hated disco were inherently homophobic. I disagreed. We didn't like disco because...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2012 04:22 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2012 09:53 PM
You can pre-order the Dr. Frank / Kepi 7" at this link. It's limited to 450 copies, including 100 red clear, 100 blue, and 50 purple -- and the rest black vinyl, obviously. There's a package deal for one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2012 08:44 PM
Here's a new one (on me, at any rate): I got a note from graphic designer Caroline Moore about how she was commissioned to make a poster for a show that happened thirteen years ago. "Maybe you remember it, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2012 06:06 PM
I am informed that these dates are accurate:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2012 12:19 AM
... preferably in that order. Some form of that is evidently going to be the cover of the Kepi / Dr. Frank split 7" that's coming out imminently on Surfin'Ki Records out of Pisa, Italy. We recorded it at Denny...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2012 08:24 PM
So, I'm playing at Gilman this Saturday (August 11) with -- like it says - Cobra Skulls, Dear Landlord, the Murderburgers, Hard Girls and Dead Ringers. Come on by and such....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2012 08:05 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2012 06:28 PM
From Harvey Silverglate (via Volokh): It would be a boon to the nation as a whole if those under attack by federal prosecutors could better understand the scope of the problem: they are victims of a war against all of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2012 04:27 PM
"I can tell you one thing about her. She is over-sexed." "Is that just feminine intuition?" "No. I am not very feminine and I have no intuition. But I have never known anyone -- man or woman -- with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2012 05:21 AM
Thinking about Agatha Christie because of this post, I said to myself: "self, it's been quite some time since you've read one of those, hasn't it?" "Yes," I replied. "It certainly has been." "How long do you reckon?" There was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2012 06:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2012 06:42 PM
I just realized that the comment function on this blog is broken and has been since 10 July. Some of the attempts to leave comments have wound up emailed to my bulk mail folder, but they didn't post on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2012 04:35 PM
I hadn't known till I read this post from Drew Mackie that the premise of the twist-denouement of Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side was appropriated more or less exactly from an incident in the real life...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2012 01:10 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2012 10:11 PM
I found this book on the street a couple of days before a flight to Baltimore and I took that as a message from the universe that I should take it along and read it on the plane rather than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2012 09:09 PM
So it looks like I'm going to be judging the San Francisco regional U.S. Air Guitar Championship competition tomorrow (Saturday, July 14th) along with Hot Lixx Hulahan and Caitlin Gill. That's at the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF CA. Doors at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2012 08:17 PM
I think I may have accidentally deleted a few legitimate comments in the course of mass batch deleting several thousand spam comments yesterday. Sorry about that. It's not personal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2012 03:45 PM
Yes, people should wear seatbelts, but do we really need yet another pretext for police to stop and "investigate" motorists? Jacob Sullum on "primary enforcement" of seatbelt laws: [P]rimary enforcement of seat belt laws provide[s] an excuse for stopping anyone...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2012 03:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2012 07:15 PM
Eggnog from the German band the Yoohoos sends along this version of "I Wanna Ramone You" done before they'd heard how mine went: p.s. In case it's not obvious, you press the black triangle to play the song. I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2012 04:22 PM
If I'm reading it right, this thoroughly, obviously innocent woman spent 53 days in jail because the cop who responded to her stolen truck report didn't listen carefully enough to the last name of a subsequent suspect wanted for assault...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2012 01:23 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2012 09:59 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2012 04:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2012 05:29 AM
When I was in middle school this kid whose name I no longer remember said he'd let me be in his band if I wrote lyrics to a song he had called "Rockin' Halls" that was supposed to be about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2012 12:04 AM
Something to do with the Masons?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2012 04:44 PM
NY man charged with assault for injuring police officers' fists with his face. No, really. (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2012 09:46 PM
I recently regained access to a bunch of previously walled-in LPs. They're in no order whatsoever, and I don't believe they've ever been put in any kind of order, though they seem to be clumped roughly with others acquired...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2012 06:35 PM
If "approacheth" is the term I want. I checked the weather forecast and learned it's going to be 102° F on Thursday, June 21st in Baltimore, when I'm planning to spend an hour or so jumping around and screaming my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2012 11:40 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2012 04:53 AM
Remember this kid? NYPD officers who thought he had drugs saw him enter his apartment building and kicked down the doors, following him into the bathroom where he was summarily killed. The cop who shot him (now charged with manslaughter)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2012 04:21 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2012 05:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2012 05:01 PM
Found near Buena Vista Park, San Francisco....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2012 05:44 PM
Part two here; part three here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2012 06:06 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2012 01:04 AM
Still can't work out whether I was in fact born to sweet delight or endless night....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2012 05:25 PM
Elves in the news, from the Iceland Review....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2012 05:24 AM
Punknews.org commenters react to my SPIN Lookout list. Apparently I left some stuff out. I guess I failed to mention it, since I thought it was kind of obvious, but in fact, you're all free to make your own list....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2012 05:47 PM
SPIN asked me to submit a list of twenty, and I did, but then they very generously decided to sneak one of mine on there, so one of the original twenty had to go. (Sorry, Sewer Trout.) Of course, "Superwoman"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2012 04:43 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2012 12:36 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2012 12:20 AM
Rand Paul has introduced a bill to revise the Lacey Act. I'm sure somebody will pop up and tell me how important it is to maintain American criminal penalties for inadvertent violations of discontinued foreign trading regulations, but I can't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2012 03:04 AM
Further to the previous post, Obama head cheerleader Andrew Sullivan asks "why did Obama cave to the DEA" on medical cannabis and launch a draconian crackdown despite a clear pledge not to? (He links to Jacob Sullum, whose only-thing-I-can-come-up-with idea...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2012 08:31 PM
Scott Horton on the Drug Enforcement Agency's finest hour: The agency and its strategies, which together comprise America’s second effort at prohibition, may be the most completely failed ideas that the Seventies brought to America. Yet the American political sector...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2012 07:37 PM
Just an update, if anyone cares: it looks like the remaining MTX/Dr. Frank albums-as-issued have finally migrated through to iTunes and (I presume) all the other digital distribution hubs. We've still got a few of the singles, the bonus stuff...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2012 09:11 PM
Doing a few shows in the next couple of months: -- Thursday, May 3rd, 1234 Go Records, 420 40th Street Suite 5, Oakland, CA 94609, Oakland CA, 7-10PM: I'm doing one of those lit/show appearance things with Sam McPheeters and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2012 06:21 PM
Only the first 100 (As) so far, but the rest of the alphabet is coming soon, but it's nice, fun design, with album art and Spotify links. I'm sure I'm not the only person to wonder if any of my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2012 05:15 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2012 04:09 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2012 02:14 AM
This guy was attacked (Tased and beaten up) by Portland police who mistook him for a graffitist as he walked home from a night of bowling. Four years later, he wins $250,000 in damages in a federal suit. The cops...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2012 06:49 PM
It's usually hyperbole when something is tagged "beyond parody," but this comes mighty close. Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times explains why George W. Bush's abuses of power were so appalling, whereas President Obama's abuses of power are just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2012 06:50 PM
which is what you are doing any time you call 911 or other emergency services. The cops always arrive first. Their first priority is to protect themselves, and in a volatile, unpredictable situation, you never know when something will make...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2012 01:07 AM
I've got no opinion on "birth rape," apparently a term of art for invasive medical procedures conducted during childbirth. But this sentence, flagged by Ann Althouse, is a doozy: Yeah, it’s wrong to make a woman feel emasculated on what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2012 12:11 AM
If you don't want to read this whole post, the short version is: much of the MTX/Dr. Frank stuff should now be back up on iTunes and other digital distribution services. (And the major stuff that isn't up yet will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2012 04:12 PM
A Bogota NY woman calls emergency services, hoping for an ambulance to take her emotionally disturbed son to the hospital. Police arrive on the scene first, hop out of the car, tackle the "patient," hold him down, and begin beating...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2012 04:59 PM
Cracker's David Lowry takes on the "Digerati." (via metafilter, where the commenters, by and large, just ain't buying it.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2012 04:15 PM
Here. (via Reason. My dad used to have this tape in his truck when I was a kid riding around with him during his work day and we used to sing along with this one, though he made sure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2012 04:55 PM
Marine biologist faces twenty years in federal prison for allegedly lying to federal prosecutors investigating the incident, in which the captain and a crew-member of a whale-watching excursion whistled at a humpback whale to encourage it to stick around their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2012 04:01 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2012 03:47 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2012 03:18 PM
So Jim Marshall has died, at age 88. I remember visiting the Marshall factory in Bletchley, Milton Keynes on a UK tour to try to get a troublesome head repaired. The repair didn't wind up working all that well...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2012 05:19 PM
Interpunk has recreated the old "...women who love them" shirt that we used to sell on our mid-90s tours. It was our biggest selling design, I believe, for many years, but it's been a long time since it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2012 08:15 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2012 04:57 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 07:09 PM
Heh. That's from a punknews.org item. By the way, that list isn't exactly set in stone and you can still discuss or contribute or whatever if you feel like it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 06:42 PM
A few days ago I asked for suggestions for a theoretical "best of" MTX collection, mostly because I've been working on getting the back catalog back together for digital re-release and it seems like a "greatest hits" type option would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 03:55 PM
That's Hank Green, John's brother. added: "ARGH. NO MAN CAN CALL A WOMAN HIS OWN!!!" The youtube comments include some, er, critiques. It's often interesting what happens when one of my songs is out "in the wild" like that....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2012 02:01 PM
68-year-old man with heart condition triggers medical alert. System operator calls an ambulance. Police arrive on the scene, break down the door, and shoot him dead. A "warranted use of deadly force," according to the public safety commissioner. Yes, after...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2012 01:46 PM
I ran into a guy on BART yesterday, who asked the following two questions: "Are you Dr. Frank? Are you playing anywhere?" This happens quite often, believe it or not, and usually the answers are "yes" and a slightly sheepish...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2012 09:18 PM
Trying to come up with a "best of" MTX track list. Twenty songs or so. What would you pick? (I think I've maybe asked this before a time or two and nothing wound up coming from it, but something will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2012 06:04 PM
I've had this shirt for nearly twenty-five years....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2012 09:48 PM
That's Are Lund of the Norwegian punk band the Promdates. His original idea for a Love is Dead tattoo was to depict the first five notes of "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba" on a music staff, but in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2012 09:03 PM
is that if you ever do have the occasion to raise your voice or assert yourself even a little bit about anything, people will look at you like you just kicked a puppy across the room....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2012 03:42 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2012 02:36 PM
Basically, you're crazy if you take a laptop across the Canadian border. The standards are so broad that almost any kind of document, electronic or printed, text or image, could potentially put you at catastrophic risk. And it doesn't matter...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2012 02:13 PM
This guy was arrested and jailed without bond for failing to complete his stucco and decorative rock siding home renovation project to the satisfaction of "city leaders" who say they "had no choice but to enforce the law." He was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2012 05:35 PM
I have occasionally observed that the arguments of culture war ideologues often boil down to little more than various restatements of the basic conviction that "we're the good people, so whatever we feel must be right." Stanley Fish demonstrates here,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2012 12:32 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2012 04:56 AM
There's this saying that you used to hear people say a lot: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's attributed to various people who seem like they might have said something like that, David Byrne, Frank Zappa, Elvis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2012 04:03 PM
The Fourth Amendment proves to be no barrier to this Collinsville, Illinois cop's desire to harass a couple of rotund, middle-aged Trekkies from Ohio. It's a long video, but amusingly-edited and -narrated enough to reward sticking through the whole thing:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2012 11:49 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2012 01:55 AM
They just are. And I don't think that because I hate Sarah Palin (I don't -- though I never really wanted her to be the president.) On the other hand, Bill Maher gets a laugh from his Palin jokes, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2012 03:32 PM
NYT op-ed: The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2012 07:07 PM
Okay so, this is funny: an Ottowa woman claims that convenient parking is a "human right" (and that her having three kids qualifies her as having "special needs" as well.) Moreover, the woman in question is a former investigator for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2012 06:28 PM
I've turned the comments back on, just to see if I can bear what spam may come after the little break. If it gets bad again all of sudden, I'll have no problem turning them off again. Honestly, it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2012 12:39 AM
Will Wilkinson's car radio quite obviously plays a different sort of country music than my record player does. Granted, contemporary country music overall is a devolved, shallow, shadow of its former self, like all contemporary music -- and culture in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2012 08:08 PM
Disingenuous campaign against Rush Limbaugh's unfunny "slut" routine sparks reciprocal disingenuous campaigns against actual funny comedians. (Also, against Bill Maher.) So it goes. I really hope they don't cancel Louie, but it could well happen, and if it does, well,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2012 02:30 AM
My buddy Chuck Prophet has a new album and it's getting some attention (and it's great -- buy one!) It's always nice when the good guys win, since it happens so rarely. He's getting a bit of press in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2012 07:39 PM
Jodi of I Will Dare, guesting at Book Riot, posts about how Andromeda Klein's love of books inspired a general, felicitous de-hoarding and purge of unwanted titles and how in the process (if I'm reading it right) the book managed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2012 07:07 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2012 08:41 PM
Michael Kinsley talks sense on the Rush Limbaugh slut boycott: any apology induced in these circumstances is almost by definition insincere. You can’t demand a public recantation and then expect sincerity along with the humble pie. If they wanted a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2012 04:05 PM
Overwhelmed by spam again, so I'm turning off the comments for awhile to let it die down a bit. Email me or facebook me if you've got anything to say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2012 04:15 AM
I have no idea how the sixth reel, and only the sixth, of the 16-track for Our Bodies Our Selves wound up in my closet, but it's lucky it wasn't the one that got flooded when the water heater...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2012 02:10 AM
... that is, it was always the thing you would try to play first whenever you picked up drum sticks....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2012 07:14 PM
Spelling test found in Noe Valley, San Francisco: Four out of twenty are misspelled, yielding a score of 23/20. This equals 100% (i.e. "NO RETAKE!" which is greater than two "spelling tasks") for a grade of A. Nice Try!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2012 05:39 PM
Maria Popova celebrates Dr. Seuss's nude "adult" book. It's long out of print but not too hard to find. Wishing a dead person a "happy birthday" is a pretty strange thing to do, and doing so as a way...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2012 02:58 PM
Say what you will about Peter Gleick, but a guy who scrupulously uses the Oxford Comma can't be all bad. I will be extremely surprised if it turns out that he is not the guy who forged the Heartland "strategy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2012 05:49 PM
Here's the FBI's Monkees file. The contents are mostly blacked out except for this bit: …that "The Monkees'" concert was using a device in the form of a screen set up behind the performers who played certain instruments and sang...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2012 04:11 AM
As Davy Jones is dead, I thought I should write something about the Monkees, but I already did that here, and I really don't have much to add. Here's wishing you a Heaven that makes all women beautiful and kills...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2012 05:01 PM
Stunning custom scabbard from Brian Kunz made for an Albion Dane....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2012 04:06 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2012 03:38 PM
Another 911 disaster story via Balko. Mentally ill man calls 911 yelling incoherent nonsense. Police arrive on the scene, find him in his attic room holding an axe, Tase him and shoot him, wounding him in the leg, and proceed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2012 06:06 PM
Huffington Post climate-heads stand by their man in the face of what must be some pretty severe cognitive dissonance....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2012 03:44 PM
Even genuine authorities hit a wall when they try to correct errors on wikipedia: I removed the line about there being "no evidence" and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2012 06:12 PM
Playing at this thing, Wed. April 4 at the New Parish in Oakland, 579 18th St. Advance tickets here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2012 10:38 PM
The FDA's milk crackdown proceeds apace....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2012 08:50 PM
A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2012 05:44 PM
I think this is the first time this has been done to anything I've ever done: The song is here, though I guess you have to buy it to hear "Ayn," and maybe I will....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2012 08:22 PM
Glenn Greenwald let's 'em have it, 'em being "progressives" who embrace Bush-Cheney policies (and worse) now that a Democratic executive espouses them....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2012 04:46 PM
All the officers in this video, including the one who kicked the man in diabetic shock in the face six times while yelling "stop resisting motherfucker" are still on the streets looking for more people to beat up: ADDED: Digby...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2012 03:36 PM
I was surprised by how much of what I thought I knew about this case turned out to be incorrect. Not commenting one way or the other on the merits of this prosecution, but I am struck by how the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2012 07:04 PM
Kol Egil's son said, "Let me get at Kolskegg," and turning to Kolskegg he said, "This I have often said, that we two would be just about an even match in fight." "That we can soon prove," says Kolskegg....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2012 02:57 AM
Here. This song was written by Tom T. Hall, I believe....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2012 04:57 PM
If you have an extra $20,000 lying around, Weiser will sell you the wax-dribbled set of the Equinox once owned by Jack Parsons. (Scroll down to 40917.) UPDATE: and.... SOLD!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2012 03:49 PM
Matt Riggle of the band 41 Gorgeous Blocks writes about his mostly-imagined view of Lookout Records based on tiny bits of data gleaned from record jackets and the like: A door tagged with the iconic “eyeballs” logo opens to reveal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2012 05:11 PM
A week ago I got a message from a guy asking if I wanted to come to London to play at a punk rock festival allegedly being put on in Camden Town the following week. I'll help you with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2012 10:53 PM
This is the tunnel that issues from the Sutro Baths ruins....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2012 09:51 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2012 09:01 PM
Westland, Michigan man faces fine and three months in jail for "malicious use of communications device misuse of 911," which is, evidently, the technical legal term for calling 911 more than once when police don't show up. This will be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2012 04:18 PM
I got a bunch of stuff out of storage and was taking stock and inventorying guitars and other things, and had this mini-freakout when I imagined that a guitar was missing. It was kind of a special one, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2011 03:07 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2011 03:57 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2011 07:02 PM
Here's another case of a naive person dialing 911 for help with a family member in need of medical attention. She probably thought she'd get an ambulance with some nice paramedics who would take her husband to the hospital where...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2011 04:31 PM
Poshdeluxe over at Forever Young Adult is still trying to talk people into reading King Dork after all these years. Thanks, posh!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2011 03:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2011 05:29 PM
Noting recent posts featuring grumbling about spotify and money and such (e.g. here), my old buddy Dallas Denery forwards this pretty funny entry from Too Much Joy's Tim Quirk about the accounting (or lack thereof) of digital royalties on his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2011 06:32 PM
Steve from 1-2-3-4 Go! Records on Spotify: The more I think and find out about it the worse it seems. I used this figure elsewhere but I think people should see it. A band on my label got a check...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2011 05:10 PM
The pizza delivery guy might turn out to be an undercover SWAT officer who will shoot you when you answer the door. (via Balko.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2011 04:00 PM
Another pic from that Starry Plough show, this one from Joseph Curran. First time on stage with Super Aaron in around twenty years....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2011 04:19 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2011 07:58 PM
Debating whether or not Frank Loesser's "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is too "rape-y". (via Althouse.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2011 03:34 PM
Show today. (Sunday afternoon.) I'll quote myself: a matinee release party at the Starry Plough for the second edition of Scott Miller's book Music: What Happened? (He's the GAME THEORY / LOUD FAMILY guy, not only a writer of brilliant,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2011 05:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2011 05:26 PM
As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2011 04:20 PM
Message on abandoned chair, North Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2011 06:56 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2011 02:28 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2011 11:20 PM
For what it's worth (very very little, to be sure), Obama's awful record on civil liberties and senseless escalation of the drug war have irrevocably cost him any further votes from me. But, as Balko points out, this guy would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2011 05:57 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2011 08:50 PM
As I mentioned, I'm doing a solo set at Scott Miller's book release party on December 4th at the Starry Plough, and my old bandmate Aaron's current band the Bye Bye Blackbirds is going to be the backup group on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2011 05:28 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2011 03:20 AM
I'm doing a couple of solo acoustic sets in the East Bay coming up. The first one is like it says: -- Friday November 18th at 1-2-3-4 Go Records, 420 40th Street, Oakland, CA 510 985 0325, with PASSAGE...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2011 10:53 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2011 07:27 PM
Rush Limbaugh tries to get a handle on Classical Studies....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2011 11:23 PM
Jeffen over at the Music Ruined My Life blog has been strolling through the Forgotten Rebels' discography. (Start here and scroll down.) I pretty much stopped paying attention to them after This Ain't Hollywood and hadn't realized they'd had so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2011 05:35 PM
Federal judge blocks the FDA's new cigarette warning labels on First Amendment grounds....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2011 05:08 PM
The Duckhead Buddha came into existence in the Fall of 1983 in the following way: walking down the street, looking at my feet as usual so as to avoid eye contact with anyone who might pop up, I happened to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2011 04:00 AM
Tom Clougherty on "brutalist" architecture: The trouble with so much architecture from the post-war period is that the state was the client – architects designed housing projects with little or no concern for the people who would actually live in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2011 11:09 PM
More West Coast sound, ca. 1959 here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2011 06:53 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2011 11:38 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2011 12:18 AM
I am quoted in this article on Spotify and other music streaming services by our own Nate Pensky....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2011 10:42 PM
I saw this Paul Lynde Halloween Special on TV in 1976. I've heard people say it's the first appearance of KISS on TV, but I don't think that could possibly be correct. I spent a bit of time doing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2011 04:37 PM
The Fairport Convention version is more famous, and I like it a lot, but Emitt Rhodes wrote it and it's hard to beat the original (available on this great Merry-Go-Round collection.) Paul McCartney never had a better or more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2011 10:52 PM
Woody Allen still tells Woody Allen jokes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2011 10:24 PM
Come see me stand awkwardly at a podium and read stuff at the Make-out Room tomorrow night, if that sounds like a good time to you. I can't speak for the relative awkwardness of the other writers, but if past...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2011 09:45 PM
An English teacher reviews King Dork: I don’t remember laughing at all. Maybe I was disappointed by the sensual scenes, which I’m sure our librarian has not yet read – otherwise it would probably be banned....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2011 12:38 AM
Him and them....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2011 10:58 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2011 06:13 PM
Thanks, Glenn....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2011 06:04 PM
There's less here than meets the eye, of course: they're simply removing what they see as a less important term from the "concise" edition of the OED, not attempting to erase it completely, and using the fact that they're doing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2011 05:28 PM
From the soundtrack album for this amazing movie....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2011 05:44 PM
As I've mentioned, I'm doing a solo-acoustic set on Tuesday October 4th (nickel beer night) at the Beauty Bar in Las Vegas. (517 Fremont St. -- I think I'm going to be playing around midnight.) Also I'm going to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2011 07:22 PM
Thought for the day, from the Bay Area guy whose house was mistakenly raided by a federal tactical team abetted by local police last month: I think when you're going to be performing a guns unholstered, safeties off, surprise raid...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2011 05:11 PM
That's apparently the best Mother Jones can come up with as a defense of Obama's civil liberties record....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2011 04:56 PM
(Here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2011 03:37 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 5, 2011 07:30 PM
Part two of the video (of which this was part one) of me playing in a park in Bergamo, Italy in 2006:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2011 11:19 PM
The Bee Gees' Idea album just seems to get better and better as time passes. Every time I listen to it I am knocked out anew. A truly great record....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2011 12:58 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2011 04:49 PM
Interview with yours truly here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2011 04:32 AM
Found in a library book, Berkeley CA....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2011 12:27 AM
So that's how you do it......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2011 06:23 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2011 04:06 PM
Federal agents raided Gibson Guitars in Memphis and Nashville earlier this week, looking for illicit wood. I suppose the resources expended on the guitar crackdown means less that can be devoted to shooting pets, harassing cancer patients, and setting little...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2011 11:47 PM
From this movie....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2011 08:51 PM
My friend's seven-year-old daughter recently stumbled on AC/DC ("Back in Black," the song, I believe) and reportedly said: "why wasn't I informed of this?" Her parents aren't super knowledgeable about "hard rock" so I volunteered my services as an ambassador...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2011 08:38 PM
Not "migraine art," per se, but it might as well be. More here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2011 11:05 PM
And don't tell the officers who just beat you up for locking up your own store that you have it on video tape, or they'll beat you up all over again, only moreso. Watch: Brothers: Chicago Police Beat Us Up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2011 08:02 PM
This is me just minutes after narrowly escaping a developing street assault by ducking into a convenient bar. Planning to wait till they give up waiting for me to come out and turn their attention to other prey, like any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2011 12:33 AM
Wind power kills endangered birds, hydro kills fish, solar kills the desert, and oil, coal, and nuclear evidently kill everything. (Also, if we don't shape up right now, we're on course to be destroyed by environmentalist extra-terrestrials.) It's tough being...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2011 10:06 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2011 09:18 PM
Don't get cancer and try to help pay your medical bills with yard sales....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2011 06:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 15, 2011 07:49 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2011 02:11 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2011 08:36 PM
The guy in the hat is John Portnoy, who was always right next to me in alphabetical order. I'm the guy with the guitar. (I still have that guitar, a Confirmation present, and I played it on a lot...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2011 09:10 AM
By King Dork....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2011 08:51 AM
I was at my mom's house going through some old stuff, and I found this duct-taped school folder containing French homework, lyrics, and love letters:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2011 08:38 AM
In a recent discussion of Milk Milk Lemonade on facebook (mostly here, but also here, and here, if you're interested) it came out that the album wasn't on iTunes for some reason. Not sure why it got kicked out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 04:30 PM
Jade and Marcella drew these pictures of Andromeda Klein:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 07:06 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 12:38 AM
Anyone who has spent any time with me will, no doubt, have heard me cry out for an air conditioned suit from time to time. Japan to the rescue. I'm totally getting one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 12:17 AM
If you've ever even glanced at Reason.com, and noted the arguably obsessive, nearly wall-to-wall, criticism of police and the criminal injustice system, this spiel by Lawrence O'Donnell will probably make you snort and roll your eyes a bit. The through-the-looking-glass...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2011 10:38 PM
Me playing in a park in Bergamo, Italy:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2011 04:35 PM
Nothing brings out the melancholy like Don Williams's low-key presence and nearly affectless delivery. This song never fails to leave me misty-eyed (it did just now) and there are quite a few others that have that effect as well....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2011 05:52 PM
(via Lexington Green.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2011 05:49 PM
Someone should autotune-the-news this guy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2011 05:57 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2011 03:24 AM
I don't for one second believe that the incident described here actually happened, but nevertheless, Colbert speaks for me:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2011 02:04 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2011 12:37 AM
I'm a broken, Balko-phonic record today, I know, but it's just one of those days. I remember several instances, back when I was a kid, of children and elderly people being struck by cars when walking across treacherous intersections. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2011 07:47 PM
This family would have been far, far, better off if they hadn't. The guy had chased off the invaders before they got anything or hurt anybody. I'm sure the family members were shaken up, but they appeared to have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2011 05:32 PM
This guy was attacked in his own home by police who thought he was a burglar. According to his lawyer, a language barrier and some sort of mental disability prevented him from understanding the situation and responding appropriately. He locked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2011 05:03 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2011 11:59 PM
I only meant to listen to (and exhibit) the first song, "Breakfast," but there are a few others from Lindisfarne frontman Alan Hull's mindblowing first solo album in that clip. That song just knocks me out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2011 12:18 AM
Prosecutorial malfeasance, apparently, in the Casey Anthony case. Presumably then, as Althouse says, if there had been a guilty verdict, she'd be getting a new trial now. But what about the prosecutors, who broke the law by knowingly suppressing evidence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2011 06:24 PM
Having succeeded in reducing the the Fourth Amendment to little more than a rote ceremonial pantomime, the Land of the Free gets to work on the Fifth....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2011 04:20 PM
From this album, but I think I prefer the version on this great album of demos....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2011 07:44 PM
So, you know that Oak Park, MI lady who faced three months in prison for growing vegetables in her front yard? A judge has dismissed those charges. But now she faces three months in prison for unlicensed dogs (now licensed,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2011 07:20 PM
I've got no opinion on the copyright issue raised here, but I love this self-portrait allegedly snapped by a macaque with a camera left unattended by nature photographer David Slater:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 11:55 PM
"And if he wants to call them his wives, the state of Utah should say, 'Knock yourself out, dude.' That, or nothing." Steve Chapman weighs in on that bizarro polygamy prosecution and lawsuit I noted here. I have to say,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 10:52 PM
The references to the characters in the sitcom Family Affair are now obscure and most likely, and increasingly, incomprehensible to listeners past a certain age, but this song more than perhaps any other determined the route my own songwriting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 08:12 PM
Google also alerted me to this....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 05:37 AM
Google has alerted me to this guide to nerd-rock....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 05:31 AM
From this album, but this box set is in print and seems like a better deal. Great stuff. I'm particularly fond of this lyric: Rock and roll addiction is a festering habit you know you got to keep on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2011 03:57 PM
Bummer....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2011 01:53 AM
Anyone know what happened to this kid? Great single....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2011 10:14 PM
Few artists, even quite hifalutin ones, have had as much influence on my life and on our cultural world as Sherwood Schwartz. People used to think I was extracting the Michael when I used to go around saying he was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2011 08:35 PM
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. And it is hard to disagree with Ann Althouse's point that decriminalizing polygamy would be a far more modest application of the Lawrence decision than applying it with regard to same-sex marriage. It should be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2011 05:52 PM
Finally got around to picking up this recent biography of Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker, and so far it's a corker, meticulously researched, well-written, not to mention beautifully designed and bound. I'm learning some stuff, too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2011 04:37 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2011 09:39 AM
A guy tries to cash a check at his own bank. Bank incorrectly suspects forgery and calls the police. Guy spends five days in jail, loses his job, has his car (still parked at the bank while he's in jail)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2011 10:14 PM
It is quite disturbing to see all those great big ads for MacKeeper on all my favorite blogs. I know the individual bloggers don't have much to do with it, per se: they just subscribe to a service, like intermarkets.net...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2011 07:26 PM
Scott Purdy does some tremendous Lovecraftian art. The Elder Thing is here. Lots more where that came from. Fhtagn! (via Michael Scott.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2011 05:45 PM
This lady in Oak Park, MI faces three months in jail for growing vegetables in her own yard. That's bad. But almost as bad is the fact the city official in charge of citizen harassment appears to have attempted, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2011 12:42 AM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2011 12:08 AM
Lauren Myracle apologizes to Meghan Cox Gurdon on NPR for characterizing her notorious Wall Street Journal YA essay as "idiocy." And here Meghan Cox Gurdon spars with Maureen Johnson. I agree that "idiocy" isn't precisely the right word here. Gurdon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2011 08:49 PM
One day I may type out the whole, strange, extremely unlikely story of how my little band wound up jamming, sort of, with Johnny Thunders in a New York cafe on one weird night in 1989. Till then, though, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2011 05:43 PM
I've been working through these audio recordings of H. P. Lovecraft stories read by Wayne June, and it's by far the best audio Lovecraft production I've heard. There are six volumes, and you have to hunt around for them...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2011 04:47 AM
In the Brady Bunch episode known as Getting Greg's Goat, Greg steals Coolidge High's mascot, a goat named Roxanne. When he is finally discovered, and the goat runs wild through a concerned parents' meeting on the mascot-stealing situation, his punishment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2011 01:26 AM
HP Lovecraft's writing workbook....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2011 11:15 PM
The SF Bay Guardian recaps, with photos, the Air Guitar competition I wrote about here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2011 01:23 AM
Jook was a great, often overlooked skinhead-glam-mod-rudi band from the early 70s that I know from some of the singles from this album originally on (I think) Chiswick Records....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2011 09:19 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2011 09:20 PM
I'd been asked to do it quite some time ago and didn't really think too much about it till I showed up an hour before the show, not knowing at all what I was walking into and figuring I'd...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2011 07:08 PM
My BMI statement for this quarter reported broadcast/publishing royalties in a category I'd never seen before: AIRCRAFT. Evidently (or not, because it certainly could be a reporting glitch) the song "She's Not a Flower" from Yesterday Rules was "performed" or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2011 09:34 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2011 03:56 PM
I know they're just promoting their book the best they can, but this breezy "how to write YA" article in Slate still irritates. The tone and attitude reminds me of many conversations I've had with "literary" writers, in which they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2011 07:56 PM
I was listening this today and it reminded me of this great tune: It appears the record that's from (the Dig that Crazy Grave EP from Irish psych-garage rock combo The Golden Horde) is no longer available anywhere for love...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2011 10:35 PM
My best guess is I was trying to play "Sway" or possibly "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2011 10:16 PM
Interpunk is doing a couple of MTX shirts. It has been quite a while since any shirts have been available commercially, so this is, by any conceivable measure, a big, big deal. We tried making Love is Dead shirts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2011 08:49 PM
The single sold for $6,500 on ebay just now, but it can be found for a bit less on Back From the Grave, Part 2....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2011 07:42 AM
I always wanted to cover this song, but for some reason that is completely dark to me there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this dream among band members across several line-ups. And you need enthusiasm. (I know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2011 05:07 PM
Steve tagged me on the trivia question "what was Mr. Belvedere's full name" because one of my songs references the TV show. I hadn't done a whole lot of thinking about Mr. Belvedere in quite some time, and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2011 11:47 PM
These guys recorded quite a few pretty great glam pop tunes, of which this is the most famous. Just thinking about it because of digging up that Ace Frehley record the other day. Speaking of which, you know whats...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2011 05:59 PM
I originally just called this "Ace" but it has a melancholy quality that made me want to change the title, so I did....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2011 12:14 AM
Metafilter has a thread on the Wall Street Journal piece on how awful YA lit is....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2011 06:31 PM
Speaking of "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" (as I just was, down there) there were few songs that had as much purchase on my attention in those days as that one did. I mean, it really "spoke to me," somehow, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2011 11:23 PM
When I turned 13 in September, 1977, my musical tastes and interests were in the process of being shaped by an assortment of DJs on college radio stations and specialty shows on commercial rock stations. The college stations tended to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2011 08:51 AM
The full-band, fully vocally-arranged album version of this song is a favorite track from one of my favorite records, but youtube just introduced me to this acoustic demo version, which is a bonus track on the CD repackage. Just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2011 06:10 AM
Amazing graphic: ADDED: Bill asked, so here's the "map" on the back cover:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2011 08:25 AM
This guy at the record store I used to hang out at when I was in high school once gave me a cut-out copy of Bill Wyman's Monkey Grip solo album, saying: "here take it, get it out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2011 02:49 AM
Just on the outside chance anyone would be interested, I'm ebay-ing a few random things I had lying around. If anyone's interested in my old tangerine iBook, my old KISS bag (remember that?) my old 2-way wrist radios, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2011 06:27 AM
More from Matt Welch on that Dept. of Education SWAT raid. As he points out, the problem with using these violent tactics to serve routine warrants isn't just the needless physical, psychological, property, and puppy damage that can result...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2011 06:38 PM
No kidding. Speechless. via Balko, obviously (whose link to a local news channel doesn't seem to be working.) Update: from Matt Welch at Reason. According to Dept. of Education press secretary Justin Hamilton, the SWAT raid was part of an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2011 07:20 PM
This was one of my favorite singles when I was a kid, bought at the Columbus Street Tower Records import section on the basis of the title and the fact that they looked cool on the cover, and played...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2011 05:24 PM
Reading that Meghan Cox Gurdon Wall Street Journal essay, I kept thinking of this song:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 10:52 PM
So there's a recent Wall Street Journal piece on the state of YA lit making the rounds. As usual, I noticed the complaints on twitter and facebook and blogs without being much moved seek out the article that sparked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 08:44 PM
An entire hour of nothing but Paul Stanley's song intros one after the other is way more enjoyable than you might think. (via metafilter.) Added: I am astonished at the anti-KISS-ism in the metafilter comments. (Or should that term...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 03:48 PM
Another of my childhood autograph-collecting projects (cf. Groucho's and Ted's.) I got the photo from NASA's free information pack and sent it to these guys one by one with a stamped envelope and what I imagine must have been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 12:02 AM
From this great album....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2011 02:20 AM
After fourteen years or so, Patrick's Revenge is Sweet promotional flyswatter finally broke whilst being used to dispatch a fly:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2011 09:16 PM
These materials were found in an old (ca. 1948) copy of A E Waite's translation of Eliphas Levi's History of Magic. The previous owner had made a few slightly cantakerous notes in an almost preternaturally neat, careful hand upon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2011 08:58 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2011 07:02 AM
I know from experience that this sound can clear a room pretty quickly, so brace yourself before pressing play. I find it does mysterious, pleasantly uncomfortable things to my brain. That recording of one of the most famous songs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2011 11:54 PM
[Photo deleted, viewable here.] I don't know who took this photo way back when, but whoever it was managed to capture something or other....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2011 11:29 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2011 07:40 PM
As I've mentioned, as a kid I used to write to people asking them to sign things for me. I'd look up their addresses in Who's Who at the library, write them little "Frank, age 8" letters, and see what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2011 08:00 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2011 07:04 PM
Talked to a girl last night who seemed, at the time, to make a pretty convincing case that "With My Looks and Your Brains" was the greatest thing since the Magna Carta, but now, in the cold, hungover light of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2011 06:18 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2011 04:47 AM
Orin Kerr explains how proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could well make checking facebook at work a felony punishable by up to three years in prison for each instance. (It's tricky even as it stands, without...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2011 08:14 PM
In the item below, responding to comments about my A-1 Steak Sauce shirt, Chris points out this etsy listing: Awesome 1980's canary yellow tee with a crew neckline, short sleeves, and text that reads, Dr. Frank. In a vintage...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2011 06:40 AM
Believe it or not, this photo appeared in the September 1988 issue of Creem magazine:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2011 05:15 PM
Enthusiasts at the Aeclectic Tarot Forum seem to like Andromeda Klein....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2011 05:06 PM
Laughing at religious fanatics is nothing new. And, at some level, there’s nothing wrong with it. But this story didn’t just take off in popularity because people wanted a quick laugh or some insight into a quirky subset of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2011 01:21 AM
Topical again because of this....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2011 10:06 PM
Original here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2011 07:40 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2011 08:49 PM
Not sure exactly what's going on at King Dork ISP, but it's quite interesting....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2011 08:44 PM
The world did not end. That's not the big news. The big news is that big news covered the nonnews. We were supposed to find it amusing. Amusing to snicker at marginal people who believe religious things. They're so dumb....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2011 07:40 PM
Funny and blast-from-the-past-y article on "how to look punk" from a 1977 publication described by boingboing as a "marketing/trendspotter's 'zine'". (The link is a pdf file.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2011 07:03 PM
-...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2011 06:26 PM
This case is really something else. A guy is questioned, arrested, and held by cops for legally carrying a legal firearm, a law of which the police are ignorant; a harsh confrontation develops in which the police become hysterical and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2011 05:11 PM
Nice knowing ya....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2011 08:42 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2011 01:10 AM
Neil LaBute to direct a film of Agatha Christie's Crooked House, adapted by Julian Fellowes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2011 12:23 AM
If I had any money, I'd give some of it to these guys, because this looks great and I'd really love to see it as a finished product: (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2011 03:49 PM
(via no hay banda.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2011 02:12 AM
This is a bit of card stock with pin attached, possibly the best "found item" ever, though it was in fact purchased rather than found....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2011 10:09 PM
Clearing out stuff from an old file cabinet and finding stuff like this:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2011 08:00 PM
This seems about right to me: The CD, the cassette, the vinyl LP, are all more or less devalued below the level of the T-shirts and other dry goods that orbit the burnt-out sun of the music industry. Their relative...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2011 04:08 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2011 09:29 PM
I had a partner once, and when we broke up, she said: I've never understood it. I've listened to all the music you've written while I've been living with you, and I never would have thought you'd think of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2011 10:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2011 09:15 PM
For the last forty years we have been diligently working on the massive, long-term project of attempting to incarcerate a full one per cent of the total population of this country, by any means necessary. No other country has come...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2011 07:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2011 02:04 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2011 02:17 AM
Here's part one of a terrific interview full of writing advice from George Saunders: This caveat about what happens when everyone has the same impulse about how to "steer into the rapids" is what is known, I believe, as a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2011 08:46 PM
Here's another "on writing" quotation that has fascinated me since I first read it. From Joan Didion in this Paris Review interview: When I’m working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2011 05:51 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2011 04:36 PM
Gizmodo explains. Fascinating classic "folklore" problem, vastly accelerated by the internets. UPDATE: Jesse Walker finds this quite plausible source for the MLK misquotation: UPDATE II: Megan McArdle has the full post-mortem on the MLK quotation here. Short version: it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2011 04:10 PM
Clearing out and sorting through things and what not, I found these notebooks, squirreled away and forgotten in various places: They're the songwriting/lyrics books that I used to carry around, spanning, I'd guess, the early 90s through the early 2000s....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2011 03:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2011 07:32 PM
Caduceus Books is selling photocopies of apparently unpublished, uncatalogued, batches of handwritten pages from Aleister Crowley's magical diaries. Bake sale!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2011 06:06 PM
The hit to miss ratio among the items on this self-explanatory tumblr project is extraordinarily high. Clever stuff. Added: of course, I've thought about how my books might fare. There is certainly fodder for some good ones amongst disgruntled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2011 05:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2011 04:57 PM
Instead of wasting time on mindless conspiracies, let’s get back to having misinformed debates about issues that matter. -- Michael C. Moynihan, on "birtherism"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2011 04:51 PM
The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey commemorates the Monkees' Head....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2011 04:29 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2011 01:56 AM
You know what's great? "Zeppelina" from the Dickies' Idjit Savant album. When Leonard Graves Philips handed me the CD at the end of a small tour we did with them (the CDs arrived at the last show) he said: Let...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2011 01:46 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2011 07:45 PM
This lady wants to put you in jail....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2011 07:34 PM
They're putting William Burroughs's The Soft Machine on trial in Turkey. It isn't clear to me what penalties the book will face if convicted, but the article reads as though they are gearing up for a criminal trial with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2011 05:23 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2011 06:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2011 09:46 AM
I've loved the "sound" of this ever since I first saw it on TV (in other words, since I was around five) and the intro-outro still plays regularly when I put my iPodlike head on shuffle, but it wasn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2011 04:40 PM
According to this, the home for sale in this Providence real estate listing is the Shunned House featured in HP Lovecraft's famous story of that name. (via Metafilter.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2011 07:39 AM
An unusually snark-less appreciation and recollection of the Hardy Boys from Vince Keenan. (The shout-out to King Dork as "contemporary variant" -- if shout-out is the word I want -- is also unusual. I know, because Google Alerts, which keeps...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2011 01:16 AM
A: I wrote one novel in which there was a 19 year old girl named Kathy whose boyfriend was named Jack who appeared to have a relation with the criminal underground who turns out to have a relation with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2011 11:37 PM
Well, I guess the migraines, the cancer, the toxic waste, and everything looking ugly and disturbing all the time is a small price to pay if it really does save the world and everything in it from an otherwise certain...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 09:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 09:45 PM
That's from Gary Johnson's website blurb about drug policy. Read the rest: it is the most sensible, sane thing I've ever read from any politician on the subject, and I would vote for it in a heartbeat. Not that I'll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 06:36 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 04:17 AM
I just learned that the class mentioned here has been cancelled. You can feel free to email me questions and send me fifty bucks anyway, if you like....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 04:05 AM
Weird Al vs. Lady Gaga: here. This whole Lady Gaga phenom is a bit out of my area -- quite a bit -- and I had never heard the original song before now, nor do I know how to assess...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2011 07:01 PM
From a sweet comic by Liz Prince. Whole thing here. (via Aaron.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2011 06:46 PM
If you spent any time at all in the Pacific Northwest in the eighties, you probably do. I remember hearing all sorts of outlandish stories about the Rajneeshees, and most of them turned out to be true. The picture...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2011 06:01 PM
Found here. UPDATE: Here's Radley Balko's post on this. I've been asking myself why I have such a strong reaction to this video and story, when, compared to so many other cases of police abuse of authority, it's relatively...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 06:35 PM
I have seen this attributed to Hemingway, Roald Dahl, William Goldman, and maybe even a few others, but whoever said it, it's some of the most useful advice anyone ever gave me: The best way is always to stop when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 05:03 PM
Sachiko sent this blast from the past, with this note: I was cleaning my apt today and found this in my CD shelf. This is such a sweet memory of my life. When Mr. T Experience came to Japan...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 02:28 AM
boingboing likens the national anthem of Montenegro to a "mid-century epic horror movie theme," and they have a point. I am (if I have this right) descended from Montenegrans on my father's mother's side, but I never heard the soundtrack...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 02:09 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2011 10:38 PM
I kid you not. I mean, this is no dream, this is really happening. I'm going to be a guest at Jane Ganahl's "Authors on Writing" workshop at the Grotto in San Francisco on Thursday April 21. The topic is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2011 09:40 PM
As you might imagine, I have never knowingly read a "romance novel," per se, though I would guess some books I have read could well fall into some genre-straddling peripheral category. I mean, like, actual gothic romances, The Monk, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2011 05:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2011 02:37 AM
Unlike Ron Rosenbaum, I'm quite fond of Ulysses, but I agree with a lot of what he says in the process of trying to trash it in this piece. As an ironic commentary on the Odyssey -- something Rosenbaum doesn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2011 12:50 AM
Thanks to everyone who has been sending me things to sign lately. I like how they all come with a quirky, heartwarming story attached. You rarely get the "backstory" when you're just sitting in a bookstore signing. I feel all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2011 11:55 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2011 06:16 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2011 06:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2011 07:45 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2011 02:19 AM
In case anyone noticed, I turned the comments off because of all the spam, so now I'm just turning them back on to see what happens......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2011 01:10 AM
As I mentioned here a ways back, I sang the bridge on this song on the new Screeching Weasel album:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2011 12:37 AM
Brendan Halpin has some thoughts on self-censorship in YA. He's right that a variety of forces, from within and from without, can combine to cause a fairly warped picture of actual teen life in a quite a lot of teen...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2011 05:40 PM
This song made quite a big impression on me when I was a kid and it was played over and over on all the big AOR FM stations. I used to play it in my bedroom and walk around...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2011 11:52 PM
Some people were asking if I still had those Love is Dead sunglasses. I wasn't sure, but it turns out I do, and here's what's left of them:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2011 07:51 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2011 01:34 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2011 11:38 PM
Interesting post on the quest-to-get-to-know-the-missing-father theme in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Brock Clarke's Exley, and King Dork. I'd never heard of the Exley book before, but its basis for the paternal investigation is a startling and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2011 09:50 PM
Lashtalians discuss the fate of the Stele of Revealing in the midst of the Cairo riots....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2011 05:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2011 02:58 AM
A chance conversation about band anxiety dreams this morning reminded me of this one show a ways back -- one of the early MTX shows, opening for Flipper somewhere in San Francisco. Guitarist Ted Falconi hadn't shown up and they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2011 08:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2011 11:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2011 02:52 AM
Requiescat in pace....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2011 01:22 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2011 10:42 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2011 10:31 PM
A kind assessment of Andromeda Klein from old comrade Steven Rubio. Also, from this goodreads review of King Dork, a cautionary clash-of-generations tale: I find Tom Henderson to be almost a hero to most dorks who read the book, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2011 10:26 PM
The "revenge sweater," I mean. Probably hasn't been worn since c. 1998, fortunately. Sorry, world....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2011 07:07 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2011 04:58 PM
If Richard Dawkins had anticipated a cakewalk through a crowd of uniformly acquiescent ditto-heads in the comments to his boingboing guest post about the Martin Gaskell case, he was in for a surprise. You can color me surprised as well,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2011 05:20 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2011 04:39 AM
Here's something you don't see everyday: a celebration of "roguelikes." Rogue itself was before my time, but but it's not an exaggeration to say that much of my life in the 80s and 90s -- and even, occasionally, more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2011 03:46 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2011 10:31 PM
My inbox got corrupted and is mostly unsalvageable, so if you're waiting for a response to an email that is my excuse for not answering. Starting over! Resend anything important, but don't worry too much about the unimportant stuff. (And...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2011 12:03 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2011 11:17 PM
So, believe it or not, last night I found myself in the unlikely position of having to brandish the longsword pictured here to scare off an intruder who was messing around on the fire escape outside my back door. True...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2011 10:11 PM
CNN's John King apologizes to viewers because a guest used the word "crosshairs" in a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. Whatever the merits of the argument that scrupulous avoidance of violent metaphors will make us safer (extremely dubious in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2011 05:23 PM
The recent brouhaha about the bowdlerization of Huckleberry Finn knocked loose a strange phrase that had rested, unused but obviously still present, in my mind, and I didn't realize why till I thought about it long enough to reverse-engineer it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2011 04:21 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2011 12:43 AM
SWAT team surrounds suspect's house to serve a search warrant, realize they've got the wrong guy, decide to arrest him anyway because of unrelated misdemeanor warrants, and set the house on fire, killing him. I didn't know what to title...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2011 04:26 PM
The poor video and audio of the clip only serve to frame the look and sound of the disintegrating Buzzcocks: Still one of my favorite songs....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2011 01:03 AM
…or they'll surveil you, entrap you, send a SWAT team to execute you a warrant, murder you, lie about it, admit no wrongdoing, harass and intimidate your grieving family, and tie the matter up in court for five years before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2011 07:25 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2011 11:19 PM
Wierus is offering an early printing of the Dragon Rouge/Grand Grimoire to anyone with a spare 3,000 euros lying around....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2011 07:39 PM
Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism; in either case the dread of being left out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2011 08:14 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2011 12:54 AM
However one might characterize the ethos embodied in contemporary American right wing populist rhetoric, "eliminationist," coined by Daniel Goldhagen in his Hitler's Willing Executioners to describe the ideological underpinnings of the popular will to exterminate European Jews, is surely the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2011 11:22 PM
(via Lexington Green.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2011 02:34 AM
Pennsylvania Congressman plans to introduce bill banning visual depictions of crosshairs and bullseyes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 11:59 PM
Of course we should mourn the people senselessly murdered yesterday, government employees and otherwise: U.S. District Judge John Roll, Dorthy Murray, Dorwin Stoddard, nine-year-old Christina Greene, Phyllis Scheck, and Gabe Zimmerman. That said, I long for the day that our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 06:47 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 05:30 PM
Available here. (Oddly enough, I first read this book when I was a kid because it was one of the texts/clues mentioned in Ellen Raskin's Figgs & Phantoms. Thus, my introduction to Conrad. I wonder how the Raskin text...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 05:09 PM
David Mitchell recalls gap year Inter-Railing....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 04:55 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2011 10:50 PM
I am as against bowdlerizing Huckleberry Finn as anyone could be, but all the hullabaloo over this particular edition is bizarre: publishers have been silently doing precisely this in school and textbook editions of that book, and many others, for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2011 08:18 AM
I find it very difficult to watch scenes in movies where music with vocals is played at the same time as dialog, so that the lyrics of the song compete with what the characters are saying. It happens quite often,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2011 05:43 PM
This funny and wide-ranging Christmas Break report by The 8th Grade Observer happens to include in passing one of my favorite King Dork reviews ever....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2011 04:45 PM
If you're like me, this story will make you mad. The prosecutor's website indicates that he is a cancer survivor, so I imagine he has himself had medical treatment with pain meds prescribed by his doctors, just like the guy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2011 05:51 PM
Live clip from Portland '79 here, with typical punk rock show mic problems. The audience footage is great though -- that's what punk rock really was like in '79, usually....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2011 04:47 PM
I found this empty cigarette pack box on the pavement outside the ESL school nearby where I used to work in Berkeley, long long ago. The slogan reads: "THE TASTE OF MY CIGARETTES IS VERY SMOOTH, SOFT, AND SENSUAL,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2011 09:16 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2011 05:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2010 01:56 AM
John Stossel: Please Stop "Helping" Us. He's talking about the CARD Act. Like its ludicrous acronym ("Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure") it exemplifies irony, having achieved precisely the opposite of its presumed aims. It should been called the RANCID...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 09:47 PM
Stephen Fry on Douglas Adams's writing procedure: Douglas's writing routine was painful in the extreme. Sue Freestone, his publisher at Heinemann, would come round and beg, often almost with tears welling in her eyes, for pages from his printer. Douglas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 05:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 05:18 PM
My friend and agent Steve Malk has been forwarding me stories from the early days of baseball, including that of this guy: In the annals of baseball history, the tale of Charles Victor "Victory" Faust is virtually unmatched for sheer...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 05:29 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 03:55 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2010 03:20 PM
Jackson posted this pic on facebook. I believe it is of my first ever solo show at the Bottom of the Hill c. 1998 (?) or so. I was so nervous before going on that I was literally shaking, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2010 04:26 AM
Unlike that guy, but also admittedly kind of like that guy, I have google alerts on me and my stuff so I can keep track of what Mr. and Mrs. Internet are saying about me. Usually they work as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2010 05:24 PM
Dan Handler on the annoying "likability" litmus test for fictional characters: I’m always mystified by discussions of likable characters. Characters are in books; you’re not going to have lunch with them. Moreover, the best books are full of trouble, so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2010 04:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2010 04:54 PM
Hear some of HP Lovecraft's Christmas poems read in quick succession over at the HPL Literary Podcast site. via Cthulhu Chick, who also posts this pic: May the ghouls of the neighbouring regions, and the cursed necrophagous things, lay aside...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2010 07:17 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2010 06:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2010 05:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2010 02:19 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2010 08:57 PM
Searching the Chick Publications website for a suitable link for the Archies item below, I discovered that you can order an assortment of all the currently in-print Chick Tracts for $15.95, and my first thought was, "what a great gift...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2010 07:46 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2010 05:21 PM
Further to this, Archie comics seems to be getting ever more mashup-y and "meta," like everything else these days. This looks a bit like a Chick Tract meld to me: (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2010 04:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2010 07:27 PM
Last week I recorded a vocal track in Oakland, CA for a session happening in Madison, WI, with all the tracks uploaded and downloaded through a series of tubes. So yes, people can make rock and roll and not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2010 04:47 PM
added: got a few messages about this tune and how great it is -- it's here. And Stars Time Bubbles Love is sheer, feel-good psych genius, one of the best vocal pop albums of all time by my reckoning....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2010 12:49 AM
Huffington Post readers have a go at the new Archie:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2010 12:17 AM
That's number three on Captain Beefheart's Ten Commandments for Guitarists, via Don in the comments to ....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2010 09:29 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2010 05:25 PM
The unnervingly prolific Brendan Halpin (whose Long Way Back is likely the best novel about punk rock and Catholicism you'll ever read) has some awfully nice things to say about Andromeda Klein in his top ten books read in 2010...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2010 05:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2010 09:10 PM
ADDED: If you've never seen the John Peel-narrated BBC documentary on Capt. Beefheart, it's on youtube in six parts and it is well worth a look. Part one:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2010 12:59 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2010 12:43 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2010 05:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2010 09:38 PM
My old bandmate Jon von reached Bob Feldman of the Strangeloves by phone in an attempt to get permission to release a French version of the song "Cara-lin," and lived to tell the tale. Spoiler alert: he didn't get it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2010 06:14 PM
This case has consumed an inordinate amount of taxpayer resources, and has no doubt devastated the defendant’s personal and professional life. The defendant’s former employer also paid a price, footing a multimillion dollar bill for the defense. And, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2010 04:09 PM
There are a lot of very bad best-of lists that don't include any of my books, but here's a iist that does. ADDED: another good list of "road tested" books for teenaged guys....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2010 11:03 PM
Here ya go, Gurt of the pop punk message bored. (Drag it into the artwork box of your i-Thing.) While we're on the subject, I have digitally "signed" pdf files before by editing the title page, though I bet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2010 07:12 PM
The weirdest thing I've seen in quite some time, unless I'm forgetting something:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2010 04:21 PM
The Andromeda Klein paperback releases officially tomorrow (Tuesday, December 14.) I've been getting quite a few requests for signed books and records and such lately, probably owing to it being the Toys 'r' Us time of year, so I figured...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2010 12:06 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2010 06:11 PM
If you click on a link called "Gossip Girls and three-ways: visit our smokin' hot teen zone" on the front page of this new lit mag, you'll arrive at a thoughtful essay about a mother's uneasy truce with the "embarrassing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2010 05:21 PM
ADDED: Beppe forwarded me this guy: You might want to brace yourself, or back the volume down a bit, at around the three minute mark, as it gets a little intense at that point. And if you found that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2010 04:36 PM
Further to my comment about how the thrill of perceived sub-cultural "signaling" tends to endure beyond all rationality (on the Necronomicon/wikileaks "connection" post) here's a case in point. Lovecraftian Playing cards: Every time something like this pops up on boingboing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2010 11:39 PM
I have a feeling that this is one of those opinions you're not really supposed to have, or to admit to having, but I like Mel Gibson, warts and all. He makes great movies, even if he is a bit...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2010 07:35 PM
What's a quotation from the Simonomicon doing in the wiki-leaks documents? Beats the Ir-Kalla out of me! It's used as an epigraph here, and explained, sort of, in this file on "One Man's Search for a Cryptographic Mythology": I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2010 01:52 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2010 05:42 PM
Is there a word for the original phrase that a spoonerism is a spoonerism of? Because they can make pretty good band names. I wanted to find the Ronnie Barker sketch on the funeral of Dr. Spooner where he does...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2010 06:37 PM
Nice 8vo copy of Agrippa's collected works, part one (including De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres, the Fourth Book, Arbatel, Ars Notoria, etc.) being auctioned on ebay by Wierus....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2010 01:53 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2010 09:48 PM
Well, as a connoisseur of the black arts, I sure did: it's "Pickman's Model" on Rod Serling's Night Gallery, all three seasons of which are on hulu. And here's "Cool Air," as well, adapted by Serling himself. Night Gallery...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2010 05:30 PM
Sometimes it seems as though the Internet is always listening, and contrives to place documents before you to prove you wrong from time to time, just to show you that it can. To wit: just last week I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2010 05:18 PM
Note found on juniper bush in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2010 09:48 PM
1. "I'm Not a Loser" -- Descendents 2. "Excitable Boy" -- Warren Zevon 3. "Rockefeller Skank" -- Fatboy Slim 4. "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" -- Rachel Bloom 5. "Caucasian Guilt" -- Noh Mercy 6. "Fascist Dictator" -- The Cortinas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2010 08:04 PM
...doesn't it seem like AT&T (or some other big competitor) could essentially kill Comcast dead by offering a pledge not to block netflix as part of their "switch" campaign? They already offer cash. Every time I go into an AT&T...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2010 06:39 PM
I mean, that was fast: TSA sets up shop at Greyhound Station. Good grief. The "homeland security" and counter-terrorism pretext is laughable. What they're really after is drugs, "excess cash," immigration violations, whatever they happen to find in your bag,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2010 05:43 PM
(via Casey.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2010 11:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2010 05:18 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2010 06:54 PM
From a King Dork reader in today's mail: My favorite part of the whole book was the Rye Heck part. I also play the guitar. I don't make up my own songs, but I play stuff like Lynyrd Skynyrd and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2010 06:24 PM
This ham-handedly statist, pro-TSA article in the Nation reads like a parody of Glenn Beck's blackboard, but it is apparently intended as a serious argument that anxiety about intrusive TSA searches is some kind of libertarian plot. (via Glenn Greenwald.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2010 06:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2010 04:56 PM
Weiser's latest on-line catalog (#84) is devoted to A. E. Waite....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2010 09:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2010 06:50 PM
It's hard to see, but the outside book is Techniques in the Organic Laboratory....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2010 05:30 PM
From Ann Althouse, reacting to this article on the election's "triumph of stupidity": Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2010 04:49 PM
I'm old enough to remember when hardly anyone outside of what seemed to be an elite group of weirdos had the faintest clue as to what the Cthulhu Mythos was, and that wasn't that long ago even in my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2010 08:47 PM
The Andromeda Klein paperback comes out next month, and I just got one in the mail: They changed the front cover, obviously, but they did include the annotated charts that were printed on the inside of the original jacket as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2010 08:40 PM
The "seasonal affective disorder" described in this Washington Post article is only supposed to run one way, that is, the darker, colder seasons cause a depression that only increased light and intense heat can relieve. But googling around, I turned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2010 05:48 PM
There's another massive spam-bot attack in the comments going on, and I've batch-deleted huge chunks. It is possible that some legitimate comments got mowed down in the process, and if that is so, I apologize....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2010 07:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2010 11:56 PM
Good grief: Honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 08:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 08:08 PM
More SWAT team over-reach, via Radley Balko. I can't tell for sure from this whether or not private poker games are ever okay in SC (though it seems unwise to risk it) but it does appear that playing any type...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 06:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 01:35 AM
For some reason, quite a few attendees at my recent appearance at the Berkeley, IL public library asked me to sign books that had nothing to do with me other than the fact that I was being asked to sign...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2010 08:56 PM
That's crime fiction author Reed Farrel Coleman, whom I met while he was in San Francisco at Bouchercon (essentially a Comic-Con for mystery fans.) One drink led to another, resulting, as so often, in a pretending-to-read photo. I had...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2010 09:28 PM
Anastasia-approved witches in books....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2010 07:03 PM
Mickey Kaus asks: …my main thought while reading her rant was—why isn't she an Obama voter? I'm serious. Was it really necessary to piss people like her off? Tucker's almost a perfect Obama voter. She's a single grandmom. Not rich....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2010 05:39 PM
Well, they did, up to around just now, but they've finally stopped. (They is Sony.) On tour in pre-iPod days, I used to travel with a trash bag of tapes, though in practice I rarely ended up removing the default...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2010 04:38 PM
Stop by and see me at these things: Midlothian Public Library Tuesday, October 19th @ 6:30 p.m. 14701 S. Kenton Avenue Midlothian, IL 60445 Berkeley Public Library, co-hosted with Hillside Public Library Wednesday, October 20th @ 6:30 p.m. 1637 Taft...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2010 03:30 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2010 08:12 PM
Elif Batumen on the creative writing workshop: Because writing is suspected to be narcissistic and wasteful, it must be ‘disciplined’ by the programme … The workshop’s most famous mantras – ‘Murder your darlings,’ ‘Omit needless words,’ ‘Show, don’t tell’ –...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2010 10:51 PM
My dad used to have one that looked almost exactly like this in his truck when I was a kid. I remember riding with him while he was arguing with whoever he was arguing with and watching the astonished...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 10:47 PM
An unpublished manuscript, begun by Dr. Seuss and completed by an assistant, is up for auction. In a way the accompanying letter, criticizing the story, assessing the "brat book" market, and blaming his lagging correspondence on galufforschmords in his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 09:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 07:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 06:10 AM
Dems and Repubs switch rhetorical monkey suits on the drug war. This is beyond embarrassing: "Dumb on crime" is right....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2010 06:49 PM
"I felt like I made the wrong choice calling the police," she said. Arizona woman makes domestic violence call. Police murder son. (And, of course, they execute the family pet as well.) (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2010 05:01 PM
Heretofore unknown allegedly genuine unfinished Michelangelo pieta found in a Buffalo, NY home....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2010 09:08 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2010 02:07 AM
ADDED: I've had several requests for the correct chords, so: G-C-D G-C-D; C-G-D-Em-C C-D (x2) Em-C-G-D; G-C-D; C-D G-D-Em C-A7-D C then at the end add a B7 after the C-A7-D part and go Em-D-C G. (That's how I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2010 09:29 PM
But I gotta hand it to the sign-maker for making me realize it: (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2010 12:30 AM
For me, writing is a performance. "Portnoy's Complaint" was a performance. When you’re an actor who gives a performance, you have a false wig and a false mustache and a crooked back, and when you go backstage you take off...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2010 12:01 AM
Ha ha. That's hilarious. I can't be bothered to follow the confusing ins and outs of the documents in the case, but, whatever is going on, this Wonkette item and the appended comments comprise quite a document of state-of-the-art class...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2010 03:34 AM
Long Gone Loser from Australia says he gets a FORBIDDEN screen when he tries to access this blog. I've heard that OZ is censorship-happy these days. Is the Australian government blocking this blog, for some reason? If anyone in Australia...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2010 01:44 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2010 10:36 PM
sfweekly notes an alarming lack of ideological conformity among iPhone users....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2010 05:46 PM
Hey, I'm going to be visiting the Chicago area once again this month and appearing at these libraries: Midlothian Public Library Tuesday, October 19th @ 6:30 p.m. 14701 S. Kenton Avenue Midlothian, IL 60445 Berkeley Public Library, co-hosted with Hillside...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2010 01:47 AM
Great short story by Scalzi....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2010 04:05 PM
High school seems made to hurt, which is insane. I knew this back when I was in high school. I faced it every day. I also knew of social spaces for people my age that weren’t designed to hurt. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 06:17 PM
Whatever the merits of this Richard Cohen column, it must be said that it is appallingly bad writing....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 05:51 PM
if you have pets: Kate Hallock arrived at her Oakland hills home after running errands Tuesday and found a blue note fluttering on her front door. "Oakland police responded to your residence to investigate a burglar alarm," the handwritten note...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 05:28 PM
via Jeffen....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 04:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 06:34 AM
When I was hired at UC Berkeley way back when, I, along with everyone else, had to sign a loyalty oath to the State of California, swearing to uphold the California constitution and promising not to attempt to overthrow the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2010 05:38 PM
Inmate's Necronomicon cited as evidence in death penalty retrial. via Volokh....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2010 01:34 AM
The most effective self-undermining advocacy ad ever produced? More here. Astounding. (via Welch at Reason.com.) UPDATE: They're sorry. FURTHER: Nearly a thousand hostile comments were left on the "oops sorry" post on the 10:10 website over the weekend, and it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2010 07:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 10:15 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 09:09 PM
This was my favorite crime show as a kid, and I've been waiting to see it again since almost immediately after it was cancelled in 1976. My memories of it are grand, and almost certainly impossible to live up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 06:59 PM
This is truly one of the strangest things I've ever seen on television: I wouldn't be at all surprised if were to turn out to be an Andy Kaufman-style performance-art hoax in the end. But maybe not, because people are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 05:38 PM
Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism; in either case the dread of being left out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2010 10:03 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2010 06:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2010 03:41 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2010 03:30 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 07:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 06:47 PM
Chris snapped this photo of a T-shirt in a shop window in Groningen, Holland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 04:30 PM
I hadn't known that the character played by Richard E. Grant in the film Withnail and I was based on a specific, real person till I read this. The newly-published photos seem to be the main point of interest, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 07:06 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2010 05:49 PM
David Brooks: So, "Even Hitler had a Girlfriend." Is that punk rock? Me: hm, I'm not sure. When it was released, a lot of people complained about the album because it had acoustic songs, which was regarded as un-punk and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2010 03:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2010 10:06 AM
MONO Equipped declares the MTX version of "Sex Offender" to be "the greatest and definitive Blondie cover of all time." Thanks, guy(s?)....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2010 02:56 PM
Adam Rex (whose latest, Fat Vampire, I really enjoyed) pens what is perhaps the greatest "letter-to-self" I've ever read. Excerpt: Understand that your brain, which is not as smart as you think it is, will file the anonymous car-shouters in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2010 04:50 AM
As you probably know, if only because I make a point of mentioning it any and every time the opportunity arises, I wrote a book about a girl who "dabbles into" witchcraft, etc. So when Christine O'Donnell's witchcraft-dabbling burst on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2010 04:35 AM
In 1975, William Borroughs saw "the Led Zeppelin group" and talked to Jimmy Page. (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2010 12:33 AM
I used to have a cassette tape of songs recorded from the radio (from late night punk/new wave themed shows on AOR stations, college radio, and Dr. Demento -- along with the "imports" bin at the Columbus Tower Records...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2010 05:09 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2010 10:10 PM
Althouse responds to this slightly nutty op-ed on book-burning: I find it hard to believe that Niebuhr and hyperventilators like him are big readers of important books, because their minds seem pretty feeble to me. "Torch a book and you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2010 04:49 PM
I tried turning the comments back on after the last post, because I was curious if anyone would have anything to say about the YA discard bin referenced in it. Result: nearly 1000 spam messages in less than an hour....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2010 11:00 PM
From Tom Grimes's memoir, quoted here: I began to consider the implications of having a book marketed as a baseball novel published by Disney. I imagined serious reviewers tossing it into a bin reserved for young adult novels, all of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2010 03:18 AM
I was just informed (via a link from google alerts, the narcissist's best friend) that my citation of The Greeks and the Irrational in the song about the history of the concept of the soul is noted as a "cultural...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 5, 2010 08:48 PM
Too much comment-spam, so I'm turning off comments for awhile. Email me if you have something to say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 5, 2010 12:20 AM
-- At least they didn't shoot the dog. -- Also, don't get caught whittling. -- Also don't… well this one is kind of hard to sum up: don't be a male victim of a car accident, get mistaken for and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2010 02:43 AM
Wow: Anyone know where this comes from? I don't think I recognize it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2010 09:03 PM
I am interviewed about King Dork and rock and roll on the Booktunes website here. There's also a review and a playlist of music "listened to, critiqued, or referenced" by Tom Henderson in the book. They've even got "Flight of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2010 04:55 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2010 04:16 AM
Cable news is, more or less, footage of people who don't know what they're talking about screaming at each other. Forever. I'd never seen this two-year-old clip before it was linked by Conor Friedersdorf on andrewsullivan.com today, and the yelling...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2010 01:28 AM
Critical theory (I guess) applied to Father Ted: In terms of the theory offered here, the notion of setting follows in part the traditional argument in linguistic pragmatics about how utterance interpretation is shaped by and is heavily dependent on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2010 06:37 PM
I could not disagree more. I realize I was an unusual kid, but browsing through the OED while hiding out from bullies in the public library is among my fondest childhood memories, for which the "convenience of the electronic version"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2010 06:39 PM
Furthering the Show Business is My Life post, Jeffen posts my lengthy audio appearance on KALX for the 2006 King Dork release....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2010 06:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2010 04:09 AM
Kind words about Show Business is My Life from Jeffen at musicruinedmylife.blogspot.com. (It's one of the coolest music blogs around - check it out. If you're like me, you'll probably learn some things.) Also, if you've never heard the Fastbacks'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2010 05:59 PM
Yet another chapter in law enforcement's war on pets and reckless disregard for public safety. Balko: I’m certain that if I (or anyone else who isn’t a cop) pulled out a gun and shot a dog at a dog park...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2010 08:05 PM
Anyone?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2010 05:30 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2010 11:23 PM
It appears that King Dork is responsible for introducing this guy to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. You're quite welcome, sir....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2010 07:19 PM
Every report I've seen on this "hidden" tax code amendment spins it as primarily a burden on Glenn Beck and his gold-dealing paymasters, but what it actually is is an attack on all self-employed people. Added: closing comments because of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2010 10:41 PM
Found in Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2010 09:27 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2010 01:26 AM
If the complaint summarized here is to be believed, ten El Reno, Oklahoma police officers, responding to a 911 call, used tasers on an 87-year-old bed-ridden woman because she "took a more aggressive posture in her bed" when they entered...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2010 09:10 PM
If you'd like to hear me doing "Goody Goody Gumdrops" and "Checkers Speech" over the phone as part of an interview-article about my career as a writer, head on over to The Switchboard Sessions....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2010 04:59 PM
on the "worst review he's ever had" An Irish Times review of a reading I gave of one of my children's books, Rover Saves Christmas, in Dublin. The reviewer referred to 'the stench of celebrity vanity'. I've seen him many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2010 06:18 PM
Somehow these two blank postcards addressed to Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov found their way into the jacket of my Gang of Four LP, unnoticed by me for thirty years or so till now. (Or did they all come that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2010 07:43 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2010 03:15 AM
Detroit SWAT team shoots seven year old girl dead while executing search warrant. "As is common in these types of situations, the officers deployed a distractionary device commonly known as a flash bang," [Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee] said in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2010 02:48 AM
"I hate the internet." -- Columbia, MO Police Chief Ken Burton in his second press conference on Corgi-gate....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2010 11:37 PM
Here's Radley Balko's update on the Columbia, MO SWAT raid video, including the story of how the video came to light and bits of a heartbreaking email from the adult female victim in the targeted household. As he points out,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2010 12:41 AM
Here's a lengthy and quite engaging conversation between Michael Totten and Paul Berman on the subject of Berman's new, long-awaited book, The Flight of the Intellectuals. Long-awaited by me, at least. My copy should be arriving any day now, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2010 08:57 PM
That's Aaron and Billy, who drove four hours from Indiana to see my little presentation in Palantine, IL's public library this past weekend, and almost made it, arriving just as I was packing up. A ways back, Aaron had...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2010 08:16 AM
The story has "legs" because of the terrifying, disgusting video. But this sort of thing happens with insane regularity all across the country. And sadly, shooting all the animals they can find appears to be part of the standard operating...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2010 08:27 PM
a couple of library appearances in the Chicago area this weekend: Saturday, May 8th, 2 - 3:30 PM at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton, Arlington Heights, IL 60004 and Sunday, May 9th, 1:00 - 2:30 PM at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2010 05:20 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2010 10:57 PM
Like this entry for the Sylvers' "Boogie Fever": The narrator of the song notes a change that seems to have come over his girlfriend - at the drive-in movie, she turns down the speaker volume and turns up the radio...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2010 10:06 PM
Police will have to find another pretext to break in and shoot your dogs. Caution, this is horrifying: The insult to injury bit is that they charged this guy for "child endangerment" because of the "small amount of marijuana" they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2010 04:57 PM
The "they all turn out to be the same person" gimmick generally irritates me, though I have been tempted to end stories like that when I can't think of any other way. It is, perhaps, slightly better than having everybody...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2010 08:11 PM
An Andromeda Klein-shaped box:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2010 07:30 PM
In a guest post on a Washington Post blog, Mitch Horowitz, author of the very entertaining Occult America, asserts that one of Ronald Reagan's oft-told parables about America's grand mission has as its direct source Manly P. Hall's tract "The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2010 05:24 PM
A few things I'm doing in May: On Saturday, May 1st, 1 - 3 PM, I'm going to be at Towne Center Books in Pleasanton along with Gennifer Choldenko, Elizabeth Partridge, Alexandra Bolger, Lisa Brown, Adele Griffin, Hillary Homzie, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2010 05:43 PM
Netflix is blocking the Super Best Friends episode as well....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2010 09:24 PM
I usually watch South Park on line late Wednesday night, but obviously that was a flawed strategy this time around. I'm really bummed I missed it. And it is also infuriating that even in the program that did air...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2010 07:17 PM
Here's a fascinating article, with sound file examples, on tuning "temperaments" through the ages. It had never occurred to me to wonder what precisely a "well-tempered clavier" was, but I know now....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2010 05:05 PM
The War on Salt, cont.: The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2010 06:13 PM
Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs. That theory is "startling and dangerous" according to the Supreme Court, and according to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2010 05:42 PM
"Sad Vader" by Alex Brown: (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2010 11:38 PM
1. I'm gonna be attending this dinner thing on Friday, April 16th at the San Francisco Public Library. Afterwards, I'll be doing this Porchlight All Stars storytelling thing (and playing a song I believe): Join us for an evening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2010 07:12 PM
Scrabble rules are being changed to allow proper nouns. UPDATE: it's not true, apparently. Never mind....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2010 09:21 PM
John Griogair Bell posts a lengthy, esoterically-informed reflection on the similarities and contrasts between King Dork and Andromeda Klein. (His Andromeda Klein review has been republished in Sekhet-Maat's journal Lion and Serpent, v. 15 n.1. That's a .pdf link, by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2010 05:59 PM
As a little kid, quite a lot of my time was spent listening to and telling what we called "dirty jokes." Some of these were straightforward and followed a familiar logical pattern, and were thus easily construed, even by me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2010 08:58 PM
Larry turns up some interesting old photos, including a pretty funny one with me in it from way back when....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2010 01:24 AM
I've got to assume that the bill linked in this post on the Reason blog prohibiting the use of any salt at all in the preparation of food at all restaurants in New York state has to be a satirical...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2010 10:35 PM
London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2010 09:30 PM
I just came across Reading for Robin, a new book blog with a touching origin: My mom passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on February 2, 2010. As people gathered to mourn her death, the topic inevitably turned to books. Her...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2010 09:15 PM
Andromeda and Booklist against the world....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2010 09:40 PM
Somehow, Andromeda Klein has made her way in to the Urban Dictionary....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2010 05:17 PM
TV Tropes does King Dork....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2010 04:30 PM
W. B. Yeats's Golden Dawn journal. (via hermetic.com.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2010 07:58 PM
Bookwitch reads Andromeda Klein....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2010 07:47 PM
Here I am blathering a bit about the Catcher Cult on the Huffington Post. (This post's title is from a comment left on that post.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2010 07:30 PM
Check out this extensive, photo- and link-laden interview with my super agent, Steven Malk....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2010 08:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2010 05:15 AM
Are you aware that Safari 4.* saves two snapshots (a png and a jpeg file) of each web page you visit, as well as some seemingly random ones from your history or bookmarks? I wasn't, till I accidentally stumbled on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2010 08:25 PM
The "…and I will be with you" 7" is featured in this post on my band and the history of the concept of the novelty song from the excellent Music Ruined My Life blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2010 06:02 PM
As the Valet Reader mentions, I'm doing a reading thing at the Ferry Building Book Passage store in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 21. 6PM. Come on by. I'm gonna bring my guitar and books and just kind of see...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2010 05:24 AM
The mind is a funny place, or thing, or whatever it is. Don't ask me why, but yesterday I was trying to see if I could remember the lyrics to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I couldn't remember much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2010 10:14 PM
Beyond a general awareness that there may have been a Western academic apologist or two among the victims of the Khmer Rouge, I knew nothing of the strange tale of Malcolm Caldwell's fatal holiday in Cambodia till I read this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2010 07:48 AM
I'm going to be at Book Passage at the Ferry Building in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 21. 6 PM....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2010 06:25 PM
There are quite a few Top 5 of 2009 lists over at the Hipster Book Club, and one of them is mine. I should mention that since I submitted my entry, hulu.com has finally put up the first five series...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2010 12:41 AM
So: Avatar Pretty good. The 3-D effect and animation worked really well, so well in fact that I stopped noticing that anything special was going on after the first twenty minutes or so. If nothing else, then, I have learned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 1, 2010 08:27 PM
"If I Could" - For Stars "Jesus was a Cross-maker" - Judee Sill "This Time Tomorrow" - Kinks "Plea from a Cat Named Virtute" - Weakerthans "Shake Some Action" - Flamin' Groovies "Disney Girls (1957)" - Beach Boys "This...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2009 11:30 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2009 05:43 AM
Thus begins a review of what looks to be quite an interesting book on the life and times of pulp occult novelist Dennis Wheatley....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2009 02:34 AM
George Monbiot expects quite a bit from Copenhagen....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2009 06:25 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2009 01:33 AM
Scenario: I had a package returned by the US Postal service marked "no such address." The recipient said there is such an address and he really does live there, but that the ZIP code he originally gave was off by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2009 10:30 PM
When I was a kid I used to write to famous people requesting autographs. In the end, I had hundreds. Some don't seem to have survived (like the one where General Westmoreland returned my own handwritten note, having scrawled "lack...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2009 08:08 PM
There's a lengthy feature/interview with me in the new issue of Ghettoblaster Magazine. Also, I recently did an assembly at Holden High School in Orinda, and the notices are in. Well, one notice anyway, reported by a teacher: "that Frank...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2009 07:15 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2009 06:01 PM
About a year late (which is usually just about my speed) I finally got around to seeing that Baader-Meinhof Complex film (it's currently on netflix watch-instantly, which is how it came about that I finally got around to watching it.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2009 09:28 AM
Remembering the young Thomas Pynchon....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2009 07:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2009 07:46 PM
Of the several biographies of Aleister Crowley out there, Richard Kaczynski's Perdurabo is the best by a mile, and perhaps the best book on Crowley, period. Its short initial print run sold out long ago, and since then it has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2009 06:30 PM
First you cut the meat off the bones. You start by severing the muscles from the joints with a sharp knife. The fibrous meat can then easily be scraped off, from top to bottom. After you've removed the flesh there's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 11:59 PM
Marie Mundaca reviews Andromeda Klein for the Hipster Bookclub. And the AK audiobook got a star from School Library Journal. Also, Rutila shares a personal moment; and leftik likes Rosalie van Genuchten's name....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 07:54 PM
According to this article describing a Muncie, Indiana mother's thus far unsuccessful efforts to get Nancy Garden's Endgame removed from her son's school library, King Dork was complained about and removed from two middle school libraries in the area earlier...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 06:51 PM
Kirkus, a venerable book trade publication known chiefly for its mean, anonymous reviews, is being shut down, leaving a significant Prince of Darkness-shaped hole in the pre-publication book review universe. Will a new Voldemort arise from its ashes? If you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 05:21 PM
Madeleine drew this for a school assignment:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2009 05:41 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2009 12:38 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2009 10:23 PM
Me, that is, on this podcast interview for the Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review. (The review is here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2009 10:05 PM
1200 at the Library of Congress and 80, including a collection of occult volumes, at Brown University....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2009 02:28 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2009 12:01 AM
Here's part two of Scott Butki's interview with yours truly. Part one may be found here. added: as the Cpt. points out in the comments, the link to part two isn't currently working. Not sure why. Try again later, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2009 08:25 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2009 06:42 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2009 07:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2009 07:24 PM
Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing. -- Cormac McCarthy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2009 05:39 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2009 05:52 PM
Want to read another one? Sure you do!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2009 05:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2009 05:57 PM
I'm going to be on the Sarah & Vinnie show on Alice Radio 97.3 FM tomorrow morning at around 8:30....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2009 12:15 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2009 05:41 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2009 10:27 PM
But pretty much everything about Rosalind Madison's version of Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy" is amazing:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2009 07:55 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2009 07:00 PM
Baby Got Books interviewed me about esotericism, magic, YA lit, Andromeda Klein, King Dork, Ozzy Osbourne and other stuff like that, and here's where to go to read it. They're also giving away a copy of Andromeda Klein, if anyone's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2009 06:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2009 05:02 PM
Here's a sweet review of Andromeda Klein from Tim of Baby Got Books. He also interviewed me, so stay tuned for that....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2009 04:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2009 05:12 PM
John Griogair Bell, curator of the Hermetic Library at hermetic.com, ruminates at length on Andromeda Klein, magic(k), and literature....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2009 04:41 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2009 05:58 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2009 03:24 PM
Gonna be at this this morning. 10 AM....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2009 04:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2009 08:00 PM
Powell's is selling Aleister Crowley's own heavily annotated copy of A. E. Waite's translation of Eliphas Levi's History of Magic. (via LAShTAL.com.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2009 12:41 AM
-- poshdeluxe of Forever Young Adult discusses her complicated relationship with Andromeda Klein (the book and the character) and includes some casting ideas. -- Valet Reader reviews King Dork. -- Also, just a reminder that I'm going to be on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2009 11:45 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2009 08:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2009 02:03 AM
I've never seen the artwork on the CD package to Nathan's right before now, and I can't find it anywhere on line, either. (The one I'm familiar with has the book cover on the front and text on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2009 05:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2009 07:02 PM
This analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tax returns turned out to be pretty interesting, to my surprise....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2009 07:15 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2009 05:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2009 06:43 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2009 04:26 PM
From Priscilla:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2009 04:07 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2009 05:16 PM
Clive Davis, one of my favorite bloggers going back quite a ways and an all-around swell person too, has left the Spectator to set up shop on his own again: here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2009 11:28 PM
I for one can date the exact moment when my childhood was ripped from me, and that was when I first heard that Humpty Dumpty's injuries were terminal. The callousness of how I was given the news after becoming...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2009 10:46 PM
Patrick writes: How about a little love for your short story from Baseball Crazy? I know King Dork and Andromeda Klein are great and everything, but you have a funny and heart-wrenching gem in "Mark Pang and the Impossible Square." Please, don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2009 04:58 PM
Broken hard drive, trackpad, keyboard (as of just this morning) and severely disintegrating casing. (You can't see it in the picture, but the plastic around the ports on the left side has chipped away, so that the cables connecting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2009 08:17 PM
From J. Francis: Darby has you pegged. Yesterday she told me,"Dr. Frank isn't the kind of doctor you see when you are sick. He's the kind of doctor who writes books, like Dr. Seuss. And he sings, too."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2009 06:02 PM
Notes on playing an acoustic set at Gilman after all these years: -- the new (?) sound system is amazing. I remember the monitors being little more than visual props to make it look like what it would look like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2009 07:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2009 06:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2009 06:00 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2009 07:17 PM
A couple of notes on this weekend, in case you're planning to go. 1. My panel at the Teenquake thing tonight (10/16) begins at 8:00 and it's in Latino Rooms A & B in the lower level of the SF...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2009 07:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2009 04:41 PM
I almost got a migraine today. I rarely get full-blown ones anymore. When I was younger I'd get them every few months, and they would be utterly debilitating, taking me out of commission for four days or so, plus...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2009 01:53 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2009 06:32 PM
I linked to this song from the latest Sparks album a ways back, but I just learned there's a video now so here it is again....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2009 08:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2009 07:17 PM
Thanks to everyone who has come to an "event" or two over the past month or so. I've still got a few coming up, too, including tonight with Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor at Booksmith on Haight in SF. That's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2009 10:05 PM
(That's a whole lotta AK reader photos: Erika is #50.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2009 06:42 PM
Jessi Harrison of Jus Guerilla Films made this short film/music video for "Andromeda Klein":...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2009 06:19 PM
This interview ran in the Buffalo News last week, I'm told....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2009 07:57 PM
Lenore thinks Andromeda Klein might be a tough sell to them, but I'm going to take the head-shaking over the author's twisted imagination as a compliment nonetheless. Thanks, Lenore. (If there isn't already a movie or book with the title...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2009 07:51 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2009 04:57 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2009 05:24 PM
Anything with hobbits or sex or drugs or other forbidden stuff in it was pretty much a guaranteed hit with my pre-teen self, so I was heavily influenced by the Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings as a young'n....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2009 10:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2009 05:03 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2009 09:28 PM
A few more bloggy AK reviews here: -- from Leanne in Melbourne. -- from Jodi at Satan's Book Club: four forbidden fruits! -- and from the Avenging Sybil, who says that Sam Hellerman is still a genius....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2009 06:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2009 04:59 PM
Just to let everybody know, this blog has been under a pretty gnarly comment spam attack over the last couple of days and I may have to disable comments for a while if it keeps up. Feel free to email...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2009 04:44 PM
Ye gods. added: isn't it really a free speech/1st Amendment issue in the end? Here's what the government is doing as far as I can see: (a) creating an offense with such broad parameters that it potentially includes nearly 100%...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2009 04:41 PM
I just heard from Rob from Jealous Butcher that the limited red vinyl 7"s of "Andromeda Klein"/"Bethlehem" are shipping today. Those sleeves have been on a wild ride. They went from Portland to Connecticut to be signed by Lane...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2009 04:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2009 06:23 PM
Shannon Corr has a report with photos on last night's intimate gathering at 1234 Go! Records in Oakland. How intimate was it? Well, afterwards we went to Geo Kayes up the street and I was able to buy everyone a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2009 08:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2009 05:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2009 05:26 PM
Hey folks: this is just a post to make sure I've made it clear that I'm playing tomorrow, Sat. October 3rd, at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, 423 40th Street, Oakland, CA. 7 PM. Requests?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2009 07:14 PM
(Photo by Steve Rhodes.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2009 05:38 PM
-- Anastasia interviewed me about Andromeda Klein for her book blog. -- Whitney A. Miller ruminates on certain extreme forms of getting into character: -- AK got four out of five pink unicorns here ; and a swell review here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2009 05:17 PM
Jane Ganahl shows and tells Andromeda Klein along with seven other books by Litquake participants. On TV....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2009 04:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2009 02:49 PM
Part II of Lee Wind's book challenge gang interview is here. Part I is here. Speaking of which, I'll be at this thing on the steps of the San Francisco Public Library (Larkin St.) noon-ish today....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2009 05:29 PM
Another tarot card from Dina. The High Priestess is here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2009 05:25 PM
The Andromeda Klein single is now on iTunes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2009 04:01 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2009 03:55 PM
Lee Wind posts the first installment of a discussion of book banning and challenging amongst Ellen Hopkins, E. Lockhart, Jo Knowles, Jacqui Robbins, Sarah Brannen, and me. Also, the Girl Detective defends Andromeda Klein's occultism....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2009 08:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2009 05:24 PM
I'm a sucker for personal rock and roll essays, and this one by Tony DuShane, peripherally concerning Nick Cave, is a humdinger. (Tony's debut novel, Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk, is due out in February on Soft Skull. I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2009 09:39 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 10:45 PM
It's been awhile since I updated my show listing info. Sometimes doing the shows gets in the way of listing the shows, which is far from ideal, I know, but then, most things are when you come right down...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 10:22 PM
I want one of these....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 06:37 PM
King Dork, that is, according to the younger cousin of the guy who interviewed me for the Canadian music magazine Exclaim....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 06:29 PM
Dina sent in this tarot card:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 12:12 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 12:01 AM
On/in Vol.1 Brooklyn....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2009 08:39 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2009 05:22 PM
Parents object to King Dork being in a school library in Hong Kong. Also, people still complain about "topless" photos in National Geographic, evidently....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2009 02:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2009 02:34 PM
(Remember him?)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2009 03:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2009 11:35 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2009 06:19 PM
I really expected this list of "Dan Brown's 20 Worst Sentences" (from the Telegraph's Tom Chivers) to be a lot funnier and Avallone-esque than it proved to be. I'm not saying they're not clunky sentences, or that there aren't "infelicities"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2009 06:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2009 01:42 PM
A couple of interviews that popped up in the last week that I haven't had a chance to link to before now: -- Alison Hallett of the Portland Mercury posted the entire interview upon which this article was based. --...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2009 01:40 PM
Popcandy posts a real sweet report on Andromeda Klein night at the Housing Works on Friday. I'm honored. Thanks, Whit! It was a good time. I'm still surprised whenever I find myself in a room full of people who sing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2009 02:41 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2009 01:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2009 09:45 AM
Jim Testa of Jersey Beat files a report on my set at the Sidewalk Cafe in New York last night (scroll down), and includes this video:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2009 09:28 AM
(cf. three years ago.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2009 04:13 PM
If you were wondering how things went at the appearance at Word Brooklyn in Greenpoint yesterday, Alex Caprio has a report on it. I loved the format for the "show." I was asked to pick a person to interview me,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2009 04:06 PM
You know how things are on these here internets. I feel like I've known Whitney Matheson of popcandy for ages, but last night was the first time I ever had a chance to meet her in person. Same goes for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2009 03:16 PM
(She blogs at Girl Detective.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2009 01:33 PM
After I did my bookstore thing, one of them said: "you know, your songs are actually pretty good."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2009 12:47 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2009 09:40 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2009 12:41 PM
Aaron was at the signing thing in Clackamas, OR the other day and commemorated it thus: If you'd like to experience the magic, and you're in Chicago, I'll be at the Oak Park Public Library tonight at 7PM. Well, I'll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2009 12:34 PM
Yesterday was the official release date of the vinyl "Andromeda Klein" single, and Rob from Jealous Butcher Records brought some over to the show last night at Plan B in Portland, OR. We had planned to sign and number...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2009 02:31 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2009 09:17 PM
Hey, if you want to listen to a sleep-deprived Dr. Frank being interviewed on Fearless Radio out of Chicago, here's where to go. 10 PM, CST....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2009 07:57 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2009 04:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 13, 2009 06:33 PM
It's great, and you can hear the whole thing here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2009 06:37 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2009 04:42 PM
Heaven drew this picture at my appearance today at Charter Oak High School in Covina:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2009 01:01 AM
Alison Hallett of the Portland Mercury interviewed me about Andromeda Klein and here's the resulting article, which includes a preview of my shows in Portland on 9/15 and some kind words about the book. Thanks, Alison. Also, here's a review...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2009 12:19 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2009 12:05 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2009 03:10 PM
-- The Girl Detective has some nice things to say about Andromeda Klein. -- King Dork is one of 46 "essential rock reads" on this list from the LA Times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2009 06:31 AM
You can listen to John Carney interviewing me on KMOX St. Louis here, if you like....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2009 05:57 AM
Martha reports on last night's reading thing at Books, Inc. in SF. Chuck and Stephanie stopped by, as did Tony, and a bunch of other nice people, including quite a few students from Capuchino High School, also known as "Cap."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2009 12:05 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2009 05:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2009 03:05 PM
I was digging around in the closet, looking for something, and I came across this mysterious box: It was a little difficult to slide open the red front panel, but when I did here's what was inside: It's pretty accurate,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2009 02:58 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2009 08:07 PM
Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2009 07:31 PM
A kind, thoughtful review of Andromeda Klein from the Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2009 07:25 PM
Found in the street yesterday: A "practical and exhaustive treatise intended to meet the requirements of Manufacturers and Traders," with chapters like "Two Interesting Two-Piece Ice-Cream Brick Boxes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2009 11:21 PM
Someone made a wikipedia entry for Andromeda Klein, but its days are numbered unless someone can produce some "evidence of notability." With those strict evidentiary standards, I don't know how this ever made it. And who's this guy Jim "Jym"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 5, 2009 11:11 PM
The guy who took it upon himself to review King Dork for Pajiba's "Cannonball Read" (basically an attempt to review 100 books in a year) really didn't dig the book's ambiguous resolution. Pajiba honcho Dustin Rowles -- a long-standing booster...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2009 10:27 PM
I just realized that this Los Angeles bookstore show/appearance was left out on previous lists, so here it is: Sunday, September 13, 2009: Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027 323-660-0232. 6PM - 8PM Full schedule after...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2009 07:36 AM
I think it is always more interesting to have people other than than the author read at lit events, if only to shake up the usual routine. In fact, I've been known to commandeer totally confused people in the venue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2009 07:38 PM
Here's a review of the Cato's Ale House Andromeda Klein book launch show from the Valet Reader....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2009 06:05 PM
1. I'm gonna be in Portland for one day only (9/15), doing school visits during the day and a Barnes & Noble in nearby Clackamas at 7 PM. Some friends threw together a last-minute show/party thing for after that at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2009 03:56 AM
One of several funny print-on-demand covers collected in this post from the Caustic Cover Critic: (Not included, but utterly captivating and baffling, is the one for Wuthering Heights.) Also, check out the Count of Monte Cristo in this complementary post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2009 10:19 PM
A reprint of Wuthering Heights with a Twilight-esque cover and a badge that says "Bella and Edward's favorite book" has been racking up sales. In answer to the question quoted as the title of this post, Waterstone's confirms that it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2009 04:12 PM
Hey, I just noticed that Andromeda Klein is a "pick" on the Entertainment Weekly website. (For today; Nick Cave is tomorrow.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2009 07:23 PM
I'm going to be at the Books, Inc Opera Plaza location in San Francisco on Tuesday, 9/8, reading, singing songs, A-ing Qs, and just kind of standing around talking. 7PM. The flier to the right -- well, it's to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2009 09:17 AM
I've always loved Largehearted Boy's Book Notes feature, where writers present annotated playlists of songs to go along with their books. So I'm really stoked to be included: here's a playlist for Andromeda Klein. As mentioned in the post, this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2009 07:54 PM
Bridget Zinn considers several curses to fling my way, and then, in the end, decides to let me live....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2009 06:39 PM
I wrote up a little thing about the Cato's show for teenreads.com. One thing I meant to include, but forgot, was that my mom was there and people asked her to sign their books. I know this because I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2009 05:02 PM
Leila of Bookshelves of Doom points out this lovely, beautifully-designed box set of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books: More images here. Gorgeous....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 11:00 PM
Kendra took this photo of Cato's's north end the other night:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 06:34 PM
The Valet Reader was at the Cato's show and took some pictures. Stay tuned for a forthcoming "full review" of the night's events. I met him at the bar, briefly. Nice guy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 04:17 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 03:47 PM
I've just about recovered from last night's wild and crazy "happening" at Cato's. And a good thing, too, because I've got an appearance tomorrow at Diesel Bookstore. This'll be a more traditional reading with no one crawling in and out...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 03:15 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2009 04:51 PM
I had been worried that no one would show up to the Andromeda Klein book release party last night. That would have been embarrassing. But I suppose the panic did me good, because the last minute frenzy of promotional begging...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2009 04:36 PM
Paige took this photo of Greg, Kari, Kayla (all of whom read at the show) and me at Cato's:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2009 08:09 AM
That's where I'm gonna be along with all this stuff. Come by and say hi or just gawk at the spectacle. If you can't manage to come by, you can still gawk at the spectacle, provided the internet gods are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2009 12:20 AM
The digital "Andromeda Klein"/"Bethlehem" will soon be up on iTunes and a variety of other on line distro hubs, but for now you can get it here. Three bucks. Vinyl coming on September 15....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 25, 2009 04:40 PM
Kendra's going to try to stream live video of the Cato's Book Thing tomorrow. If the Cato's wifi stays up -- fingers crossed. Here's the link....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 25, 2009 01:37 AM
Check out this kind and thoughtful review of Andromeda Klein from Jim Testa of Jersey Beat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2009 11:15 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2009 10:29 PM
Just a heads-up to let you know about this late-breaking addition to the bill of the Cato's Ale House Andromeda Klein Book Release Thing. Please welcome Jennifer Sky Band, witch poet/YA author/fairy person: She'll be reading from her forthcoming poetry...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2009 01:31 AM
I have been pretty lame about listing stuff in a single place, so this is an attempt to put it together a bit. Here's what I know about what I know about: Saturday, August 22, 2009 KALX, Berkeley, 90.7 FM....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2009 07:10 PM
I'm going to be on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM this Saturday (8/22) talking up my new book and record and show and such. 9 - 9:30 PM. You can listen on-line here, or use one of the other streaming options...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2009 08:43 PM
This link will give you a pdf of Chris's flier (two up) for the 8/25 Cato's Ale House show, in case anyone in the bay area feels like putting some up, or handing some out, or leaving them lying around...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2009 03:11 AM
Local press was, for some reason, completely uninterested in covering my book release thing. Maybe I just didn't ask them nicely enough. Anyway, that has me doing things like taping fliers to telephone poles (just like the old days eh?)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2009 12:39 AM
Entertainment Weekly is streaming the A-side of the "Andromeda Klein" 7" if you'd like to hear it. You can pre-order the 7" (and the book) via this link. (The first 200 copies are going to be on red vinyl...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2009 07:40 PM
Cecil Castellucci picks eight YA rock and roll novels for the LA Times book blog, and generously includes King Dork among them. And here's a real nice preview of Andromeda Klein. Thanks Cec and Kevin....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2009 06:25 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2009 03:00 AM
That's one of the better lines from this "micro-interview" appearing on The Morning News today (actually a distillation of a much longer phone interview I did with Jay Hathaway a ways back -- thanks, Jay.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2009 05:00 PM
I hope people will consider showing up to my Andromeda Klein event show thing at Cato's Ale House. August 25, 2009. 7 PM. Free. 3891 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, CA It will be: Dr. Frank (that's me) playing solo, reading, etc....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2009 09:18 PM
If you order Andromeda Klein from Interpunk you'll get a screen-printed bookmark/patch, while supplies last. The 7" is also going to come with some exclusive, limited edition type specialness from Interpunk, too. More on that when have it all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2009 07:02 PM
-- Mary Kole, yet another MTX fan who grew up to be a writer and lit agent, attended my editor's YA "voice" workshop at the SCWBI conference in LA last week. Here she selects three of my songs as a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2009 10:21 PM
The test pressings of the "Andromeda Klein"/"Bethlehem" 7" arrived today: It's probably been well over a decade since I got a test pressing of a 7" in the mail, but I'd like to think that if I'd had a blog...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2009 07:31 PM
...of Andromeda Klein in Booklist: Portman’s follow-up to King Dork (2006) will leave some readers turning to less demanding fare, like, say, advanced calculus. Yet it’s a must-read simply because of how rare it is to see any topic tackled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2009 12:57 AM
Bookdwarf wonders if this is the best book cover ever: I'd vote yes. The "flap copy" is does the job as well: They speak German. They carry whips. And they are connected in some mysterious way with Nazi experiments carried...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2009 08:19 PM
I've turned comments back on, just to see what happens. Maybe the robots have forgotten me and moved on to lay waste to some other defenseless planet. Or maybe they will come back with even greater fury. In the meantime,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2009 09:08 PM
When King Dork came out, I had a hard time finding a bookstore willing to do a launch event, so I ended up just doing one myself on the release date at Cato's Ale House on Piedmont in Oakland, where...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2009 08:46 PM
By the way, if anyone wants to pre-order my new book, he, she, or they can go here. I hope to have the details on pre-ordering the 7" soon, so watch this space....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2009 07:31 PM
So as I mentioned, I had to turn off the comments on this blog because of an intense spam attack. My friend Lynn tried to install one of those "captcha" programs so I could bring back comments but she just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2009 07:11 PM
You know what feels kind of strange? Trying to practice playing your songs and having to resort to looking up your own lyrics on the internets....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2009 10:16 PM
The Publishers Weekly review of Andromeda Klein may be found on this page. (I think that's the first one in print.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2009 06:32 AM
It's been a long time coming. And by "it" I mean the finished copy of Andromeda Klein. It's not like I didn't know it would arrive in the end, but it still doesn't seem quite real till you actually...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2009 11:23 PM
Here's a cool blog document of items used as bookmarks found in books by a guy who works in a used bookstore. (via metafilter.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2009 08:10 PM
A great deal of nonsense is written every day about characters in fiction -- from the side of those who believe too much in character and from the side of those who believe too little. Those who believe too much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2009 05:58 PM
I had to disable comments because of the spam problem I mentioned here. Usually you can just ride these attacks out and they'll die down, but this time it just got worse and worse. Deleting them was turning into a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2009 07:40 PM
Read all about the Mick Jones Guerilla Rock'n'Roll Public Library here. And this is as good an occasion as any to re-post a photo of King Dork's finest hour:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2009 06:38 PM
(via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2009 10:09 PM
The MTX's smarter, more Sacramento-y half, Bobby and Ted, have launched a new music website called Rock Show USA. Take it away, Bobby: We're just getting started, but we have some big plans in the works to provide some really...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2009 07:48 PM
Just f. everybody's i., this blog is under a massive comment spam attack at the moment and I've been batch-deleting huge swathes of robot postings like the one with which I titled this post. Sorry in advance if I wind...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2009 08:26 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2009 10:40 PM
Walter Cronkite never had much of an impact on my own life, and I probably wouldn't have any sort of feeling about him one way or another if it weren't for Lizard Music. But because of Lizard Music, I do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2009 01:31 AM
Word on the street is that Andromeda Klein is going to get a star in Booklist. One star out of how many, you may ask? Answer: one out of one. It's crazy but that's the star system established by the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2009 07:57 PM
You know what's weird? I haven't officially released a record in five years, unless you count the acoustic songs that were included on the King Dork audio book. Well, maybe it's not so weird, what with all the other stuff...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2009 08:12 PM
I've never been too good at synopses, and I have been known to be a bit tongue-tied when called upon to sum up, briefly, what either of my books is "about." With regard to King Dork, New York Magazine to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2009 04:15 PM
"Seth Gordon finds another King."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2009 07:54 AM
Product placement at around 0:19. My Mother's Red Hat w/Alicia Silverstone & Alanis Morissette from Alicia Silverstone...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2009 09:04 PM
Can we get some ringers in here? All these crickets are kind of embarrassing....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2009 01:48 AM
I know not why, but the word "random" always lends a whimsical, arch character to any word it is added to: e.g. "a seemingly endless succession of random facial expressions"; "random acts of the apostles"; "some random Member (of Parliament)";...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2009 01:24 AM
I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number now. All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2009 11:23 PM
... who they would get to read the Andromeda Klein audio book? Well, I'll tell you anyway. It's an actress named Deirdre Lovejoy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2009 11:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2009 11:03 PM
The Telegraph will publish a whole article about what a jerk you are, in effect hyping the offending item in your own country as well....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2009 06:22 PM
Every now and again life intrudes on my normal blog-reading habits and I take an inadvertent, extended break from it all. After such periods, it is always reassuring to learn that things haven't changed at all since the last time...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2009 06:17 PM
... if Alice Hoffman's twitter outburst exemplifies how not to respond to unfavorable reviews, this song by an actor in response to a critic who slagged his singing pretty much works. (NSFW, I'd guess.) And the critic responds here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2009 03:44 PM
A very famous novelist named Alice Hoffman flipped out over a lukewarm review in the Boston Globe on twitter over the weekend, publishing the reviewer's email and phone number and inviting readers to harass her. (Hoffman's twitter account has now...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2009 02:22 AM
(via boingboing. Contains swear words.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2009 07:03 AM
The Farrah Fawcett - Ayn Rand connection....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2009 04:44 PM
John Scalzi on "why new novelists are kinda old."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2009 01:46 AM
From Ray Bradbury: "Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2009 10:57 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2009 07:50 PM
They're making a movie about the Runaways, which could wind up being great, or not, like most things. Casting call here, but note the hair specifications: This is not Austin Powers, over-the-top 1970s. This is real, a reproduction of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2009 04:24 PM
Michael Schaub, one of my favorite book-bloggers of old, is back posting on bookslut....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2009 02:46 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2009 09:13 PM
I don't know who this guy is, but this page from an old article in Nylon magazine, presented to me by google alerts this morning by way of this live journal entry, cracks me up for obvious reasons:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2009 04:45 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2009 08:09 PM
From Ben's latest post on music biz devolution: At this stage the cupboard has been rendered so bare that record royalties are more or less a moot point. I'd be happy to give away future albums, settling for crossing my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2009 07:00 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2009 04:42 AM
There was a time when the presence or absence of one of these fluorescent keychains would reliably reveal at a distance whether a given person was one of us rather than one of them....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2009 05:01 PM
Invariably, the first thing that comes to mind when I see a mediaeval English church is: Black Sabbath....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2009 04:56 PM
The missing word at the end of the legend decorating this old public drinking fountain at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London is "life." It's a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, and though it's not hard to follow the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2009 09:55 AM
Several items used by Dr. Dee in his Enochian actions and "spiritual conferences" are on display at the British museum: Speaking of which, I've always been curious about the story behind this story, but if anything further has ever been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2009 08:08 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2009 09:23 AM
I really loved that Blake exhibit. The pages (from the sixty-six page book he produced to introduce and elucidate the paintings) lamenting the failure of some of the paintings I found particularly poignant and relatable. There's tons of amazing, bizarre...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2009 08:08 AM
Going to see this re-created William Blake exhibition today: the poor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are unintelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character by caricature representation,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2009 09:43 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2009 12:11 AM
Question posted on Yahoo! Answers. Anyone?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2009 08:45 PM
Maybe it's the delirium talking, but the new (to me) £20 note is kind of beautiful. Title of post from this money program(me):...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2009 09:17 PM
I get a kick out of this goofy sword photo I took of myself, so sometimes when I get asked for a promo photo I'll send it instead of a more normal one. I also sent it to my publisher,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2009 02:09 AM
Milwaukee's statue commemorating the Fonz doesn't look too much like the real thing, at least when it comes to the head. But they did a good job on the thumbs: Earlier this year, Marion Ross made headlines and charmed the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2009 08:59 PM
72, huh? Interesting... A.V. Club's Hater has some fun with Hasbro's new, extremely pink, Ouija board for girls. Cameron the Mad Oujia Board Person has some caveats in the reviews, however: One how cold you se it because it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2009 05:47 PM
That quote from this article appears to reflect a rather flawed PR strategy on the part of credit card companies and is pretty funny. (via Althouse.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2009 04:57 PM
Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2009 05:18 AM
Every day people arrive at this weblog via searches through Google or other search engines. I'm not systematic about it, but I do glance through these referrals every now and then and save those that are funny, weird, disturbing, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2009 08:17 PM
There's not really much to say about this opinion piece on a newly-published Catcher in the Rye sequel, but I am in awe of the author's haircut. (via Kevin Wilder.) added: not that it makes no nevermind concerning my point...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2009 10:54 PM
and I want to win the Beatbox Battle wildcard..." (via metafilter.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2009 08:57 PM
I am quoted in this article about twitter novels....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2009 06:15 PM
(Found here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2009 12:42 AM
The electric guitar is the instrument of modern hubris. It articulates the inarticulate. It supplies a soundtrack for modern Cains and Calibans. The older men may be right. It is not respectable, it is not right... For the electric...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2009 07:35 PM
That is to say, I have been awarded an honorary doctorate from Crawdaddy! University. I have never had anything bestowed upon me before, that I can recall....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2009 08:26 PM
Practically every conversation I ever have with anyone eventually gets around to this question. What they're wondering about is the status of potential King Dork film. For some time now I really haven't had much of an answer. The option...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2009 08:48 PM
The bass playing on "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque." (And did you know Jerry Vale recorded it, too?)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2009 07:44 PM
I dusted off the old tape deck today to work on some Andromeda Klein songs. I think that's nearly three years of dust....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2009 07:24 AM
Emerging from the vortex I mentioned below, getting caught up on current events, I learn via Young Manhattanite by way of fimoculous that Steve Wiebe of King of Kong fame just set a new Donkey Kong Jr. record on March...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2009 08:17 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2009 08:16 PM
The kids on the pop-punk message "bored" have been complaining about the fact that this here blog is a shadow of its former self, and I can see their point. Basically, I've been lost in the novel-writing vortex. Has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2009 07:54 PM
King Dork and Spicy Octopus Salad...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2009 06:03 PM
(via Metafilter.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2009 02:49 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2009 07:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2009 11:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2009 12:29 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2009 10:22 PM
(thanks, Lex.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2009 02:11 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2009 09:19 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2009 09:30 PM
So I was reading King Dork for the bajillionth time the other day and my dad asked me what was "supposed to be under" the title of the book. My dad is hardly LBT material, but after I replied...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2009 01:09 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2008 02:34 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2008 12:55 AM
I appear to have inherited my maternal grandmother's nose:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2008 01:05 AM
From a ukelele collective, sung by this guy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2008 07:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2008 02:58 AM
Found in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2008 02:52 AM
If you really need a tutorial to help you figure out the chords to "Sonic Reducer" you may need more help than this, but Cheetah Chrome's instructional video for Gibson guitars has a kind of gormless charm anyhow: And that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2008 11:14 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2008 08:46 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2008 04:28 PM
(via Lex -- thanks, man.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2008 02:44 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2008 08:17 AM
Looks like Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the group, died over the weekend. Listen to stuff he played on....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2008 09:00 PM
You know what's great? This....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2008 11:06 PM
(via Idolator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2008 02:12 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2008 07:04 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2008 03:25 AM
One weird thing about having been in the fifth grade in 1975 is that you end up having memories of things like the "cool kids" standing around at recess air-keyboarding the Daryl Dragon *wow* sound from the chorus of "Love...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2008 11:46 PM
Stephen Fry launches his latest in London:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2008 11:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2008 12:20 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2008 01:09 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2008 12:14 AM
Thanks for the tip, Lex!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2008 12:01 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2008 09:12 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2008 05:43 PM
...click on this youtube PSA of condescending reverse-psychology celebri-torture. How long can you stand it? I made it all the way to around 0:34, but that's only because of my nerves of steel and can of Hamm's. (via Althouse.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2008 11:45 PM
Every day people arrive at this weblog via searches through Google or other search engines. I'm not systematic about it, but I do glance through these referrals every now and then and save those that are funny, weird, disturbing, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2008 06:41 PM
Here's how my first meeting with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor went down: I was opening for her (and other author-acts) as this festival in Carmel. I had just done my routine and was coming off the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2008 03:52 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2008 06:36 PM
Ross Douthat yawns at the latest alleged what's-it in the presidential race, and it's hard not to yawn along with him: Barack Obama, who once claimed to embody sweeping, once-in-a-generation change, has ended up running a cautious, negative, and deeply...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2008 06:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2008 12:04 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2008 12:15 AM
Mirakururun Grand Purin! | Minimoni PV - For more of the funniest videos, click here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 19, 2008 12:33 AM
Encyclopedia Sullivan Finds the Clues: The record is very clear that the decision to accept the veep nomination was kept from the Palin children until they arrived in Ohio on what they were told was a surprise trip for their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2008 12:01 AM
Gabe snapped this photo in Charles Schulz's Peanuts studio library, noting: There's a big museum for Schulz in Santa Rosa, but his studio is tucked back behind a baseball field and tennis court; it's not open to the public......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2008 06:58 PM
Ann Althouse gets the best comments....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2008 03:07 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2008 03:02 AM
I'm with Ann: the new sitemeter is useless. Anyone have any suggestions for another counter? UPDATE: Never mind. The SiteMeter people have decided to turn back the hands of time. That was a close one......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2008 05:29 PM
And so our presidential election finally slips all the way into complete irredeemable inanity. Does anybody really, truly think Obama meant to call Sarah Palin a pig? Seriously? Ah well, it matters not. I'm checking out of this one......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 10, 2008 02:25 AM
Emotional Hippies - Crying Over Dead Trees - Watch more free videos via Hit and Run. Real?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2008 08:57 AM
This is old, but new to me: Ann Coulter is interviewed about her love of the Grateful Dead....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2008 06:46 AM
Three of the reasons I kind of wanted Obama to win:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2008 02:00 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2008 01:03 AM
Ta-Nehisi Coates predicts: The entire Sarah Palin pick comes down to one thing--the hope that George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, or (God forbid) Will.I.Am. will make a joke about moose-burgers. At that point, the McCain campaign will cut an ad which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2008 12:21 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2008 02:26 AM
As many of you may know, taking a picture of yourself reading can be kind of difficult, but I gave it a shot. I was one of the vaguely "punk"-related writers who read at the Edinburgh Castle along with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2008 01:36 AM
Boris Johnson endorses Obama (and likens himself to a "greased bounding panther.")...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2008 12:07 AM
The AP wire gives good spell-check: CHICAGO - Presidential candidate John moccasin on Sunday endorsed a proposal to ban affirmative action programs in his home state, a policy that Democratic rival Barrack Abeam called a disappointing embrace of divisive tactics....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2008 09:27 PM
I don't get around much anymore, but today I had lunch with Chris Appelgren, who kind of still does. Or rather, his iPhone does, and he showed me this on it: Video here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2008 02:25 AM
A New Zealand judge has made a 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name can be changed from Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, the country's national news agency reported Thursday. That one is pretty bad,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2008 07:24 AM
Yet more text-cloud narcissism, to augment the t.-c. n. featured in this post. To wit, here's a wordle-generated graphic made up of a random arrangement of the 150 most commonly occurring words in the lyrics to the songs on Love...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2008 09:13 PM
The recitation of label names in that Reunion song put me in mind of the label list-patter verse of the Freshies song with this post's title. It's one of my all-time favorite singles, and one of a handful of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2008 07:17 PM
I've seen quite a few text-cloud applets over the past few years, but Wordle is perhaps the coolest one yet. Here are the randomly generated Wordle text-clouds of the 150 most common words in the first chapters of each of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2008 08:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2008 12:15 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2008 01:42 AM
Man cuts off own head. (via Sasha and a few others.) Speaking of which, sort of, I'm off for an evening of "punk" at the Edinburgh Castle now. Okay....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2008 12:45 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2008 12:04 AM
I really enjoy all the Atlantic bloggers "voices," but those grandiose Obama ads on the top and sidebar really wreak havoc with my Safari. I don't know if it's because of the graphic itself or because the server is overloaded...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2008 08:31 PM
I'm doing a couple of readings in San Francisco this week. (a) this "punk" one on Thursday, July 17, at Edinburgh Castle, 950 Geary St., San Francisco, CA, with Stephanie Keuhnert, Erick Lyle, Blag Dahlia, and Ammi Emergency, and MC...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2008 08:10 PM
John Derbyshire dips into his teenaged daughter's reading list, samples King Dork, and reports the results on National Review Online....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2008 02:41 AM
The King Dork audiobook in mp3 form is now available on eMusic, and in conjunction with that they have put up this Q&A....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2008 09:36 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2008 02:52 AM
Strange to say, perhaps, I am quoted in the article on "Geek Chic Fashion" in this magazine....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2008 05:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2008 08:59 PM
A great little scene on intervals from Kaamelott: (via the Anchoress.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2008 06:56 PM
Amazing space pictures, via the Corner....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2008 05:47 PM
It was bound to happen, of course, but it is still a bit of a shock to note that Cody's has closed for good. Unless I'm mistaken, there is, now and for the first time since just about forever, not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2008 11:51 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2008 05:32 PM
Whatever the merits of Kozinski Kontroversy, the judge's antagonist seems to have amassed a pretty impressive collection of judicial reprimands -- all from "biased" judges, naturally -- but among those posted by Ted Frank of Overlawyered, this is the funniest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2008 07:51 PM
After single-handedly creating the Kozinski pseudo-scandal with a deliberately misleading and inflammatory story, the LA Times cheekily advises the parties to chill. Via Patterico, who also posts a courtly, quite well-written letter from Kozinski's wife. Meanwhile, the seeds sown by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2008 04:27 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2008 06:23 AM
I have no serious doubts that M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie is every bit as awful as people say it is, but this list of the eighteen worst things about it actually makes it seem kind of awesome. (Warning: there...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2008 09:32 PM
I'm not sure exactly what it means, but this picture of Ohio's Judge James Burge under the USA Today headline "State must change lethal injection law" certainly captures something, and it's weird: (via Volokh by way of Reynolds.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2008 01:43 AM
If you haven't been following the Kozinski "porn" scandal, look here and here. I'm not sure I agree with Lessig about how reasonable it is to expect that people won't paw through your personal stuff if you leave it unattended...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2008 07:24 PM
From an old Christie's auction: (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2008 05:35 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2008 12:25 AM
Interesting artist I'd never known about till now. (via lashtal.com)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2008 08:36 AM
From Lucy Ellmann's review of Chuck Palahniuk's latest: So not only has America tried to ruin the rest of the world with its wars, its financial meltdown and its stupid stupid food, it has allowed its own literary culture to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2008 10:47 PM
From a Financial Times interview with Nick Hornby: At what hour of the day does inspiration strike? It tends to be the evening, which is unfortunate as I never do any work in the evening. (via Clive Davis.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2008 05:52 PM
Or rather, my book has, which is close enough. It is apparently "Internet Week" in New York at the moment, and John Carney of Dealbreaker.com brought his King Dork paperback along to the Thrillist.com party just in case the party...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2008 05:38 AM
If this clip of Jodie Foster performing Serge Gainsbourg's "Comic Strip" in a rope swing with Claude François on French TV doesn't cheer you up at least a little, I really don't know what to suggest....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2008 12:42 AM
From NASA via Squid List....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2008 07:49 AM
The brainy sophisticates at Crooked Timber take a curmudgeonly turn and nominate movies "to avoid watching before you die," meaning, more or less, films that are so horrible they should never be seen by anyone. Taste is taste, and like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2008 06:31 PM
UPDATE: the comments reminded me of Robbie Fulks's great parody/homage "Fountains of Wayne Hotline," which can be heard here, if anyone's interested....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2008 12:43 AM
David Hayes is selling some punk rock memorabilia on ebay....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2008 06:31 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2008 06:17 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2008 06:39 PM
Found in Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2008 03:13 AM
In re this post on the discomfort felt when cherished cultural touchstones turn up in suspect, banal, or otherwise undesired contexts, Alecia forwards this page from the Sundance mail-order catalog: I can attest that being completely unfamiliar (till now) with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2008 10:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2008 05:05 AM
Is there a word for that particular type of distress you feel when you observe someone outside your own reference group referencing something that only people in your reference group are supposed to know about? Further, is there a word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2008 03:11 AM
Gravedigger it ain't: (video at this link, via Andrew Sullivan.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2008 07:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2008 09:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2008 04:54 PM
David T. of Harry's Place notes that the latest cultural advisor to be "parachuted" into Boris Johnson's London by the Tory establishment to "keep on eye on" him happens to be a member of the wacky RCP/Living Marxism/IoI/Sp!ked cabal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 12, 2008 04:47 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2008 11:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2008 11:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2008 06:26 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2008 02:27 AM
There's this thing called the Contra Costa Library Reading Festival on May 16 through 18, presented by Target. And I'm 1/50th of the authors, so I'm going to be at the Pinole Library on Friday, May 16, 4 pm....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2008 01:36 AM
That's Steve McDonald on the bass, looks like. There is allegedly a new Sparks album coming out any day now, and the song titles are great...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2008 12:53 AM
Commenting on political stuff, whatever you say, only makes people mad, so it's hardly worth doing because who needs the aggravation? But say what you will about Boris Johnson, and notwithstanding the probability that he will spend most of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2008 12:50 AM
An email from a Gawker staffer's mom....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2008 06:43 PM
If you spent much time avoiding real work on the internet last week, you probably came across the story of Priya Venkatesan, the postmodern-ish Dartmouth writing instructor who sent a series of bizarre emails threatening to sue her undergraduate students...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2008 07:17 AM
Thieves are robbing long-distance coaches by sneaking dwarves into the luggage holds in sports bags. Once inside, they slip out from their hiding places to rifle through the belongings of unsuspecting travellers. Then they take their loot back to their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2008 12:28 AM
Like so many of us, Spice Girl Geri Halliwell has "hung up her hotpants" in order to write children's books: With storylines including the feisty heroine seeing off playground bullies and foiling art thieves, each instalment of the book will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2008 07:43 PM
Fox News graphic illustrates a reference to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: (via Wonkette.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2008 08:05 PM
I am a fervently aligned anti-Olympics activist in theory, though not in practice in any real sense, so I stayed home from the big demonstration the other day. Thus I missed the mysteriously poetic prediction depicted here: I should get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2008 09:14 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2008 05:51 PM
An animal protection group is investigating claims made by British band The Fall[']s Mark E. Smith that he killed two endangered red squirrels and condones the deliberate running over of seagulls, it said Thursday. The revered but unpredictable frontman of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2008 05:24 PM
Feministing commenters debate whether an online thesaurus ought to list "the weaker sex" as a synonym for "female." UPDATE: The problem is no more. Next stop, "tomato"......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2008 06:11 PM
I imagine it would be a little hard to explain to someone who has never encountered the "buttrolling" variant of "rickrolling," but, for anyone who has encountered the b. v. of r., the latest South Park features a truly hilarious...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2008 05:03 PM
By the way, I'm going to be at Books, Inc. at the San Francisco/Opera Plaza on Tuesday April 1st, reading and playing and such. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA. 7PM, and, like, free....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2008 11:59 PM
I wakened on my hot, hard bed; Upon the pillow lay my head; Beneath the pillow I could hear My little watch was ticking clear. I thought the throbbing of it went Like my continual discontent; I thought it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2008 02:40 AM
Greg Graffin to receive the Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence award....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2008 02:06 AM
Glenn Reynolds flags this case: a lawyer sends out threatening letters to nineteen area hair salons, claiming that the different prices they charge to men and women are causing him "mental anguish," and demanding $1000 from each to avoid facing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2008 01:27 AM
"Mark Pang and the Impossible Square," my entry in this collection of baseball stories, gets a shout-out in the starred Publishers Weekly review on this page. Which is as good an occasion as any to mention that the book,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2008 07:47 PM
(via Andrew Sullivan.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2008 06:50 PM
Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, said during a conference call with reporters that Clinton would not pick a running mate who has not met the “national security threshold” — as Clinton’s military advisers and Wolfson put it on the call...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2008 08:04 PM
That's on Friday, March 7th at Books Inc's new location in Palo Alto, 855 El Camino Real, #74. I'll be doing the usual reading and public service announcement with guitar at 7pm And on Wednesday March 5 at Sacramento...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2008 01:10 AM
Was Maximum Rock'n'Roll the National Review, or merely the Commentary, of hardcore zines? Yglesias commenters debate....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2008 01:00 AM
I'm going to be at this Noise Pop-affiated "night of musicians turned writers, writers turned musicians and all the artistry that happens somewhere in between." If you're reading this on Thursday Feb. 28, that'll be tonight. With Beth Lisick, Greg...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2008 05:23 AM
So, tomorrow at Moe's in Berkeley, 7:30. Songs, reading, standing around talking, etc: If you can't make it to the thing, you can still order an autographed copy of the new paperback King Dork here or here. The paperback edition...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2008 11:29 PM
(found on Pitchfork, via Tris.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2008 01:37 AM
Yet another quite damaging youtube ad where ridicule masquerades, if only just, as advocacy, I'd guess. Still, I can't look away and I doubt I will soon forget:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2008 10:12 PM
That's a geep, allegedly. Happy Valentine's Day....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2008 07:46 PM
Global warming claims another victim....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2008 02:45 AM
Patty Hearst wins with French bulldog at Westminster dog show....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2008 06:20 PM
via Luke in the comments, the stirring testimony of a man who refused to let Hurricane Katrina have the final word on his Road to Ruin, posted on a website called Whiskerino. And here is The Drifter:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2008 01:22 AM
...otherwise known around here as King Dork Paperback Day. So go ahead and buy one and tell your friends about it and ask bookstores to stock it and call up your local radio station to request it and get a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2008 11:24 PM
Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2008 06:33 PM
The King Dork paperback officially comes out on Feb. 12. and vaguely related to it is this stuff: Saturday, February 9: I'm going to be attending this Berkeley Public Library dinner thing. Monday, Feb. 25: I'll be at Moe's Books...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2008 06:16 PM
I'm told this photo was taken in the Mills High School library....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2008 07:03 PM
I would guess that within each writer-editor pair in the English-speaking world, one party has emailed this particular clip to the other today, and mine was no exception:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2008 06:59 PM
A ten-minute history of the Conservative Party, via Andrew Sullivan:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2008 07:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2008 02:24 AM
Tough gig....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2008 06:32 PM
Cell phone picture of a 15 x 15 character square written in pencil on a marble counter top at the Berkeley Post Office annex:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2008 12:50 AM
And it was pretty sweet, too, because some of the books were really good. Really. And we think you should celebrate that long-lost age of ideas with these beautiful cover art posters..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2008 05:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2008 06:06 PM
Along with Patty Hearst, Pete Shelley, Yog Sothoth, L. Sprague de Camp, and Radagast the Brown, this guy was a major touchstone/icon/bugbear of my childhood, such as it was, so, even though he went insane in the end: pax tecum....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2008 11:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2008 10:56 PM
Photo from this page referencing this band, via an email from Kevin B....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2008 02:30 AM
As you can see, I just got a few advance copies of the King Dork paperback, which is officially out on Feb. 12. It includes a "preview" of a chunk of the first chapter of Andromeda Klein in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2008 10:15 PM
Her new book is out now: Check her out. She's funny....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2008 05:57 PM
It had to happen some time, and that time is come: George MacDonald Fraser is gone....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2008 05:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2007 07:04 AM
An Althouse commenter notes that Hillary Clinton's deputy campaign manager appears to be a lolcat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2007 08:52 PM
This has been kicking around the internets for some time, but Andrew Sullivan linked to it this morning and it made me laugh:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2007 05:21 PM
From Hez: I brought Frank Portman's book King Dork on my trip. I read the thing in two days. It was really good. In the book, the main character makes up a band with his best friend. They change the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2007 07:43 PM
Couple three items while I happen to be logged in: 1. King Dork is included among the "21 good books that need to be great films, like now" on this list from the Onion's AV Club. 2. This has been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2007 05:58 PM
I am sure the august academics in this Crooked Timber thread on how true freedom of expression requires the suppression of certain undesirable sentiments have their hearts in the right place. Like them, I am generally opposed to undesirable sentiments,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2007 11:00 PM
Spinebreakers is Penguin's new teen lit web site. They interviewed me a ways back, via AIM. You can find chunks of the interview and other King Dork-related stuff on this page, including the re-designed cover image above and this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2007 05:45 PM
A pretext whose time has come....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2007 09:01 PM
Found on Piedmont Avenue: It looks like a "to do and not to do" list, though to what end? The layout is hard to transcribe in plain text, but here are the main points as I can make them out:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2007 03:51 AM
I'm basically a good citizen, i.e., I'm terrified of what the government will do to me if I don't knuckle under to its outrageous demands. Today they're re-distributing more of my imaginary income from the future to those more fortunate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2007 01:04 AM
Tolen sent this email and photo: Hey I love your book King Dork so much I must have read it at least three times. I even gave Sanjaya your book yesterday at a concert. Thank you so much for writing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2007 06:10 PM
Hey, guess what? I'm doing a little acoustic set tomorrow in New York, that's what. Wednesday, 19 September, 8:30 PM. A Rooftop Films event. It's "on the lawn" at Open Road Park, 11th St. between 1st and Avenue A. Me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2007 08:07 PM
There are six very friendly people on this web page who want to tell you all about the "washlet," a toilet seat apparatus that incorporates a "bunch of nifty technology," including a "small wand" and a remote control unit with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2007 03:08 AM
Ann Althouse has some fun with the diabolical ingeniusness of the writing in this post by first-tier blogger Josh Marshall. The vaunted perch is something we insist on giving one guy, a insistence involving something paradoxical with regard to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2007 09:28 PM
John Podhoretz remembers Madeleine L'Engle. (via Ross Douthat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2007 08:11 PM
Someone recently arrived at this blog via a google search for how to write a punk song. I checked out the list and found this essay. "It really all depends on what type of punk you want to write," says...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2007 08:05 PM
Now is the time to make a difference. (via Bookslut.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2007 02:47 AM
Few T shirts, especially cheaply produced home-made punk rock ones, survive intact for twenty years. For some reason, though, I have this Crimpshrine shirt from back then that has really hung in there. I don't think about it too much,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2007 08:36 PM
From Mark Steyn's column on Larry Craig: My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. "Never go to a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2007 07:23 PM
This morning my editor and I discussed book design ideas via a series of text messages....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2007 01:46 AM
I'd say that characterization, from Matt Yglesias over at the Atlantic.com, would be a top contender for my epitaph, if I ever end up needing one. I daresay Matt is right, in the sense that I would not be terribly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2007 12:16 AM
Strange to say, I pop up in this article in this Sunday's New York Times Fashion & Style section. (The article is about using blog tours to promote books; the photo is me in my "writing corner" at Jupiter in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2007 03:35 PM
Over the weekend I went to see The Unlovables and three other bands in the Thrillhouse Records basement. I'd say it's been around fifteen years since I have been to anything like this type of show, i.e., a dusty-basement, low-ceiling,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2007 12:19 AM
Andrew Sullivan quotes what has to be the greatest poem ever written about being an author. It's by Clive James and can be found here and in this (ironically?) out-of-print book. "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered" Here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2007 12:58 AM
A reader forwarded me this kind review of the British King Dork from a free commuter paper in London known as the Metro. Also, I happened on this rather thorough review on what appears to be a high school teacher's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 23, 2007 06:24 PM
A lot of people out there seem to think this guy would make a good Sam Hellerman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2007 10:11 PM
In Australia, there is a Golden Inky and a Silver Inky. These are "teenage choice" book awards, and King Dork is on the long list for the Silver one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2007 05:42 AM
Mitch Clem drew a swell six page comic illustrating the lyrics of my old song "Checkers Speech." And here it be....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2007 06:28 AM
...that the comments are buggered again. Not sure why, but I'll look into it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2007 07:24 PM
Chris Thompson writes in the Village Voice about the death threats and intimidation that followed his East Bay Express articles on the Your Black Muslim Bakery crime syndicate (#1 here, #2 here.) YBMB thugs were threatening Chauncey Bailey's life...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2007 06:20 PM
I don't often read the local news these days, but I have been following Bakery-gate and the latest phase of Oakland's rising and spiking bloodbath, so I stumbled on this and I found it kind of funny: "A group of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2007 12:41 AM
Yay Oakland. UPDATE: 77 + 2 = 79....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2007 01:21 AM
Penguin's British edition of King Dork officially comes out on August 2nd (though it has had an early release in Australia, as I understand it.) I just got a copy in the mail, as you can see. It appears...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2007 08:46 PM
Thoth: Plus, "Set is an interesting god:"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2007 01:34 AM
(via Strange Ink.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2007 12:00 AM
Spectacular edition of Agrippa offered by Wierus, for those who happen to have an extra five thousand euros lying around....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2007 01:32 AM
By the way, I'm going to be doing the King Dork song and dance at Book Passage's Children's Writers & Illustrators Conference in Corte Madera. Reading, playing, Qs and As, that sort of thing. Free and open to the public,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2007 06:28 PM
I'm afraid the slow pace of posts on this blog may continue for a bit longer, but there is one piece of news that might interest anyone who does happen to stop by, which is that I have reached an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2007 12:00 AM
In yesterday's email: Hello Dr. Frank, Have you an interest in marketing or selling another product, similar but of course different then your pain relief spray. I have a money maker product -- old family "recipe" that can help millions...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2007 03:18 AM
Not really. But April 1 will be Cheap Trick Day in Illinois, if the votes go the right way. Guitarist Rick Nielsen got a warm welcome when he visited the state Senate today. He told lawmakers that the band's achievements...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2007 09:38 PM
Somehow or other, this napkin drawing managed to find its way into my copy of Crime and Punishment:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2007 09:47 PM
Richie Ramone, acclaimed punk rock drummer from the Ramones, performs the WORLD PREMIERE of the "Suite for Drums and Orchestra based upon Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story arranged by Ron Abel under the direction of Richie Ramone"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2007 08:11 PM
The reason why is kind of a long story, but we need to find hi res images of the Revenge is Sweet and So Are You album cover and the goofy promo photo from that era: No one seems to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2007 06:03 PM
By the way, this is gonna be the cover of my new book:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2007 06:11 PM
Sanjaya fans discover King Dork and talk possibilities. Also here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2007 03:06 PM
From Nikki, who disagrees with Tom Henderson's assessment of the Doors in the King Dork glossary:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2007 01:29 AM
A generous assessment of King Dork on the Suicide Bookshelf....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2007 08:10 PM
At Chacchoben:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2007 12:47 AM
Gabe found this song taped to the side of a building in Phoenix, AZ:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2007 03:21 AM
David T. notes a swell case of wikipedia vandalism....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2007 05:37 PM
The King Dork paperback is due out on December 26, 2007, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon now, if anyone feels like doing that. The UK edition (out in August) can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk. That's all I got...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2007 08:44 PM
All the links I've seen concerning Barack Obama's remark in re: Morgan Freeman characterize it as a "slip" or a "gaffe," but it's clearly a joke, and a pretty funny one, too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2007 01:03 AM
I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what's gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn't happen accidentally, all these things. --Joe Biden, apparently....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2007 07:50 PM
(A glimpse inside the Washington DC House of the Temple of the Scottish Rite, from the Smithsonian, via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2007 11:14 PM
Dinesh D'Souza's stock isn't too high these days in the wake of what I understand is a perfectly dreadful recent book, but I have to agree with Clive Davis that he has a point here. (I refer to the opening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2007 09:09 PM
The minute you come near the general vicinity of the outskirts of the ballpark of anything distantly resembling the lower levels of something approaching "wealth," you find to your surprise that they are already well in to the process of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2007 10:48 PM
Pravda has the real story about the Imus flap: In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2007 08:26 PM
Well, it turns out my book won that Northern California Book Award, and no one was as surprised as I was. The program called for the winner in each category to read for three minutes. I realized on BART on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2007 01:46 AM
I'm also going to be at this thing. The Times Book Club Author Gala. Tues. May 1st. 7 PM. Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Locust Street at Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. I've never been to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2007 06:20 PM
The folks at Butterflies and Wheels and Dawkins.net have fun with a chunk of a 600 page monograph on "quantum feminism," which does not appear to be a hoax....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2007 06:05 PM
By the way, I'm in a novel-writing vortex right now and even less on top of things than I usually am, but I just realized I should probably mention that I will be at the Northern California Book Awards at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2007 12:28 AM
Today happens to be the anniversary of the publication of King Dork. It's been a hell of a year....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2007 04:23 PM
6500 euros' worth of Sefer Yetzirah from 1642:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2007 01:10 AM
A supermarket chain got itself into a huge muddle over the meaning of Easter yesterday in its attempt to sell more chocolate eggs. “Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2007 04:35 PM
I am quoted in this Wall St. Journal article on Larry Doyle's forthcoming novel (I Love You, Beth Cooper) and the pros and cons of the YA ghetto label. UPDATE: more here from Galleycat. And there's more from Larry here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2007 05:20 AM
wagbog.com WAGBOG HISTORY UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the first person to acronymize "what a great bunch of guys." Got an email today indicating that any history of WAGBOG would be incomplete without reference to this guy's dad: I'm writing because...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2007 05:26 PM
They don't reveal who donated the cells to create this sheep-human, but it looks as though it might have been Donald Sutherland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2007 01:15 AM
I just noticed that the British edition of King Dork from Penguin/Puffin is up on Amazon.co.uk. Pub date: August 2. The copyediting for it has been pretty interesting. They went for a "light Anglicization," which means stuff like "favourite"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2007 07:35 PM
"Can Any Literati Published by a Commercial New York Mainstream Publisher Truly Rock Out?" (They're discussing The Great American Rock and Roll Novel over at Gallycat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2007 12:29 AM
(via Harry's Place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2007 06:03 AM
"Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws," animal rights activist Frank Albrecht was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation Bild daily, which has featured regular photo spreads tracking fuzzy Knut's frolicking. "The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2007 11:54 PM
Newsweek's Periscope section has a newish feature called "A Life in Books," where authors are asked to supply a list of five notable books and answer a couple of booky questions. Last week it was Harold Bloom; and, believe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2007 04:02 AM
An excerpt from what appears to be page eight of a novel in progress, found at Broadway and 40th in Oakland: The copywriter shrugged his shoulders, made a fist and again struck the data analyst in the face. The data...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2007 06:09 PM
This was the scene earlier today outside Cybelle's Pizza on Piedmont Avenue, just down the street from Cato's Ale House where I spent today writing. The cops had closed off the street and brought in a SWAT team and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2007 02:35 AM
SF fanzine Ansible quotes fantasy writer John C. Wright from a Sci Fi Weekly interview on what constitutes "YA fiction": Nor is [my] book anywhere nearly gross enough to qualify for YA status. To win awards in YA fiction, one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2007 07:37 PM
A 4.2 isn't that big as earthquakes go, but I sure felt last night's, and it seemed to go on for quite a while. Nothing fell over in my place, but numerous things in the apartment upstairs must have been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2007 05:00 PM
-- from Scott Butki at Blogcritics.org. -- in Estella's Revenge. (I have a vague notion that this particular interview might have appeared somewhere else earlier as well, but I could well be mistaken about that.) And, by the way, here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2007 04:40 PM
Every day people arrive at this weblog via searches through Google or other search engines. I'm not systematic about it, but I do glance through these referrals every now and then and save those that are funny, weird, disturbing, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2007 06:28 AM
Of the "found in the..." variety. At least I think it's a poem: Found at the Mountain View Cemetery, Piedmont. Transcription: Tumbling Away Life Connect the dots or mots [?] then green with papers white and stained with canned sauces...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2007 03:40 AM
mom: why are you reading that book joy? joy: Oh, i just found it lying around. mom: you’re not a dork joy: haha.. of course I’m not! *fake english laughter* mom: dork- De Originaly Real Kingstress,that’s what you are. joy:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2007 03:38 AM
Believe it or not, this baseball-themed collection will contain a short story of mine, if the world still exists on December 31st, 2010....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2007 09:21 PM
(via Bubblegumfink.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2007 03:55 PM
Blogging teachers discuss "famous pieces of literature they can't stand or don't like to teach (but would never admit it to the class.)" (I stumbled on it because of a google alert pointing me to this guy, whose entry mentions...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2007 11:32 PM
In the latest installment of the email debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan about faith, atheism, etc., Harris challenges Sullivan to get God to guess a number between 0 and 9,99,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2007 05:03 PM
If you want, and have the evening free, you can check me out on Friday Februrary 10th at the Make-out Room for Writers with Drinks. Besides me, there will be: Eric Spitznagel (Fast Forward: Confessions Of A Porn Scriptwriter)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2007 01:26 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2007 05:30 AM
Here's another gem via Clive Davis, a snip of an interview with John Mortimer in a Paris Review's "Art of Fiction" interview: I found writing novels rather a lonely business. You very rarely actually catch anyone reading them. I've heard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2007 11:58 PM
I had never before seen this original version of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, featuring two future Pythons, Tim Brooke-Taylor (later of the Goodies) and Marty Feldman. Thanks, Clive!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2007 05:24 PM
OK, so my book didn't make the top five, nor even the top ten. But it is on this list of the top 82, which is nice....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2007 02:22 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2007 06:57 AM
From a notebook found in Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2007 01:10 AM
I keep having these dreams involving this rabbit: UPDATE: via Richard in the comments. I think this may be Rudi:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2007 03:50 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2007 02:03 AM
Posting has been light, and may be light for awhile, till (a) I fill in the rest of the words in this file entitled novel.doc; or till (b) I hit a wall and require distraction while figuring out how to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2007 08:41 PM
Gary Farber is having a rough time. He's a good guy, and his blog is always worth checking out. Help him out if you can....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2007 08:40 PM
Laurell K. Hamilton is, I gather, the author of a popular series of vampire books, only known to me because of this widely-linked (and possibly rather ill-advised) lengthy essay denouncing her "negative readers." Here's a snip of the section in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2007 05:02 PM
Tim writes: "this is what happens when you're a punk rock fan in Mississippi, where no band has ever come and where no one else likes what you like."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2006 04:40 PM
It's been a heck of a year for me, really, and to cap it off, King Dork has somehow managed to infiltrate the Entertainment Weekly's top ten books of the year list. I know, I was surprised, too. It's not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2006 04:33 PM
Doesn't this book have an amazing cover? Plus: The title is not metaphorical; the story is actually about a houseboat on the River Styx, a houseboat populated by all the great thinkers from Diogenes to Confucius to Doctor Johnson... We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2006 07:01 AM
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. No, seriously, I do. I haven't read either of Sam Harris's anti-religion books - a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon - so it is possible that I've got the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2006 07:05 PM
Clive Davis, filling in for Andrew Sullivan, has been running a series called "Old Books of the Year" in which he has asked a few bloggy friends and associates to write about newly discovered or recently re-read books and has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2006 05:07 PM
I can't remember this many little earthquakes "in a row" at any time in my life....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2006 05:48 PM
as the audience filed into the lobby after the new-music ensemble of Vacaville Christian High School performed a work dedicated to Nikola Tesla, "there was a huge explosion,'' reports Diane Roby. "One of the band's TV monitors fell face-down and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2006 06:36 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2006 02:01 AM
Count me among those bewildered and bummed by the news that Bethanne Patrick has been laid off and will no longer be AOL's Bookmaven. She was a bright spot in the publishing blogosphere and an all around good egg in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2006 05:53 PM
Clive Davis, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, scans the reviews of the short-lived Broadway adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and finds a humdinger of an unintentional double entendre: best of all in this show is Will Chase's pitch-perfect performance as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2006 03:23 AM
I'm actually not sure I don't prefer the botched version of the joke, in the end, but the correction to this NYT obituary of comedian Sid Raymond, which adds insult to injury by screwing up his final punchline, is kind...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2006 07:36 PM
Erika of Little Type tells me she's getting lots of Christmas orders for autographed books and Sam Hellerman shirts and so forth. Which is great to know, and thanks and everything. But I figure it can't hurt to slip...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2006 02:50 AM
James Wood writes critically, sympathetically, and brilliantly on contemporary atheist polemics....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2006 02:31 AM
Hey, I just got a Christmas present from Will Ferrell! Or rather, from Gary Sanchez Vineyards: "Making adequate wine since the bloody revolution of 1972." Sweet:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2006 01:33 AM
Here's a review-poem I found on the internet: wnt off to hg mall. rotted at the library. read this king dork book. utterly retarded. but highly entertaining. cos tht dork is funny. he IS retarded. so i kinda lik...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2006 05:42 PM
I'm not turning into a catblogger, I promise. But you would be surprised at how many requests I've received for more pictures of Matilda, and I'm feeling kind of Christmas-y and sentimental so here she is once again, freshly microchipped...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2006 09:52 PM
Mi2N is the "Music Industry News Network," a for-real music trades news site that apparently fell for a Stop the War/SWP gag: Tony Blair, has re-formed his old university group "Ugly Rumours" and is putting a track out on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2006 06:54 PM
Cindy & Bert perform Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" with lyrics rewritten in German to tell the story of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on German TV circa 1970: (via Germans Under Cover by way of WFMU.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2006 09:07 PM
For Christmas, Krista, my editor, presented me with a fancy leather bound King Dork. I believe it is a unique item. It has gilt lettering and pages and those swirly marbly end papers and one of those bound-in ribbon bookmarks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2006 09:15 PM
Richard Dawkins on Elvis: I should have known better because of course practically all Americans of that class are religious maniacs. But when I discovered that Elvis was religious I went back on to religion for a bit. (via Norm.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2006 04:43 PM
I was just teasing with the worship/warship crack earlier, but sometimes teasing gets results. To wit, this brand new, orthographically correct Elephants of Style artwork from our own Todd Purse. Sweet....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2006 01:15 AM
So Matilda (the cat who ran off and has been missing for the past week) is back. We did all the usual things, putting up fliers, staking out shelters day by day, knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2006 08:14 PM
[Photo of Lindsey reading King Dork deleted to preserve the archives, viewable here -- ed. 03.01.18] You may have noticed that I've been posting photos of people reading my book. It all started with this picture posted by Anarchie...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2006 07:57 PM
The reading at Moe's went quite well, I thought. I read the bit about the first band practice to feature Sam Hellerman's mail-ordered bass. When the part came up, I played the chorus of the song "Losers Like You" instead...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2006 05:58 PM
I never in a million years thought I'd ever be doing a post like this, and I'm sure this is the longest of shots, but... I am looking for my lost cat, Matilda. She is a long-haired tortoise shell...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2006 07:09 PM
Just a reminder about my reading/show/thing at Moe's tonight. Come if you can: Moe's Books in Berkeley on Tuesday, Dec. 5th. 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704. 510 849-2087. 7:30 PM....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2006 06:38 PM
I am migrating all my stuff to a new computer, and I've come across some items in my email that I don't remember seeing. Among them are some King Dork reader photos I may post soon and this piece of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2006 07:09 PM
As you may know (and if you don't know you will know very soon - just wait till the end of this parenthetical phrase... here it comes... and: now!) I have a little arrangement with Pat and Erika of Little...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2006 10:27 PM
The Dr. Laura action figure. (Thanks, Crumbly!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2006 08:02 PM
The Queen officially owns all the swans in the UK, so if she wanted to go out into a public boating pool and stab one with a kitchen knife and possibly even bite it to death, I guess she'd be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2006 06:45 PM
The Kirkus Best Children's Books of 2006 includes most of the usual suspects, including King Dork. (That's a pdf file, by the way.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2006 08:09 PM
Or rather, upcoming: I'm going to be doing a reading &c. at Moe's Books in Berkeley on Tuesday, Dec. 5th. 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704. 510 849-2087. 7:30 PM. I'm also going to show up at "Arline and Beth's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2006 10:16 PM
If you want to witness Joel Stein writing about King Dork in Time Magazine and comparing me to Mark Twain, sort of, go here. (I like the Chris Henchy quote.) UPDATE: I'll tell you what: it sure is weird to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2006 04:31 AM
Graham of Harry's Place celebrated his anniversary by going to see Chas and Dave....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2006 11:58 PM
I "love" this flickr gallery. ("via" boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2006 04:34 PM
Long-time readers of this blog, if there still are any, may remember Neil Clark, the eccentric British journalist most noted (by me, at any rate) for an article entitled "Slobodan Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience." He once sent me an email...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2006 05:12 PM
Milbarge of Begging the Question reviews several books, including mine. King Dork's ambiguous resolution is not to everyone's taste, though those who "get it" really do seem to appreciate it. I'm pleased with this formulation from the BtQ review, because...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2006 06:02 PM
Christopher Buckley spins a spot-on Jeeves and W. parody in the New Yorker: “Dash it, Jeeves, the only exit strategy is victory.” “Yes, sir. So Dr. Kissinger keeps insisting. And yet, as the Bard would suggest, ripeness is all.” “What...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2006 04:48 PM
Eagleton reviews Dawkins. Mr. Grayling objects. Norm comments. Mr Grayling objects......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2006 04:37 PM
Gir set up some stuff that, we hope, will make the comment spam more soft and manageable, so I'm turning the comments back on just to see what happens. Only posts on the main page will allow comments. Comments on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2006 01:16 AM
Found at a used book store in Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2006 11:33 PM
Pajiba comments on the King Dork movie news in its Weekly Trade Round-up....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2006 12:09 AM
These photos are from Razor's wild and crazy English class:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2006 10:04 PM
I've been getting lots of calls and mail about it, so clearly the story is out, but I may as well mention it here anyway. The film rights to King Dork were acquired by the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay Paramount/Vantage production...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2006 07:11 PM
Tracey found this shopping list at The Beanhouse: [image of "found" shopping list deleted; it may be viewed here -- ed.]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2006 02:46 PM
Buckfast "tonic wine" is apparently all the rage in today's Young Scotland. I have never tasted it, and indeed I know next to nothing about it, but I did enjoy these exuberant (and perhaps slightly hammered) "reviews" from Buckfast enthusiasts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2006 06:38 AM
I feel I can no longer fight the spam robots, so I have turned off the comments. At some point, I imagine, I will post something new, at which time I'll consider turning them back on just to see what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2006 12:48 AM
In the process of trying to delete the thousands of spam comments left on this site recently, I accidentally junked the 19 most recent real comments. I have tried to locate them to restore them, but the layers of spam...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2006 08:02 PM
The King Dork paperback is some time away, but we're working on copyedits for it now. I haven't found too many errors, but I am not known for my attention to detail. If anyone has noticed any typos or other...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2006 05:21 PM
If you're up for some "true-life storytelling", I'm on the bill of this Kitchen Sink Magazine event called "Telegraph Stories." Sunday, November 5. 7 to 10 PM at the Make-out Room, 3225 22nd St., San Francisco, CA. With Chris Baty,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2006 04:29 PM
In case anybody's interested, I'm doing a reading, playing, appearance thing at the SF Public Library on Friday, Oct. 27. (SF Public Library - Civic Center, 100 Larkin St Lower Level-Koret Auditorium, 4PM.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2006 06:58 PM
Did you know that there is a Grammy category for "Children's Spoken Word Album"? Well, you do now. The King Dork audio book is on the ballot, as it turns out. As I understand it, "voting members of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2006 03:54 PM
So I didn't win that Quill Award. Thanks to everyone who voted for King Dork, of course, but the result was never really in doubt. As expected, a millions-selling dragon book got more votes than a thousands-selling dork book. And...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2006 10:36 PM
Tony from Minneapolis myspaces: Umm... okay so I'm a 15 year old boy that is a sophmore in high school, and in english we were reading catcher in the rye. (remind you of something you wrote?) So there is this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2006 01:04 PM
That Litquake thing was - well, here's an account of it. Everyone, including the big shots, were very friendly backstage. Everyone got a tote bag. Dan Hicks read from The Catcher in the Rye. I could hear a few giggles...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2006 05:28 PM
Adèle Geras, author most recently of Ithaka among many others, and wife of Norm Geras, took King Dork with her on a train journey and has written a very sweet and generous review....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2006 04:14 PM
A couple of years ago, spending New Year's Eve in a tiny, spooky, slightly hobbit-y village in Norfolk, England, I happened to be talking to a lady who worked in the British publishing industry. When I mentioned that my first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2006 04:39 PM
Ellen found this link. Our Bodies Our Selves is apparently still available here:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2006 04:19 AM
As I mentioned, John Green is blog-touring for his new book, An Abundance of Katherines. Today's stop is this here blog. As I've written and recorded approximately a zillion breakup songs, and since John's novel is perhaps the ultimate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2006 07:00 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2006 04:58 AM
A reader writes concerning my upcoming appearance at Paulina Springs Bookstore in Sisters, OR: I attended Sisters High School from 1996 to 2000 and can attest that it would be a highly ironic place for a King Dork book signing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2006 06:48 PM
6 October, 2006 I mentioned this a ways back, but it's coming up soon so here it is again. I'm appearing at the opening night of "Litquake" which is a highfalutin San Francisco literary festival type thing. The title is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2006 12:19 AM
Yes, I just wrote a couple of checks to the US Treasury for an obscene, unmentionable amount, and yes, in the title I am referring to our thinly-disguised socialist overlords and their draconian, sadistic self-employment tax....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2006 10:41 PM
What I'm starting to think is that Frank is just too well-adjusted for me to get in to his lyrics or something. Is that a fair assessment? Maybe I just tend to like things written by troubled people. --some dude...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2006 07:31 PM
John Green (of Looking for Alaska fame) has a swell new book, An Abundance of Katherines. Remember that bloggy virtual book tour I did in the first week of King Dork's release? Well, John is doing a blog tour...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2006 06:35 PM
That's the cafeteria of Capuchino HIgh School in San Bruno, where I did an "author event" last night organized by those swell gals of Books, Inc./NYMBC in concert with a student reading group called "You Say Read, We Say...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2006 05:20 PM
No this post isn't actually about Office Depot. I just happen to have that song stuck in my head right now. The big news is that it looks like we finally do have a deal for the film rights to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2006 10:00 PM
Children's/YA author Gail Gauthier didn't much care for King Dork (which is fair enough, of course - some people just don't dig it, and you can't please everybody.) Even so, in this post she quotes Tom Henderson's attempt to analyze...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2006 07:44 AM
Natalie Eve stumbles on a spectacularly loopy review of Veronic Mars on netflix. (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2006 05:40 PM
Daniel Robert Epstein Suicide Girlses me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2006 06:39 PM
Our increased appetite for non-fiction is a crucial factor in both the inception of A Million Little Pieces and the subsequent persecution of James Frey - a persecution that seems particularly vicious when you consider that a man who is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2006 06:24 PM
Supernatural Kingdom of Horses. (via Ytossie Fandango.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2006 11:27 PM
From the "about me" page of a Spiritual Life Coach advertising in the National Catholic Reporter classifieds: Mr. Young's spiritual path has been rich and varied leading him from the Presbyterianism in which he was raised, through agnosticism, New Age...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 13, 2006 03:46 PM
As I mentioned earlier, my friend Tristin was commissioned by salon.com to write a follow-up to her widely-linked, -forwarded, and -discussed essay about her experience of losing a close friend in the 9/11 attacks. As so often on these internets...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2006 06:29 PM
For many Oakland residents, the horrifying case of Sandra Tellis has become an emblem of the dramatic increase of violent crime in this city over the last couple of years. She was beaten, tied to "an object" and set on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2006 12:35 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2006 02:23 AM
Hey, remember the Slime Sluts (Robin the MTV-watcher and Super Bimbo)? Well, Robin unearthed a page from their comic book:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2006 02:14 AM
I take Dana Milbank's point about skewed Congressional priorities. On the other hand, for some reason that probably doesn't reflect all that well on me, I sure am glad I got a chance to see this sign: Plus, did you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2006 07:16 PM
That post about Robin's Sam Hellerman triggered the following message from Sasha: I've come back and read this last entry several times already. It makes me terribly sad, but I keep re-reading it anyway. Alisha Cooke (a.k.a. Ralphie, later Twitch)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2006 05:04 PM
My friend Tristin lost a close friend in 9/11. When her essay about it was rejected by Punk Planet, I posted it on my blog instead. Five years on, she has now written a sort of follow-up essay for Salon.com....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2006 04:35 PM
According to this, page 163 of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces is now worth $23.95. (via Galleycat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2006 05:55 PM
Steven Rubio used this site to create this graphic teaser for the website for his King Dork-reading college course: In the same general sort of ballpark, Robin writes in, with the subject line "My Sam Hellerman...": ...was Anna Wareham. Our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2006 01:26 AM
Kate found this book in a used book store in Knoxville, TN. My guess is that things started to go wrong at Question 215....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 5, 2006 07:00 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2006 06:51 PM
This, sent to me via myspace mail, is the kind of message Dr. Frank gets in the bizarro world: att. dr. frank: how come you always write pop-punk songs? You're obviously intelligent enough to step outside of standard pop-punk structures...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2006 03:35 PM
John McNally experiences James Frey's website: It's kind of like walking into a room and seeing dozens of shrunken heads floating inside glass jars while the host talks about the weather. (via Maud Newton.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2006 05:16 AM
Stepping off from this article on adult readers of YA lit, Leila and her commenters have begun to assemble a "list of Young Adult books that adults will appreciate (and hopefully love)" (As for the original article, do you buy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 25, 2006 08:40 PM
Lookout Records was kind enough to add a news link on their website about how King Dork is up for a Quill Award. Just to be clear though, the official name of the subcategory for which the book has been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 11:43 PM
I keep meaning to mention: Random House presents The King Dork Band Name Generator. Submit! And speaking of band names, Chris Parker, transatlantic King Dork reader and TV writer (for such shows as Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, and East Enders) sends...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 06:07 PM
I believe I've gotten more feedback on the basis of this review in the American Airlines in-flight magazine than from any other recent King Dork press. I guess people really do read these things... (Nice piece, too.) And here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 04:31 PM
That's Jeff, who recently mailed me his copy of King Dork to be signed, along with a letter, some snapshots of his trip to Italy, and a page torn from his English class journal. Here's the page from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 02:06 AM
Tony found this letter in the Mission a couple of years ago. Transcription: March 10, 1998 Mark [last name not transcribed] my dear Man, Hi pumpkin pie-head! So how's the life of the emotional abuser? Don't worry I'm stable...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 01:47 AM
Get with us. We're like dough in your pockets....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 23, 2006 02:49 AM
So it turns out that King Dork has been nominated for a Quill Award. Al Roker apparently announced the nominees at noon today (EST) on a live webcast on MSNBC, but I couldn't get the webvideo player to play. It...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2006 07:02 PM
The reading thing at Pegasus Downtown went pretty well, I thought. Carla and Kendra have more....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2006 05:20 PM
Inspired by Epeshians 6:10-18: (via Relapsed Catholic, by way of David Weigel at andrewsullivan.com.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2006 04:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2006 11:15 PM
Geo Kayes is my neighborhood bar, and there is a book club that meets there called The Master Readers' Drinking Club. They have been reading King Dork, so they invited me to their meeting last night. Usually they meet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2006 06:18 PM
From time to time, this blog presents a Google-ympics, in which interesting search strings that have brought people to this site are categorized and listed. At the end, a winner is proclaimed. This is one of those times, so here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2006 05:57 PM
Erin and Cailin discuss the "make-out fake-out."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2006 03:19 PM
Hey, sorry for the last-minute heads up, but I'm going to be on KALX tonight (Mon. 8/14) between 7 and 9:30, spinning records with Kendra and trying to plug this event-y show-y book-y thing: That's tonight on KALX Berkeley, 90.7...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2006 11:48 PM
Some very kind words on King Dork from Steven Rubio, who has assigned the book to his fall course (along with Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and the movie Dazed and Confused.) Thanks, Steve!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2006 07:52 PM
Sasha's phone: (By the way, when I played that song at my recent appearance at Amoeba in LA, this guy who was offended by it went around the store hassling various fans. He complained to the management and accused them...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2006 07:14 PM
This object was placed in the stairwell-vestibule of my apartment building about a month ago and has been there ever since:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2006 06:00 PM
Jennifer Reese, the Entertainment Weekly book critic who gave King Dork an early boost with her unexpected, spectacularly prominent review, is interviewed at the National Book Critics Circle blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2006 05:45 PM
This picture arrived with the following note: As a graduate of Hillsdale High School (Hillsdale Knights) in San Mateo, class of '83, and as one of the few punk rockers, I can honestly tell you that you nailed every...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2006 06:21 PM
I just listed a few new shows/appearances. In addition to the rock and roll show on the flier above, we've got: Thursday, August 17. A reading/singing/signing at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704. 510 649 1320. and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2006 05:47 PM
On the "radio": Listen to AOL's Book Maven Bethanne Patrick interview me for AOL Books web-radio by clicking here. If that link doesn't work for you, go to the Book Maven blog and click on over from there. (For...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2006 05:31 PM
That's Andrew Krucoff, the man who helped me and King Dork dominate the internets in the release week and following. He organized a party at the Gawker office before my show at the Sidewalk Cafe. Even though it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2006 04:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2006 12:51 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2006 08:37 PM
Thanks to everyone who braved the monsoon to come out to Coliseum Books for my reading last night. I had a good time. I asked for requests for passages to read, as I have been doing lately. And, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2006 05:30 PM
I suppose it's a chain of association that could only happen in the age of the internets: cultural-political journalist Reihan Salam discovers the Kinks through reading King Dork, which was recommended to him by someone who noticed the title on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2006 05:19 PM
There is a little essay of mine in the current issue of SPIN about my memories of this Clash show. And there is a Q & A in the latest Harp. (Neither of those are on line, unless my methods...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2006 02:21 PM
New York City is perhaps not quite at its best in the summer, but soul-sapping heat and peculiar smells aside, so far so good over here. I dropped in on a handful of bookshops in Manhattan to say hi...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2006 01:51 PM
So as I mentioned before, I am doing a few booky events in New York next week: Saturday, July 8th, at The Village Bookshop, 7 North Village Avenue, Rockville Center, New York. 516 764-1395. 7PM. Wednesday, July 12th at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2006 06:32 PM
In Hollywood, as I've recently learned, people use the phrase "see the movie." As in "can you see the movie in this?" Or great character, but I'm not sure I can "see the movie." JB says he's on board and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2006 04:34 PM
I didn't have time to do a whole lot of sight-seeing in Milan, but we did manage to fit in some of it. This sign was at the entrance to the cathedral at Como, a nice lakeside town near the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2006 04:48 PM
[Pic of Kari reading King Dork deleted to preserve the archives. It may be viewed here-- ed. 03.01.18.] (a) My book was in the "Must List" issue of Entertainment Weekly. (I had to miss this party because I was in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2006 12:40 AM
Last week I went to the wedding of Beppe and Sara in Milan, Italy. Beppe first saw my band when we opened for Green Day on an Italian tour c. 1995 and he has been a big fan ever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2006 05:32 PM
Like it says up there, my buddy Lane Smith is going to be appearing on the CBS Early Show on the 4th of July, talking about his latest, John, Paul, George, & Ben. I imagine there will be some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2006 03:08 PM
So my blog is fixed, but my world has been too full of activity to post much. I'm not used to activity. I'm much better at just sitting around. I'm about to launch another week of stuff that may...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2006 02:44 PM
There is a terrific interview with Paul Berman in the current Democratiya. Excerpt: In the pre-modern age the rational and the irrational could both be understood. It was possible to think and to speak about such things as the soul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2006 04:38 PM
That picture (by Kurt Rogers) is from the San Francisco Chronicle's crazy huge piece on me and King Dork. I like it because you can see Casey of Cato's on the phone in the background. There was also a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2006 06:50 PM
Man, being able to post again is weird - I feel kind of like I'm getting away with something, so I better act fast. If anyone notices, I could be in big trouble... But while it lasts, it's like some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2006 05:07 PM
,,,and I'm not. As you have probably figured out, my blog has been totally broken lately. I get crazy error messages when I try to do anything with it at all, which puts the posting process far beyond my rather...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2006 12:19 AM
Colleen Mondor's new Bookslut column is about various and quite different recent literary attempts to evoke the high school experience. She reviews several YA novels, including Dairy Queen, Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies), Nailed, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2006 08:53 PM
As I've mentioned, I've got this sweet set-up with Pat and Erika of Little Type: they sell autographed copies of King Dork. They're the only people doing this over the internets, and lots of people are ordering them (and thanks!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2006 10:02 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2006 02:14 AM
Found in north Oakland, near Kaiser....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2006 01:56 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2006 05:50 PM
Wrong. (via Annie Maud Newton's place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2006 03:51 PM
This blog was broken as well as haunted and possessed by the Devil for awhile there, but thanks to Dean and Michele, it looks as though we're back in business. The only drawback is, now that can post regularly, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2006 03:48 PM
Dr. Frank is now back on the air. (This message is a test. Had it been an actual message you would have recieved interesting or amusing content. This is only a test.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2006 08:04 AM
That's Michele of Faster than the World (né A Small Victory) reading King Dork. (Ever hear a schoolbus story in which Sparks' "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" plays a role? Here's one.) Had a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2006 06:23 PM
I just realized my comments are totally buggered up. I'm trying to figure it out. In the meantime, if you have a burning comment or question you'll have to email me (see mailto link to the right.) Or, you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2006 04:58 PM
The Insta-mom reviews King Dork; Megan McCafferty recommends it to the Brick Township High School's Lit Chicks; and Pajiba includes a nice blurb in the weekly trade round-up. That's all I got right now....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2006 10:37 PM
I'm not sure quite what to make of it, but a couple of poli-blogs have noticed that according to Amazon, 43% of customers who view the page for National Review guy Ramesh Ponnuru's vaguely Coulter-ish book The Party of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2006 04:06 PM
I had never heard of "ableism" before reading this article about how we, or at least the professors of literature among us, ought perhaps to "consign certain books to the back shelves of our consciousness" for political or sensitivity reasons....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 10:58 PM
I love this rather desperate-sounding novelty song manifesto, the back of a "Looney Tunes Medley" radio promo 45 by the Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1983: (Thanks, Gabe.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 04:07 PM
Here's more stuff about my book I found on the internets: (a) Megan McCafferty wrote this swell blurb. (b) This piece ran in Friday's Oklahoman. (login: blogsofwar@yahoo.co.uk; password: blogsofwar.) (c) The Village Voice's Tom Breihan ruminates on East Bay...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 01:04 AM
More shows here. UPDATE: As Kenny Kaos and others have pointed out, the date on the flier is wrong. It should be Thursday, May 25. I have alerted the proper authorities....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2006 06:32 PM
So here is the current schedule for the Northwest trek next week. A lot of this stuff was added very recently, so there isn't going to be a lot of time to get the word out. The self-deprecator in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2006 05:59 AM
Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2006 03:25 PM
- I'm told they are ordering up a fifth printing now. - It's like Day of the Locust with King Dork out there in Hollywoodland. If I understood enough about the tales of intrigue and drama and general craziness...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2006 04:25 PM
Megan McCafferty, whose novels were recently shamelessly Alloyed and plagiarized by that Harvard Opal girl, wrote me a sweet email congratulating me on King Dork. I got a kick out of this comment, which she has graciously given me permission...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2006 07:11 PM
For all my Oklahoma friends: I had a great time talking to George Lang of The Oklahoman yesterday. He interviewed me for an article for Friday's paper, and blogged about it here. For my San Francisco friends, feel free...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2006 06:19 PM
There was a time when Michele's A Small Victory was one of the best and most heavily-trafficked blogs around. It was always one of my top five back in those days. It was sad when she pulled the plug last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2006 04:19 PM
Sasha drew this swell picture of Deanna Schumacher, one of the King Dork characters. "I suppose she is inflicting some kind of confusing verbal torture on Tom or something."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2006 04:19 PM
If you break down the Amazon ranking by Amazon/books/teen/fiction, King Dork is currently #1. I've never had anything be number one broken down any old way. On anything. So weird......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2006 09:54 PM
More booky items: (a) I'm told we're on the third printing now and that they're making plans for a fourth. As a lot of people have pointed out, Amazon appears to have run out of stock. They're supposed to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2006 03:24 PM
Found at Mills High School, Millbrae, CA. An envelope addressed to Maria, with a drawing of a butterfly, a bunch of grapes, and an illegible last name: On the other side of the envelope is a list of Maria's attributes:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2006 07:13 PM
That's my buddy Lane Smith, reading King Dork and being aware of his own mortality. As I've mentioned, I had a great time hanging out with Lane and playing songs for his big but mostly fairly short audience last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2006 07:13 PM
(a) Matt Berman of Common Sense Media turns in this nice "family friendly" review of KD. (b) Yesterday's USA Today had a piece on me and my quirky self, by Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson. And here's a Pop Candy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 09:16 PM
That's a couple of gals from the Secret Garden Bookshop in Seattle, WA. (Actually, I guess it's Ballard. Is that a district or area in Seattle, or is it a suburb? No idea.) Anyhow, wherever and whatever Ballard may...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 06:25 PM
My mom found this "story" I wrote in first or second grade. The beginning of my fiction career. I'm not sure what the boy's mistake was, but according to the accompanying illustration, it somehow involved a horse as well as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 06:25 PM
Everybody's flogging a book these days. Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin has a book out on 30 July. It's a "discussion" with Professor Preston Jones on the subject: Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? I haven't seen the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 06:18 PM
I got together with Pat and Erika of Little Type last night. It turns out they sold out their stock of King Dorks and had to re-order, so we had a little book autographing party at Spats to inscribe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2006 04:50 PM
Sorry for the weird, multiple posts. My blog is still haunted. I can't preview, so I just have to post and hope for the best. And if I try to edit, sometimes it treats the edit as whole new post....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2006 04:50 PM
Sasha rearranged the Barnes & Noble fiction section just to take this picture:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2006 07:57 AM
Hey, welcome to another installment of the Google-ympics. Here are some recent searches that brought inquiring minds to this blog's url, divided into categories. Practical: a fish restaurant in downtown Belgrade how do I trim my own hair how to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2006 09:12 PM
So, to everyone's surprise, there has been quite a media-gasm surrounding my book. I'm used to being covered not at all, not even slightly. Before the street date, I was going around saying "man, I hope Punk Planet runs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2006 01:53 AM
Check it out: Publishers Weekly stokes my buzz, if "to stoke one's buzz" is the proper terminology. What do I know? I've never had my buzz stoked before......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2006 11:33 PM
As you can see, Kendra ended up with at least one King Dork too many. So she's holding a contest to give away the excess. She's calling it The King Dork Band Name Contest. The full description of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2006 08:50 PM
I have been meaning to do at least a token post on another topic, but I keep never getting around to it and in the meantime more King Dork stuff has appeared just waiting to be aggregated. And who's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2006 05:57 PM
I'm a big fan of Whitney Matheson's Pop Candy blog on the USA Today site, so it was cool to see her critiquing yet perpetuating the King Dork buzz over there the other day. When they're comparing your book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2006 04:56 PM
As you can see, I crashed the Lane Smith party yesterday at Copperfields in Petaluma. Lane read some stories, made some underwear jokes, and wore a wig; there was also a "John, Paul, George and Ben" sing-along and a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2006 01:49 AM
If you're in the market for an autographed copy of King Dork and you can't make any of my upcoming appearances, you might consider web-ordering one from Little Type. I hung out with Pat and Erika the other day and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2006 04:24 AM
I don't know if you've noticed it, but, believe it or not there's an amazingly prominent review of King Dork in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, with this huge-ass photo of me (taken by my friend Paige O'Donoghue.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2006 06:14 PM
Sasha came up with this great picture of Tennis with Guitars, Sam 'n' Moe band #4 from King Dork: [pic deleted for the sake of preserving the archives on this crumbling blog, viewable here -- ed. 03.01.18]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2006 08:59 AM
My buddy Lane Smith is on tour now, and he snapped this photo at a Barnes & Noble in St. Paul, Minn. This was the first evidence I'd seen of my book being in an actual store, and it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2006 05:24 PM
The Flowerpot Men and White Plains pop up in King Dork, but I had never seen the film clips for these songs till now. The guy who posted them has all sorts of great clips up there on YouTube, including...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2006 09:32 PM
Welcome to the fifth and final stop on the King Dork Litzkrieg Bop Virtual Book Tour, presented by Andrew Krucoff. Today we'll be at Jane Magazine on-line. Our reading is about high school jazz band and the song is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2006 07:21 PM
4/5ths of the way through the tour. The tension is building. Tempers start to fray. The drummer is sulking in the back of the van. You're getting slightly tired of the Supersize Me diet. Sausage McMuffins for breakfast, chicken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2006 06:09 PM
Hey, thanks to everyone who came out to the Cody's party on Tuesday. I don't know about you, but I had a good time. Here a few more things coming up: Saturday, April 15, I'll be on the Drinks with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2006 09:11 AM
For Day Three of the Litzkrieg Bop virtual book tour, we're stopping by Largehearted Boy's place. This is one of my all-time favorite music/culture blogs and I read it religiously (if religiously, as Bertram might say, is the word I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2006 07:56 PM
Dr. Robin says these books are dangerous in many ways. "[They] are defining for girls who they are, making them think they're choosing it, and then profiting off of the demise of a whole generation of girls and women," she...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2006 06:23 PM
Well, this guy ain't too impressed by with my my Gawker interview: First off, what, precisely, are the Cather In The Rye generation(s)? Seems to me like another arbitrary nickname of an era(s) used to bolster one's own argument. And...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2006 10:30 PM
So day Two of the Litzkrieg Bop Blog Book Tour has officially begun. Today we'll stopping by Stereogum, doing a reading about sadistic PE classes, and playing the song "I'm Still Not Done Loving You, Mama." And by the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2006 06:59 PM
...to this post. It was a twin of the post above, an my haunted cgi won't let me delete it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2006 06:59 PM
What do you do if you can't afford a book tour? Answer: you do it on the internet: New York media maven and mp3 blogger Andy Krucoff has organized this kind of "virtual book tour" for the week of King...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2006 12:10 AM
I am about halfway through Brendan Halpin's newish rock and roll novel A Long Way Back, and I'm really enjoying it. I probably would be further along in the book if I didn't keep pausing to read his blog, which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2006 08:43 AM
Regular readers will be familiar with this blog's occasional Google-ympics feature: various search strings through which people have reached this site are categorized and set against each other. At the end, a winner is selected. To great fanfare. Or something...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2006 08:43 AM
People who find it tiresome when a guy aggregates stuff about his book and posts it on his blog are probably not going to be too happy with Dr. Frank's What's-It for the next couple of weeks. I'm afraid it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2006 05:47 PM
Speaking of defaced books, DJ Cayenne over at Baby Got Books posts a terrific punkified high school Hamlet cover: Scroll down the post for a distressing anecdote about a Barnes & Noble clerk who tries to discourage a customer from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2006 05:01 PM
I used to love music, back when it had melody and chords and lyrics. But now it has no melody and no chords, just thwack-thwacking, and they even seem to be cutting back on the thwack-thwacking, so now its sometimes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2006 04:37 PM
Well, I may not be "voice-of-a-generation good," but at least I'm better than "I'm-published-in-Ploughshares good." So says the SF Weekly, anyway, in a Night and Day blurb for the King Dork book release event at Cato's....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2006 03:09 AM
Leila Roy's Bookshelves of Doom has always been among my favorite book blogs, so I'm pretty stoked at (or should that be "over" or "about"?) her real sweet review of King Dork. And Michael Schaub and Colleen Mondor of Bookslut...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2006 05:46 PM
Naomi Wolf is quoted in this Newsday piece on racy teen lit, calling for warning or rating labels for YA books. (via Bookslut.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2006 05:46 PM
Salon's Rebecca Traister quotes some crabby comments from a Huffington Post blurb about the wedding of NBC's Campbell Brown and Fox's Dan Senor, adding: Let's hear it for those on the left who dismiss a man they don't like by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2006 05:19 PM
Thanks again to everyone who made fliers. More after the jump....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2006 04:50 PM
(a) There's an article in this week's East Bay Express about me, King Dork, books about rock and roll, songs about girls, and my book release thing at Cato's. (The caricature by Norman Dog is almost unique among caricatures,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2006 05:59 PM
Remember how I wrote and recorded a theme song for Lane Smith's new book John, Paul, George & Ben? They played it on WFMU's Greasy Kid Stuff last week. Click that link to listen to the show. The Lane Smith...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2006 06:09 PM
Nikki Sudden, I mean. On the night of Epic Soundtracks' death, my band happened to be playing a show at London's Garage, and I dedicated the set to him. (I doubt there were many in the crowd who had any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2006 05:06 PM
I left out a word in the Nikki Sudden post, and somehow adding it resulted in a whole other post, which I cannot delete. I'm replacing it with this text so the front page will look just a little less...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2006 05:06 PM
Found today (24 March, 2006) in north Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2006 02:23 AM
Hey, anyone out there who has some time on his or her hands and is good (and fast) at making fliers, would you want to help me out with a flier for my book release show thing at Cato's? Details...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2006 07:24 PM
Ahmed Akkari, the Danish imam who stoked the flames of the cartoon conflagration, has been caught on hidden camera threatening to have an elected moderate Muslim politician blown up. "I am deeply sorry about the remark," he said. "[It] was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 05:27 PM
I guess it's no surprise that this guy prefers I Am the Cheese to Catcher in the Rye. He revisited Catcher, and here's his review: Well I re-read Holden Caufield in preparation for KING DORK and uhhh, well I don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 04:49 PM
Apparently, there are now two, wholly distinct and quite different Oliver Kamms. (This one is new to me; here's the old favorite.) (via Andrew Sullivan.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 04:23 PM
If you were going to do a study following a cohort of children through life, with an eye to reaching general conclusions about the relationship between child personality and behavior and cultural-political identity in adulthood, would you decide to do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 04:01 PM
A previous owner of this copy of a 1950 paperback edition of Thoreau's Walden and Civil Disobedience sketched a front view, side view, and what looks like the beginnings of a view from above of a car on the title...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 04:21 AM
If you feel your day would be brightened by an Andrea Dworkin insertion joke, this is probably the place to go. (via Bookslut.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 07:19 PM
If perchance you are interested in the Publisher's Weekly review of King Dork, here it is, at the bottom of this page....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 06:45 PM
So there's this kind of book release party thing for my book on the "street date": Tuesday, April 11. It's going to be at Cato's Ale House, 3891 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, from 7pm to 9pm. All ages. Free. I'll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 06:35 PM
As you may have noticed, my book is being published under the name "Frank Portman," which is my actual real name. There was some discussion over whether to use the more familiar "Dr. Frank" on the book cover, but the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 02:20 AM
This bizarre and potentially disturbing stream-of-consciousness to do list was found near Piedmont Avenue in Oakland: Much of it is hard to construe, but here is my best attempt at a transcript: glue traps - Indian meal moth traps -...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 01:14 AM
I'm going to be playing a live acoustic set on KALX live this Saturday (3/25/06.) The show starts at 9pm. It's 90.7 FM in Berkeley and environs, and it'll be streamed on the web here, and/or here. I imagine I'll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2006 11:42 PM
The metal band Saxon has been denied permission to play at Dubai's Desert Rock festival because of the lyrics to the song "Crusader." This is allegedly a translation of part of an editorial from a local paper: The question here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2006 03:56 PM
Kirkus is an important book review journal that is notorious for its anonymous, often quite snarky reviews. Almost since the beginning of the recent launch of my so-called literary career people have been warning me to brace myself for a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2006 07:55 PM
Have you ever read an unfavorable book review that unintentionally made the book sound totally awesome? Well, that's what happened for me with this brutal review of Kate DiCamillo's Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I'm totally going to order...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2006 07:40 PM
I guess I'll always feel a vague connection to Naomi Wolf, simply because I once wrote a song about her. Here she writes about that sector of YA lit that includes the Clique, Gossip Girl and A-List series. I haven't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2006 05:28 PM
The Stephens Island Wren may have been the only passerine bird entirely incapable of flight. In any case, its flightlessness evolved during its long residence on the island, where there were not enough threats to make the ability to fly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2006 06:54 AM
Bill Moon forwarded me this piece on the new TVPs album. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm excited about it. According to the article, the line-up on the album includes Ed Ball, which I hadn't known. "My Dark Places"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2006 06:04 PM
For some reason that last post was posted twice and it somehow refuses to be deleted. So the only thing I can think of to do is replace the text of one of the items with other text, as I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2006 05:22 PM
Here's another review of King Dork, from Cherry Bleeds....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2006 05:22 PM
Larry Livermore is one of the few people out there who have read King Dork, and he says some really nice things about it in this essay on the vagaries of the "punk" novel. I've never read the other book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2006 01:15 AM
There's an interview with yours truly in the librarian/pop culture blog Pop Goes the Library. (The Q's are from this swell gal named Sophie; the A's are from me - that's what I meant by "yours truly" in case it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2006 12:13 AM
Wow, they're really pulling out all the stops on the promo campaign for Lane Smith's John, Paul, George & Ben: I'm pretty sure most picture books don't get a billboard at Times Square. There's apparently one in LA, too. Anyway,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2006 09:32 PM
Even when you know that the "MTX" in the MTX Youth High School Ministry stands for "Mountain Top Experience" rather than the (to us) more familiar term, it's still pretty fun to browse the youth ministry site of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2006 03:30 AM
LUCKY for little Ursinus College that Mark David Chapman is securely locked away, or the J.D. Salinger-obsessed John Lennon slayer might be applying for the liberal arts college's new scholarship award. The Collegeville, Penn., school - where Salinger spent his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2006 09:29 PM
Like many San Franciscans, Chronicle columnist Joan Ryan rather overestimates how charming it is to go around telling everyone how much better you are than everyone else. (via Larry.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2006 09:26 PM
Hey, here's a real nice review of King Dork from a teen librarian's Live Journal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2006 02:46 AM
Salon's Rebecca Traister weighs in on Margaret 3K: speaking of Margaret, it makes me a little sad to think that girls (and boys) who get to know her now don't know that she had to pick the color of her...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2006 03:21 AM
Here's another comment recently left on a post from long, long ago. The post was about those Bush = Hitler commercials from the moveon.org contest back in January of 2004. Brooke writes: The truth about gossip which all Mr Frank...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2006 05:38 AM
It's been awhile since I've held a Google-ympics, so, well, I here I go. These are google searches that have brought people to this site recently, divided into categories. The winner is at the end. (a) simple questions: yiddish word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2006 01:40 AM
Both sides of a damp note found in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2006 11:41 PM
Bente Hogh, David Irving's girlfriend, speaks. Will she wait for him? "He would," she said, "have to show a great change in attitude." And did you know that Irving has a twin brother? Well, now you do. (I didn't.) In...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2006 03:16 PM
On the subject of Margaret and her incredible disappearing belt, the Powell's Book Blog features this comment by the author of this essay: At least Judy Blume's classic wasn't updated to reflect the brand consciousness that has taken hold. With...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2006 09:17 PM
Everybody's doing it. Here's the "word cloud" for Dr. Frank's What's-It:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2006 01:43 AM
Comments left on archived posts are rarely, if ever, read, so when there's a good one, and I notice it, I'll always try to point it out. About a year ago, I posted a "found" letter from this collection of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2006 01:01 AM
Riverhead has dropped James Frey. I have to say, I'm actually a little surprised. He had a two book contract with them, and I imagine the advance was substantial. What happens then? I think he probably has to give at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2006 05:23 PM
The ad campaign for the Asia Argento film of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by "JT LeRoy" makes the best of things: (via Galleycat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2006 02:40 AM
Quite possibly everything you ever wanted to know about Soviet underwear. (via Norm.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2006 02:06 AM
Beth found this song on the bus in the Gilman St. area. Transcribed as found, underlining set as italics. Twist of Faith When I first felt the Holy Ghost Power I try to stand tuFF Lord, [first word scratched out]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2006 10:50 PM
The Great Vowel Shift originally described (I believe) by Otto Jespersen illustrated by this chart happened around 1400. Now, according to Professor William Labov and others, there's a similar "Northern City Shift" occurring in American phonology. There's something kind...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2006 02:14 AM
Did you know that Are You There God? It's Me Margaret has been "updated" to reflect more modern "menstrual technology?" (That is, they took out the "sanitary belt"; now Margaret uses "disposable adhesive pads.") I can't quite bring myself to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2006 08:47 PM
Here's an intriguing look at Arizona politics on the state level. They're considering legislation that would "allow" college students to opt out of course reading that they consider "personally offensive or pornographic." University and community college students are "youngsters." There's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2006 07:02 PM
The person to who I sent this article, for who I have the greatest respect, and after who I may end up naming my first child (that is, if I ever have one, and if said child happens to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2006 06:35 PM
The redoubtable Leon Wieseltier takes on contemporary Scientism, Brightness, biological reductionism, "evo-psychobabble," and Daniel Dennett's new book: "Breaking the Spell" is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions. The orthodoxies of evolutionary...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2006 06:13 PM
Ron over at Blog of the Hurricane wrestles with love, guilt, faith, repentance, remorse, James 2:24, sackcloth and ashes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2006 12:26 AM
Marc W. points out (in the comments to my earlier post on the word "quite") that Hugh Laurie addressed the topic in a recent Playboy Magazine Q&A: I'm constantly confused by the difference between the English and American quite. They're...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2006 05:27 PM
It will take awhile, but bear with me: eventually this post will explain how I came to record two songs for Lane Smith's terrific new picture book, the Beatles-y, Founding Father-y John, Paul, George, and Ben. Herewith, the post:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2006 03:41 PM
Well, I daresay this isn't the first time one of my tunes has wound up on a Valentine's Day mix/playlist, but it may well be the first time that such a list has wound up in the Village Voice. It's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2006 09:34 PM
As I've mentioned before once or twice, the word "quite" has a different meaning in British English than it does in American English. In American English, the word "quite" means "quite," whereas in British English the meaning is more like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2006 07:01 AM
Man, I know it's in poor taste, and possibly dangerous if people "of faith" know where you live, yadda yadda yadda, but there's just no way this genie can be put back in the bottle, and many of these sitcom...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2006 02:15 AM
Larry notes that many Western news outlets have begun referring to "the Prophet Mohammed" instead of plain old "Mohammed" in their reports. One thing is certain: it's not due to a heightened sensitivity toward all the world's religions. Otherwise, we'd...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2006 07:46 PM
The next project for Bernd Eichinger, the writer-producer of Downfall, is to be a collaboration with Stefan Aust on a film about the Baader-Meinhof Gang. This is great news. I was quite impressed with Downfall, and I'm sure the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2006 04:00 PM
A WELSH flagmaker last night issued an urgent safety warning to Muslims who are buying up his Danish flags to torch in cartoon protests. Orders for the Danish national red and white flag began flooding in to Swansea-based business Mr...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2006 03:09 PM
My friend Beth Lisick (author of, most recently, the excellent and hilarious book Everybody into the Pool, about which I gushed here) was kind enough to mention King Dork in this poll of "what local authors are reading" in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2006 05:16 PM
I was checking out my referral log (which lists the urls whence visitors to this blog have come, if "whence" is the word I want.) Among them are links from the King Dork Amazon page, which have occurred because I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2006 08:55 PM
Oliver Kamm can't catch a break from the FrontPage Magazine yahoos, who accuse him of being a "typical Fabian Society International Socialist," of being soft on Sontag, and, most humorously, of singing the praises of Noam Chomsky! Then there's this,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2006 06:06 PM
Leila Roy over at Bookshelves of Doom was kind enough to link back to my little essay on YA and rock and roll. It was through her link the the Mr. T Experience allmusic.com page that I migrated to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2006 01:10 AM
A couple of quotes from Stephen King's piece on James Frey in Entertainment Weekly: At the beginning of the show, the best-selling memoirist was the deer-in-the-headlights Frey first glimpsed in the Larry King softball interview earlier in the month; call...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2006 08:36 PM
NURSES want patients who are intent on harming themselves to be provided with clean blades so that they can cut themselves more safely... This could include giving the self-harm patients sterile blades and clean packets of bandages or ensuring that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2006 07:11 AM
sparkly drags herself up the steps and into the cabin. though it isn't her time, she feels this to be a rough and just a hormonal day and is weary. She picks up the coral and smiles, silently thanking blu...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2006 02:53 AM
Oliver Kamm writes amusingly in the Times about the responses from a handful of celebrated authors asked by Britain's Royal Society of Literature to name their top ten recommended books for children. It is true that there's something funny about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2006 03:22 PM
This ACLU ad is great, in that it depicts our inevitable future, which is not. No more double meat for you! (via Stephen Pollard.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2006 02:34 AM
Ben has more taste and shame than me, apparently, because he had the decency to be embarrassed, but man Brokeback to the Future had me literally howling and shaking with laughter. Now I'm finished watching it, and I'm still shaking....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 05:55 PM
I was in San Diego earlier this week and I had lunch with my agent and Michael Cart, who is a kind of big shot in the YA world and has a genuine, truly affecting passion for these books. There...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 03:38 PM
So I'm sitting here trying to write my second novel (man, that's hard), and I've had a few drinks and I'm looking for distractions and I start reading my blog's comments, just to see, as one does. Maybe someone has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 02:40 AM
After a long break, my long-time ally, fellow curmudgeon, partner-in-misanthropy, smart cookie, and all around good egg Tristin Laughter has revived her blog, with a post that charts the route you must navigate if you wish to buy CS Lewis's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2006 06:30 PM
This may well be the funniest thing I've read all week: some folks are worried that the usual suspects (i.e. people who live outside of Manhattan and San Francisco) are suspiciously silent about their hatred and fear of the film...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2006 06:08 AM
Well, before I get any more letters advancing the theory that my views on life, the universe, and everything are as they are because I have engaged in intimate relations with one Pat Robertson, I think I'll remain more or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2006 05:35 PM
Because I figure #1 would have to be Richard Dawkins or the Pope or Stalin or somebody: This eBay auction was up to $172.50 at post time: I'm a 22-year-old Atheist from Chicago. I stopped believing in God when I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2006 08:55 AM
Whatever breached security at Pine Bluff Arsenal late Tuesday night wasnt human, officials said Thursday. (via Sploid.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2006 03:23 AM
Robert Kagan, on the state of not being a Straussian: I have long admired the work of Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, Harvey Mansfield, and Thomas Pangle--though not, I must say, Leo Strauss himself, since I have never understood a word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 08:55 PM
Heather King (Joe's sister) writes in Publisher's Weekly about James Frey and "lying to tell a lesser truth": It's every writer's sacred honor to "get it right," but perhaps the burden falls heaviest on the memoirist. As a memoirist, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 08:21 PM
There's an interesting discussion over at Ann Althouse's blog about Steven Colbert, Paul Begala, and John 3:16....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 07:04 AM
No, not me! That's Alfred Hitchock's Vertigo. Norm Geras notes this rather embarrassing (in retrospect) passage from a 1959 piece by film critic Stanley Kauffmann: The decline of Alfred Hitchcock is no longer news. It is quite clear that the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 02:51 AM
I have learned through experience over the years that it avails one very, very little to get in arguments with Chomskyists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Objectivists, vegans, postmodernists, Maoists, Scientologists, LaRouchies, Deadheads, Foucault dependents, and crusading atheists. (I'd add Catholics to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2006 09:43 PM
If you find the argument over whether Religion has done more harm than Science or vice versa diverting, you might want to head over to Natalie Solent's place: she's arguing with Professor Anthony Grayling. UPDATE: Hey this is almost just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2006 03:36 PM
A friend of mine found this letter between the pages of a copy of Gail Sheehy's Passages, which was in a box of books on the street in south Berkeley. The letter was ripped in quarters and placed in an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2006 01:03 AM
Speaking of religion, philosophy, spirituality, atheism, contrarianism, drugs, hippies, punk rock and what have you, Larry dredges up an anecdote from a drunken ramble through Poland in the summer of '92. What he doesn't mention (and possibly doesn't know) is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 09:39 PM
Treacher's Joel Stein parody is quite funny....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 05:19 PM
The BBC plans to mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this Easter with an hour-long live procession through the streets of Manchester featuring pop stars from The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and featuring songs by The Smiths and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 04:54 PM
I just have to say how proud, stoked, chuffed, and generally pleased I am to run a weblog that can get comments that include the phrase: as a punk rocker studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood... That was in response...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 03:52 AM
Oops, make that: the Evils of Religion. Sorry about that. Am I alone in thinking that the question of whether or not Religion (qua religion) is "bad" or "good" is a rather frivolous one? Is Politics "good"? Or is it,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2006 05:48 PM
I expect it could be seen as kind of gauche to point it out (not that I ordinarily let fear of gaucheness get in the way of a good time.) But I believe this is my first ever "staff pick"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2006 04:42 PM
The latest thump on the controversial best-seller "A Million Little Pieces" is a Seattle federal court lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of consumers for the "lost time" they spent reading the book....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2006 04:17 PM
Hey, want to see the new New York Times blog? Here it is! (via Andrew Sullivan.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2006 12:00 AM
Walt Disney Records takes devolution to the next level with Dev2.0: Devo reincarnated as telegenic kids. Kind of creepy, yet kind of mesmerizing. My internal irony-o-meter was flashing like a strobe light and finally blew a hole through my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2006 01:28 AM
Congratulations also to Matt Welch, who is now an assistant opinion editor at the Los Angeles Times. Way to go, man....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 11:47 PM
Congratulations to John Green, whose YA novel Looking For Alaska (one of my favorite books from last year) just won the Printz Award....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 08:23 PM
According to this, Naomi Wolf has had a mystical experience in which she, as a soul inhabiting the persona of a teenaged boy, saw a "holographic image" of Jesus. Not only that, but the Sunday Herald also predicts "a theological...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 06:58 PM
Romanian-born writer Andrei Codrescu addressed the American Library Association's midwinter meeting in San Antonio, and raised the issue of the Cuban "independent librarians." (I've written about it here, here, and here: the basic story is that the ALA has pointedly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 05:08 PM
So now there's a King Dork Discography to go along with the King Dork Reading List. It's a list of some of the records listened to, commented on, or alluded to by the narrator in the course of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 04:31 PM
Clive Davis is a great guy and runs one of my all time favorite blogs, so it has always bothered me a bit that he has been unable to leave comments or send trackbacks to this site. I knew it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2006 02:22 AM
(via Bubblegum Fink.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2006 02:54 AM
According to Kirkus, Macaulay Culkin's new "novel" manages to "lower the already low bar set for celebrity fiction," and "makes Ethan Hawke read like Philip Roth." (via Galleycat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 08:00 PM
Loompanics is going out of business, and holding a fire sale. Head Loompa Mike Hoy explains, and suggests: (via Maud.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 06:31 PM
So I went ahead and made one of those "listmania" lists on Amazon, the King Dork Reading List. Through the course of the story, the narrator Tom Henderson reads a whole bunch of books from the fifties and sixties, including...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 02:57 AM
How in the world did I ever manage to miss this awesome Chick tract dramatizing the dangers of D & D? (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 02:20 AM
I finally got around to running "King Dork" through the Lulu Titlescorer: according to it, and I'd sure like to believe it, King Dork has "a 63.7% chance of being a bestselling title," which seem like pretty good odds to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2006 07:40 PM
Ages ago I came up with this sort of instruction manual for how to visit London's Tate Modern. I know most people disagree, and call me a philistine if you must, but I stand by my initial reaction: the "art"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 08:37 PM
In England you can be prosecuted for holding the opinion that homosexuality is immoral. And you can be prosecuted for saying that Islam is a "barmy" doctrine insofar as it supports that opinion. And you can be prosecuted for telling...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 06:19 PM
Chastened former JT Leroy enabler Susie Bright traces the "imaginative roots" of the JTL literary oeuvre (if oeuvre is the word I want) and concludes that they grew out of "slash fiction."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 05:34 PM
The Daily Mail seems to have a bit of difficulty understanding the true meaning of the term "cheap publicity stunt," as that's how they characterize Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong's petition urging George Galloway to "respect his constituents not his ego."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 04:56 PM
There's a terrific interview with Paul Berman in the current New York Press. Excerpt: I regard myself as of the left, and my complaint about a great many other people on the left is that they are stuck in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 04:35 PM
The other day, in the midst of a flurry of emails on the general subject of James Frey, JT Leroy, identity or lack thereof, and the nature of truthiness, my editor asked: "I just want to check. Are you real?"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2006 10:44 PM
Novelist Christian Bauman considers the Frey Affair in the light of his own archive of rejection letters and makes a pretty good case that, ultimately, Dave Eggers is to blame. (via Ross at Andrew's place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2006 04:31 PM
Want to hear something crazy? Then get someone to read this aloud to you: Random House will refund readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move believed to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2006 07:50 PM
Harry of Harry's Place points out the lesson of the George Galloway Big Brother affair: This should be a lesson for any budding British demagogues. You can be a servant for a brutal murderous dictator, you can be pally with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2006 05:08 PM
By now I imagine most people have seen the Smoking Gun expos on James Frey and his fake memoir A Million Little Pieces. I'm enjoying it as much as everybody else, of course, particularly as it presents an occasion to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2006 06:18 PM
I honestly thought it was a joke the first three or four times I heard it, but it's for real: George Galloway has decided he can best serve his constituents by appearing as a contestant on Britain's Celebrity Big Brother...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2006 04:13 PM
Life imitates Onion once again....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2006 07:19 PM
It appears they finished recording the King Dork audio book. According to this, anyway, it's six hours and thirty minutes on six CDs and it's read by this guy. Presumably the pronunciation of "Wig Wam Bam" and "Foghat" went off...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2006 07:12 PM
In real life, it would give me nightmares, but on the internet it's just hilarious: A mother in Dallas is one of several parents complaining about a new interactive book for toddlers in which Sesame Street character Elmo asks "who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2006 08:15 PM
Neil Clark, the author of what may be my all-time favorite and most quotable piece of loopy alterna-wing journalism ("Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience") has reviewed Oliver Kamm's Anti-Totalitarianism for the Telegraph. It can be read on Clark's relatively new blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2006 07:42 PM
The Bookshelves of Doom points out an article in Wired that reveals the Scientologian underpinnings of the Neopet phenomenon: [Neopets CEO Doug] Dohring brought two things to the company: expertise in market research and a deep commitment to the principles...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2005 07:22 PM
I suppose this isn't exactly brand new news, but it was certainly new to me: according to this LA Times article, personal letters indicate that Upton Sinclair discovered that Sacco and Vanzetti were in fact guilty in the course of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2005 06:30 PM
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors: In the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior. According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2005 04:06 PM
Jah Jah Dub notes the location of Prague's Museum of Communism: (via Harry's Place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2005 11:59 PM
A moment of pure poetry: (via Mickey Kaus.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2005 12:44 AM
If any Mac users out there know the answer to this seemingly trivial question, I'd love to hear it. I usually use Safari, but there is one situation that has just come up where I need to use Firefox. Firefox...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2005 08:52 PM
Anyone who has ever been in a "gifted and talented" program at school will probably recognize this classic AP scenario: a tea party, where the students dress as literary figures, presided over by a student dressed as Queen Victoria. All...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2005 05:10 PM
The truth was an incredibly hot commodity in 1974-75. -- Lorne Michaels, reflecting on Richard Pryor's commercial appeal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2005 03:42 PM
I hear ya, sister: Mary-Kate Olsen says her heart is broken. The 19-year-old sweet teen and multimillionaire mogul says she has taken a leave of absence from New York University to recover from losing her boyfriend, Stavros Niarchos, to her...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2005 02:16 AM
Another Bit of Berman: This Insta-linked article from Salon's Cary Tennis, offering advice on The Revolution to an academic who longs for the fulfilling days of '68 and the barricades and Foucault and the Maos and the Red Brigades and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 05:12 PM
And here, from the same source as the Cliff Richard quotation below, is a charming John Lennon story: BACK in the 1970s, John Lennon met some aliens. Those aliens gave him a little brass egg. He gave that little brass...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 04:01 PM
Sir Cliff Richard weighs in on the complaints about Narnia's sinister Christian message: Its rubbish, he raged. Nobody would ever say anything like that about Islam or Hinduism, would they? I mean, Christians are the most loving people in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 03:54 PM
A pretty good stuck on the train story. (via Damian Counsell.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 02:32 AM
So I finally got around to reading Paul Berman's Power and the Idealists. It reproduces his 2001 New Republic essay "The Passion of Joschka Fischer," which I have long admired, and adds to it several chapters concerning the aftermath of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 12:43 AM
John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on the same day. They all went to the same place. Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore. Huxley went to hell because he trusted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2005 02:49 AM
A good one from Dave Barry, via one of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents: The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2005 09:47 PM
An eighth grader in Stronghurst, IL has been removed from school and faces criminal charges for compiling a list of people he found "annoying." When I was a lad, there was no need to keep a list, as such a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2005 11:32 PM
The director of the King Dork audio book production called me last night to check on the pronunciation of various names and words in the book. It's a good thing, too; otherwise there might have been embarrassing errors in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2005 08:39 PM
Wil Wheaton comments on this story about HDTV, the beautiful people, and make up: When I was heavily involved in promotional appearances for things like Star Trek, I was constantly amazed by the celebrities I'd meet in green rooms. Some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2005 02:11 AM
Here is a sweet account of a self-styled Musical Odyssey....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2005 12:48 AM
Plush toys of Cthulhu mythos entities, including Nyarlethotep, a Shuggoth, a Deep One, and these Cthulhu slippers: (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2005 12:37 AM
Polly Toynbee melts down over a frustratingly popular allegorical lion. Choice quotes: Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2005 06:48 PM
So earlier this week I was down in L.A. recording acoustic versions of five songs that are referenced in King Dork, the book. It was at the Books on Tape headquarters in Woodland Hills, CA. (The audio version of King...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2005 03:37 AM
Kyrie O'Connor says that CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy is too politically incorrect to be made into a movie without heavy bowdlerization. She's probably right, though my recollection is that the Saracen slurs run through the other books,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2005 05:41 PM
Few people in this world have had more impact on my day to day life than Ruth Siems, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing, who died a couple of weeks ago....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2005 04:35 PM
Here's another comment that was just left on a post from long, long ago. (If I don't mention it here, chances are no one will ever see it, so I reproduce it here as a public service.) The original post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2005 03:32 AM
Bookslut's Michael Schaub says (and it's hard to disagree with him) that The War Against Toenail Fungus is "the most magical book ever written in any language." The first paragraph: You might think that since we were able to put...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2005 04:35 PM
The Guardian notices the new audio incarnation of Mobylives, who continues to post daily audio-blogs that are way better than any "book notes" program you'll hear on the real radio....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2005 01:19 AM
Larry Livermore has started a blogspot blog. The first post references my recent shows in New York, plus a range of other topics, including an account of the Potatomen "reunion" that I had to miss because I was playing in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2005 12:57 AM
Over a year ago, I post-quoted without comment a bit of an AP article about what appeared to have been a rather extravagant awards ceremony presented by the government agency in charge of airport security. It cost nearly half a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2005 06:27 PM
Kendra attended the show the other night, and one of the songs I played ("Leave the Thinking to the Smart People") took her down memory lane: My roommate freshman year hated that song. i played the hell out of it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2005 05:01 PM
If, for some reason, you want to see a solo set from me, along with the Specs and Kevin Army, here is your chance: Wed. Nov. 9th at The Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th at Missouri, San Francisco, CA,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2005 02:03 AM
Mobylives was on hold for quite some time, but it is finally back, with an audio post for Nov. 7, and a fascinating side-bar interview with Michael Finkel....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2005 06:37 PM
Marlene Dietrich's ode to Ronald Reagan, written in her Paris hotel room on a portable typewriter that once belonged to Noel Coward: A tense silence Grips me Surrounds me Grounds me to the Messy floor Around me No voice No...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2005 05:15 PM
Speed-dating at the British Library: The British Library is to hold its second Mingle evening an opportunity for anyone who is single, likes to talk and wants to make friends... This is your chance to network with like-minded individuals...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2005 04:09 PM
The cable is out at the Brooklyn apartment where I'm staying - this is officially the longest I've gone without watching TV since I was around five, and boy does it ever feel weird. I'm wifi-ing from a tiny "cyber"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2005 07:16 PM
So here I am wifi-ing from a cafe in soggy Brooklyn, and I thought I might as well let another show update dribble out: Wed., October 26, at The Kettle of Fish, 59 Christopher St., Greenwich Village, NYC. 7 pm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2005 04:03 PM
Transatlantic journalist and blogger Clive Davis (one of my favorites since he started blogging a year ago) was in California on account of a media fellowship from the Hoover Institution and we had some drinks in San Francisco the other...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2005 03:58 PM
Paradise Lost, I mean. Seriously. Frankly, I'm finding it a little hard to imagine. All the same I am praying with my whole strength that Oliver Stone will direct. (via Bookslut.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2005 05:52 PM
Burger King vs. the Food Police....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2005 04:03 PM
So, the word on the street is that the Kettle of Fish appearance will happen on 10/26 as originally schemed. (59 Christopher St., Greenwich Village, NYC.) It's going to start at 7 and end at 8. Also appearing: Lise Johnson,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2005 06:22 PM
Just a quick note to let you know: I've just learned that the date of that NY "show" is in a state of flux. It is currently slated for Wed. 10/26, but it may change to either the 24th or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2005 03:27 PM
Maud Newton says "you probably had to grow up in a whacked-out fundamentalist household" to appreciate this Cthulhoid parody of a Chick Tract. Well, I didn't but I do. I think my having had a largely Cthulhu-focused childhood might...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2005 06:17 PM
With very little to go on (the Amazon flap-copy description, this review w/excerpt, and a bit of hearsay) the message board kids try to project the probable quality and contents of King Dork. A "serious recipe for shittiness?" Or "fucking...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2005 06:50 PM
So I've got a few shows coming up. Wed., October 26, at The Kettle of Fish, 59 Christopher St., Greenwich Village, NYC. 7 pm. As far as I know, I'll be reading something from King Dork, and playing songs afterward....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2005 05:28 PM
Michele has a good post on Banned Books Week and the perversity of trying to mess with Captain Underpants. Of course, I agree with not banning stuff. Totally. But there are still weird ironies and contradictions in the American Library...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2005 04:34 PM
Are you ready for The Da Vinci Code Diet? First printing: 150,000. (Not to be confused with The Da Vinci Fitness Code.) I tried the Chariots of the Gods diet a ways back, and it didn't do much for me;...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2005 11:28 PM
A page from a school workbook, found in Berkeley:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2005 11:50 PM
So this is tax time for lazy, unorganized people like me who file extensions till the last possible moment, and my life could, at the moment, be accurately described as "receipt hell." I've got a couple of suggestions for a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2005 04:25 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2005 10:57 PM
Found at the Berkeley BART station, east entrance, by Jupiter....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2005 06:15 PM
Well, it's not actually "out" till April 11, but I just realized they're already doing advance orders of King Dork on Amazon. It has a sales rank (somewhere in the gazillions, one being the highest) so I suppose that means...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2005 06:49 PM
Michele very sweetly cites "I Don't Need You Now" as a song she wished she had written: I always wanted to be clever. Clever, as far as songwriting goes, means you have the ability to be witty and punchy while...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2005 06:36 PM
A Design head pays tribute to the power of the iconic maroon Catcher in the Rye cover. Somewhere along the way (Was it the mid-sixties? My attempts to find a chronology have been unavailing), Catcher acquired the cover it bore...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2005 06:39 PM
Bookslut's Michael Schaub includes King Dork in his Guide to Rock Novels. The list is pretty interesting. Who knew there were so many punk rock novels, for instance? But even though they're from Chicago and everything, somehow they missed this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2005 04:56 PM
I once wrote a song whose gimmick was telling time by the number of drinks rather than the number of hours and minutes. I'm not about to write another one, but that particular song did not exhaust all the possible...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2005 10:51 PM
Gawker has a good point about the NY school system's decision decision to scale back recruitment of teachers from overseas: Seriously: How will they possibly succeed in college if theyre not familiar with math classes taught by those with no...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2005 10:19 PM
Here's another Google contest, featuring recent web search terms that brought people to this blog over the past couple of months, divided into basic categories. The winner is my totally subjective favorite. 1. Simple Questions: what is happiness? is living...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2005 09:59 PM
Bill Quick has a new novel, a thriller called Inner Circles, which he has published as an e-book. In the original series of comments, since removed to clear up the inline comment clutter, there was some discussion over whether or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2005 10:02 PM
Terry Teachout pulls out an interesting factlet from a P.G. Wodehouse biography: the fee paid by Cosmopolitan magazine for the serial rights to Thank You, Jeeves in 1932 was $50,000, which would be over $600,000 in today's money. Cosmo has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2005 04:46 PM
Well, folks, I've been pretty lax on the blogging front. If I don't act fast, these few posts will soon evaporate and condense in the archives, leaving nothing but links. It's happened before and it'll happen again. What I've been...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 23, 2005 05:17 PM
Longtime readers of this blog may remember Ethan Stoller, the man behind the "band" Dynamite Ham, and his longterm concept album project contrasting my songs with those of Frank Loesser, by means of quirky and imaginative covers. Well, now the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2005 07:25 PM
Damian Counsel posted this analysis of the Shouty Woman song in pop music. Some Anastacia fans discovered the post, and now they're setting him straight in the comments....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2005 11:23 PM
My friend found this on Craig's List: I don't understand why some of you women have a problem when a guy posting a pic or e-mailing you a pic of them with "NO SHIRT ON". How can you assume that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2005 04:48 PM
Number nine....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2005 06:54 AM
I spent this weekend feeling superfluous and mostly rather out of place in Los Angeles at this conference/convention for an organization with the least memorable acronym I've ever come across: the SCBWI. It stands for the Society of Children's Book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2005 07:08 PM
Paul Morrissey on Andy Warhol: I really have to explain who Andy was, says Morrissey. He was a disabled man who was autistic, and dyslexic to a degree that he couldnt read one word. He was frightened and timid, had...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2005 05:07 PM
Tim Blair notes an interesting turn of phrase in The Age: On July 7 three trains and a bus in London killed 56 people - including the four suspected suicide bombers - and wounded 700. (via Norm.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2005 11:26 PM
The source isn't specified, but according to David T. at Harry's Place, the Guardian's NUJ Chapel held a special meeting yesterday to discuss the Dilpazier Aslam case. Aslam was present at the meeting, which produced the following, arguably pretty weird,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2005 09:08 PM
The War on Terror as viewed from the Bourne shell. (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2005 04:54 PM
The Guardian has dismissed Dilpazier Aslam, the "trainee journalist" and member of the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir whose recent column on "sassy" suicide bombers was spotlighted and ridiculed by Scott Burgess amongst others. I imagine some folks are going to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2005 09:33 PM
A ways back, I asked for suggestions for a proposed "best of" MTX compilation. Fastforward to now. If it surprises you to learn that I am no closer to arriving at a track list than I was nearly a year...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2005 06:56 PM
Cranky tips on how not to do acknowledgments, with instructive examples from Chuck Klosterman and Steve Almond. There is not one piece of the book publishing process that is not a potential well-spring of embarrassment. As with anything that is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2005 05:06 PM
So, like I said, the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart. On the same night, I'll be doing a brief set...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2005 09:33 PM
"Jokes designed to make kids laugh, while opening their minds..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 10:29 PM
Professor Bainbridge has his mind on important matters: I can't help wondering whether J. K. Rowling is as anti-American as the evidence seems to suggest. (via Donkephant.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 07:51 PM
Michael Totten, who is currently engaged in the launch of a centrist group blog called Donklephant (get it?) wonders why "conservatives" seem to tolerate centrists more than "liberals" do. I don't have an answer, though the observation squares with my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 06:59 PM
Spiegel interviews the novelist Ian McEwan about London, 7/7, Iraq, and, incidentally, his novel Saturday. Excerpts: What keeps getting forgotten here is that the people committing massacres in Iraq right now belong to al-Qaida. We're witnessing a civil war that's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 04:48 PM
Parents Against Bad Books in Schools provides this Sample Book Review Documentation Form, which recommends this grading system: For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide: Violent Content Basic (B): cut...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2005 12:02 AM
Andrew Sullivan reviews the Schmidt Report on cruel and abusive treatment at Gitmo in some detail. It is worthwhile, though uncomfortable, reading. Whether the incidents described count as "torture" or not is a matter of definition, perhaps; but it is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2005 07:17 PM
David T. at Harry's Place links to this twisted article from Indymedia UK. I only check out Indymedia when its loopier moments are linked by someone else (as here, for example) so I'm in no position to judge whether it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2005 06:18 PM
Moby points out this page, evidently a pic of the original "welcome" page for "Amazon.com books" from 1995. Note retarded logo and bizarro slogan: If you explore just one thing, make it our personal notification service. We think it is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2005 12:27 AM
Found in Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2005 06:54 PM
Harvey Pekar (yes, that Harvey Pekar) reviews Chris Sorrentino's "re-imagining" of the Patty Hearst kidnapping in the Baltimore Sun. He likes it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2005 02:40 AM
My friend Beth Lisick has a new book out, Everybody into the Pool. It's a series of humorous, charmingly told, stories about her semi-alternalife, but that description, while accurate, doesn't quite suffice. There are a lot of arch daily-life humorists...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2005 05:45 PM
The Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe: We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2005 04:11 PM
So the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart. On the same night, God willing, I'm going to stop by at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2005 02:41 AM
Hak Mao spots an apt punctuation error, if error it be, on the Where We Stand page of the Students Waving Placards website: We oppose everything, which turns workers from one country against those from another....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2005 12:29 AM
I disapproved of the AUT boycott of Israel for all the customary reasons, as might have been predicted, even though I willingly concede that there were well-intentioned ingenues amongst those who disagreed. However, this proposed boycott of an Israeli gay...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2005 01:42 AM
Found in Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 09:59 PM
On the eve of Live 8, Prospect's David Rieff revisits Live Aid, and the vexing topic of how politics and the behavior of totalitarian regimes can complicate the ethics of even the best-intentioned relief efforts: Did the mobilisation of public...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 08:44 PM
If you can think of a better way to start the day, I'd love to hear it, but I sincerely doubt you could do better than this: Eurodisco masters Dschinghis Khan performing "The Rocking Son of Dschingis Khan" on a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 05:13 PM
The WSJ examines YA novels with "heavy themes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 04:55 PM
A few days ago, I linked to Elizabeth Clementson's attack on MFA programs. Now writer Steve Almond responds to Elizabeth with a full-spectrum fisking. (It's down the left-side of the main Moby page.) Almond makes his distaste for Clementson and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 04:22 PM
Found in Berkeley: Unfortunately, I'm getting a Ring vibe here......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2005 12:37 AM
The editor of The Age thinks Douglas Wood should be more solicitous towards his kidnappers: I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood's use of the a---hole word, if I can put it like that, which I just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2005 05:43 PM
Harry takes on Eric Hobsbawm. Meanwhile, Guardian columnist Mark Lawson visits America, watches some TV, and concludes that this country really has become a theocracy to an "astonishing" extent. Last week an 11-year-old boy from Utah disappeared during a scout...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2005 04:17 PM
Beth sends along this transcription of a note she found on her way to church earlier this week. "I enjoy its almost poetic normality," she writes. So do I. (upon lined spiral paper, as written) Shake Well TAKe measuring cup...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2005 03:37 AM
From an interview with Daniel Pinkwater: Someone once said that no book has ever been written that could not be subtitled, "How to Be More Like Me." I am conscious never to write a book that could be so subtitled....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2005 01:28 AM
Is criticism too "snarky" these days? Or is everybody too nice? Those age-old questions have been revived and batted around by a certain art-focused segment of the blogosphere recently. I think it began with Neal Pollack's New York Times account...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2005 06:01 PM
The author of The Anarchist Cookbook disavows his own book on Amazon. (via Fimoculous.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 07:50 PM
Ambulance chiefs today urged the public not to ring 999 if they felt hot and sweaty after a 25% increase in calls... Liz Howarth, the services director of corporate development said: Many people are calling with complaints that they are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 06:32 PM
Elizabeth Clementson's "Down with MFAs" guest column on MobyLives (down the left-hand side of the main page) has sparked vigorous disagreement from various MFA-holding readers, as well as a plaudit or two. It seems that many people feel that what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 04:44 PM
Robin Cody has bowdlerized his own coming of age novel, cutting out the juicy bits in a new edition for teaching purposes. In one, the book's main characters -- all teens -- spend the night in a hotel room in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 04:41 PM
For those who might be interested, here's the first real advance review of King Dork. Warning: includes excerpts, spoilers, and Who lyrics....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2005 03:18 PM
I got a kick out of this anecdote about a "live commercial" for British Airways on the tube to Heathrow: ...on the train back to Heathrow, two men stopped in my car and started talking about how one of them...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2005 03:04 PM
Wow, King Dork's first joke Amazon review....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2005 08:08 PM
OK, I'm not "meme"-happy all of a sudden or anything. I feel a little embarrassed that I'm doing two in one month, but Ted Barlow "tagged" me so graciously that I feel I ought to be gracious back. Here it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2005 12:38 AM
Regular readers know that, like a lot of people, I collect "found" stuff. Usually that means written material, like letters, notes, shopping lists, that sort of thing, though it can include photos and other anomalous objects as well. Over the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2005 12:58 AM
As far as I know, this is going to be the front cover (plus spine) of King Dork: Here's the full drawing "underneath" the "torn off" corner: I say "as far as I know," because there's still a chance it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2005 01:48 AM
On re-reading your childhood: Im currently re-reading The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. The last time I read this book, I was 18. I know this because I write my name and date inside the front cover of all of my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2005 05:36 PM
Lucy Elmann had to get something off her chest, it seems, and a review of Francine Prose's A Changed Man was as good a forum as any: American sentimentality may once have seemed endearing, but now we know it's just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2005 04:28 PM
I am utterly charmed by the excerpts from the teen-written Harry Potter-y novel described in this article: The wind howled like a pack of wolves on the hunt and the ocean rolled fiercely, tossing a small, battered boat around in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2005 05:42 PM
This diagram of how the world works was found taped to a lamp post in Santa Monica in 2004 by frequent commenter and longtime associate Wes Biggs, who generously forwarded it to me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2005 03:38 PM
This kid's Napoleon Dynamite impression in the middle of a spelling bee is way funnier than it probably ought to be. (via the Corner.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2005 06:57 AM
It is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Judy Blume's Forever, prompting this interview-article. There's an amusing anecdote about Margaret Drabble's navel-genital confusion, and some interesting observations on the state of public morality, popular culture and publishing. Like this,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2005 06:14 PM
Or vice versa, maybe. Anyway, I've started posting music-related stuff on the suicidegirls.com "newswire." They're restructuring it to make it more "blogospheric," and along with their usual crew they've signed up me, Wil Wheaton, Susannah Breslin, and Michael Totten (though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2005 03:25 PM
An auction house is flogging items from Ayn Rand's personal library. The listing for Rand's copy of Mary McCarthy's The Humanist in the Bathtub includes transcriptions of several humorous marginal notes, one of which is the title of this post....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2005 12:00 AM
Remember that call for papers on "the gendered construction of public toilets"? Well Alex Beam actually interviewed the co-editor, Olga Gershenson, who sticks by her story: the project, she insists, is a "very serious project in an established field of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 11:40 PM
In the comments to the post immediately below, Kendra asks for more Father Feeley stories. This isn't exactly a story, and I'm pretty sure Kendra has heard it before, but here goes; One job you have as an altar boy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 06:36 PM
Andrew Sullivan posts an old, recycled, but still more or less funny Catholic joke: Leonardo Boff, Hans Kung and Benedict XVI all die on the same day. They arrive at the Pearly Gates and St Peter welcomes them and says...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 04:12 PM
"This website features a series of drawings made by children who were abducted by aliens for the alien purpose of creating a new race of alien/human hybrids." NB: (a) Drawings of aliens by the children the aliens abduct; (b) Drawings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 06:44 AM
There's not much to note about this review-blurb of Robert Stone's SLA documentary other than the fact that it appears in the Socialist Worker. Because of the deadpan irony I discussed in my pseudo-review a ways back, this film has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 01:58 AM
Found in Rockridge....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2005 11:49 PM
Sorry about the (more or less) duplicate entries below. The url for the mp3 had a space in the wrong place, and editing it somehow created another post. I've tried to delete that, but: I can't delete posts because most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 04:37 PM
Perky over-the-top PBS-style audio-acting and crazy Canadian accents are featured in this awesome edit of highlights from the cassette that came with the late 80s boardgame Girl Talk: Date Line. (From WFMU.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 04:30 PM
Lisa Carver reads around a dozen pieces of "chick lit" and lives to tell the tale: Have you seen this girl? She shops, talks, slogs through life, wielding her sense of humor like an itty-bitty knife. She specializes in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 03:43 PM
I don't usually like these "meme" chains, but this one appeals because of the randomness. Put your iTunes in alphabetical order by song and note the first track for each letter. Michele did it, and came up with a much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 04:02 AM
A former Nazi graphic designer named Borg has embarked upon an insane quest to get credit for his role in designing the VW logo: According to his lawyer, Borg presented the first draft in June 1939 before joining the German...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2005 08:59 PM
In re: the previous item about the Girl Power Gospel, a commenter over at the Anchoress mentions a story from a 1971 issue of National Lampoon entitled "The Story of Jessica Christ," by Tony Hendra. Her last breath at crucifixion:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2005 08:24 PM
The title of the book is: Judith Christ of Nazareth: The Gospels of the Bible Corrected to Reflect that Christ was a Woman. Not only do we get a Jesusetta named Judith, but there's the Prodigal Daughter, and The Lady's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2005 03:44 PM
Take a section from a Harry Potter book. Replace the letter "d" with "g" in the word "wand" each time it occurs. Watch the hilarity unfold. (via Gary Farber.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2005 10:47 AM
The Turner Prize committee is slipping: they actually short-listed a painter this time. Of landscapes and still-lifes, no less. The artist's work explores "the fundamental properties of painting," they say, by way of justifying their rather shocking choice. After years...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2005 05:32 PM
Robert Stone's SLA documentary (which I wrote about here) has been released in the UK. Here's an article-interview with Stone, who proffers this analogy: It was like Paris Hilton getting kidnapped by Al Qaeda, turning to Islam and becoming a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2005 05:07 PM
I just learned that, as of now, the official publication date for King Dork is April 11, 2006....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2005 06:39 AM
I've found that the best way to enjoy this teen-speak lexicon from the national website of Wales is to imagine the phrases and definitions being spoken in a Welsh accent. Especially "you're a right homie," and "talk to the hand...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2005 02:31 AM
Neil Armstrong's legal team is on the case....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2005 01:40 AM
A lot of people were taken aback by Tom Cruise's baboon-like God's Quarterback as Care Bear with Tight Trousers performance on the Oprah show last week. ("Something happened to you... Something happened to you...") In fact, though, I find this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 06:08 PM
This appears to be an elementary school kid's homework, found in Oakland. Emerson Elimentry monday may, 23. 2005 ANDREW Spelling List 1. quit: stop doing somthing 2. quack: a duck making noise 3. quick: somthing fast 4. quiet: not making...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 05:32 PM
...so you won't have to. James Spader describes his "very graphic, explicit, loving" sex scene with William Shatner for an episode of Boston Legal: You can tell a lot about a person by that first impression, that first smell. He...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 03:06 PM
Psst. If you take Stanley Fish's English Composition course, you don't actually have to write any English compositions. Pass it on....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 06:51 AM
According to this, the re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar (to commemorate its 200th anniversary) will tactfully refrain from revealing that the French lost....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 04:52 AM
John Whiteside Parsons embodied the supposedly counter-intuitive intersection of three related currents in the southern California culture of the '30s: Ritual Magick, Science Fiction and Rocket Science. It's about time someone wrote a book about him. More here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 02:04 AM
Roger Kimball reports on a call for papers on "the gendered construction of public toilets": This collection will work from the premise that public toilets, far from being banal or simply functional, are highly charged spaces, shaped by notions of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2005 03:48 PM
...that in Denmark, Lutheran ministers are faith-optional state employees?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2005 03:20 PM
"Slaying President Bush is simply immoral..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2005 03:06 PM
Here are some more search queries that have led people over here recently. (For all those who find my periodic google contests tedious, all I can say is you're getting off easy in re: me and tediousness.) I have noticed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2005 02:46 PM
As time goes on, you get older. It's kind of obvious, in a way, though people spend a lot of energy trying to evade this logic. Yet even though time flows as a steady, relentless stream, you don't always notice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2005 05:27 PM
I go over to Rosie O'Donnell's blog every now and again. I'm not sure why. Maybe just to see if she's still doing it. Or maybe just to check: is she still doing the weird poetry slam format? I like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2005 04:44 PM
And now it's time for another installment of Ellie's found diary. (Previous entries: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4.) The story so far: Ellie's relationship with Mario has been heading for rough waters, an approaching storm always just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2005 04:51 PM
Yet another intriguing Craig's List listing, entitled The most powerful collaboration since Lennon and McCartney: Here are THE two musicians to start looking out for, who have now teamed up to create powerful, epic, all original music. Think Alice In...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2005 12:06 AM
Here's another collection of interesting searches that have brought people to this blog. The searches in this collection fall into four broad categories. There are those who know what they want, and whose dreams of finding what they want on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2005 05:49 PM
I'd never heard this story before: a Church of England vicar gets his book published by a for-women-only specialty division of a publishing house by managing to leave the impression that he is a young, female Muslim of Indian origin....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2005 04:18 PM
Jeremy over at Who Knew? compares the Bill Moyers of yesterday with the Bill Moyers of today. I doubt it "means" much but it's an angle on Moyers I hadn't been aware of. I'd heard about Moyers's anti-Tomlinson campaign, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2005 03:13 AM
Jenn found this crumpled up love note/cry for help on Valentines Day at the Earth Sciences building at UC Berkeley. (She has generously allowed me to curate the item in exchange for a beverage - thanks Jenn!) It is written...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2005 06:45 PM
In this, this, and a great many other threads, the Democratic Underground crowd salutes George Galloway's courage, strength, and indefatigability. UPDATE: Some highlights: I am not kidding, when I heard Galloway today, I felt just like I did when I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 08:43 PM
Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations at The New York Times Co., dismisses complaints about the proposed $49.95 fee for accessing NYT "premium" content and proves that he knows his market: "People think nothing of ordering a $25...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 06:49 PM
Norman Mailer, posting on that Huffington thing, wonders whether Isikoff and Newsweek were set up by the US government as part of a Byzantine "counter-espionage" reverse public relations scheme. (I mean "Byzantine" in the figurative sense, though taking it literally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 05:58 PM
I don't know what's weirder: (a) that we have a "national cathedral" in Washington; or (b) that there's a Darth Vader head carved into the northwest corner of its nave. (via the Corner.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 03:51 PM
Christopher Hitchens on writing and being edited: I used the word Promethean and the [magazine editors] said, Take that out because people won't know what Promethean means. I said, Maybe they won't. I'll cut it out if you give me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 03:24 PM
Anonymous confessions from UC Berkeley students, most of which are quite staggeringly lame. The one currently at the top: I'm not really a Republican. I just don't care very much about politics, so I support Bush to piss people off....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2005 06:55 PM
This "found" item is a bit hard to describe. The author is attending a conference or meeting of some kind and has made some preparatory notes on a computer-printed page. One side of the page is a print-out of a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2005 04:32 PM
They're arguing about J. D. Salinger over here. (via Sheila.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2005 04:31 PM
You've got to watch your enunciation carefully when you do interviews, otherwise stuff like this can happen: In a profile of movie director Don Roos last Sunday, David Carr of The New York Times wrote: "The conventions of Hollywood filmmaking...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 06:03 PM
Jesse Walker couldn't make it past the first sentence of this Eric Alterman column about how even if civility in public discourse is important, an exception should probably be made when it comes to Robert Novak. "Such a lede," he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 02:55 PM
A person or persons unknown (but apparently from Belgium) have been arriving at this site trying to find information about the song "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word." He, or they, weren't too clear on the title at first....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 02:14 PM
Tales from the teen fiction ghetto. (via Bookninja.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 01:44 PM
He was found soaking wet in the middle of the night, unable to speak and dressed in an expensive dinner suit. The only real clue to his identity is an astonishing talent for the piano. The 6ft musician dubbed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 01:34 PM
If you're a fan of the classic educational/promotional film aesthetic, this promo clip for a new experimental centrifuge-ball bearing gun has it all. (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2005 05:40 PM
David Greenberg "subbed" for Daniel Drezner recently, and wrote this interesting essay about his first blogging experience. Sheila O'Malley has this response: The essay illuminated for me why I have no interest in blogging about politics anymore. I like to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2005 05:18 PM
Speaking of found items, remember that box of stuff related to hippie/musician/art dealer Will Spires, c. 1964? Well, Mr. Spires left a comment on that item, and we've exchanged a few emails. I have this idea that it might be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2005 04:29 PM
Here's another snip of Ellie's found diary, covering January 9th and 10th of 1975. (The "74" in the first entry is her error.) When we last looked in on Ellie, on January 8th, she was consumed with anxiety over her...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2005 03:59 PM
Compulsory voting would give the less well off a stronger political voice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2005 03:34 PM
As Bill Quick says, the administrators at this Hercules high school seem a bit less concerned about the welfare of the student who was severely beaten in a four-on-one attack in the boys' bathroom than they are worried that a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2005 06:56 PM
Michael Totten pointed out that my counter only appeared on the main page, and not on individual posts or archive pages, which meant that my "hits" were probably being severely undercounted. I never really thought about it or cared about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2005 04:56 PM
...to be on HarperCollins, there may be a lucrative sitcom cameo in your book's future: Those who thought a TV show positing Pamela Anderson as a bookseller was a laughable idea have turned out to be right. Its so laughable,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2005 04:38 PM
Have you seen this movie, Kingdom of Heaven? I'll admit, it's no Troy, but it's still a hoot. Kingdom of Heaven asks a question that has plagued historians for decades: what would happen if a late 20th-century, secular, agnostic, multiculturalist,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2005 03:08 AM
From the folks hosting MIT's time traveller convention, some tips on how to publicize the event so that people from the future will be able to find out about it: We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2005 05:49 PM
Here's a further excerpt from Ellie's "found" diary. (Part 1, and the general description of the collection of documents, is posted here; and here is part 2.) With this excerpt arises the first of several tantalizing Ellie-related questions: for some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 11:05 PM
Here's a pretty interesting interview with crusading atheist Richard Dawkins. Like many radical materialists, he affects, for rhetorical purposes, a failure to grasp that when he discusses religious experience and matters of faith he is not talking about the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 07:26 PM
I'm sure it will be commented upon ad nauseam by folks with more energy and insight than I happen to have right now, but I did get a kick out of this article on the new "writing sample" portion of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 04:44 PM
Another little slice of life found in Oakland. This is written in black ink on a page from a legal pad. Even if SBC wasn't mentioned in the text, I'd know these are the notes of an SBC customer service...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 03:42 PM
The other day I was wondering aloud about the differences and similarities between the rock and roll interview and its "literary" counterpart. This breezy profile of Ron Howard's wife Cheryl, who (like Linda Bruckheimer and Gigi Grazer) is a budding...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2005 04:45 PM
A Russian circus plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War by having monkeys dressed as Nazis. Anatoly Marchevsky, director of the Yekaterinburg circus, said he had first wanted leopards to be the Nazis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2005 09:50 PM
From Craig's List/NY, under the title "Why, God, Why..." Why is CL Women Seeking Men flooded with whores all of a sudden. Don't you skanks know there's a section just for you? Wake up, asking for "arrangements" and "sugardaddies" makes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2005 06:36 PM
"One nation, under your belief system..." (via Joanne Jacobs.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2005 12:56 AM
This interview with the chief executive for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting confirms what I probably should have suspected all along: the people who run PBS aren't actually that into TV and don't spend much time watching their own programming....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2005 12:31 AM
...coupled with a weakness for women and Champagne. The best obituary I've read in a while, of the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury. Excerpt: On his 9,000-acre estate at Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, he planted more than a million trees and,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2005 11:31 PM
Maureen Dowd phones it in from Rome, with a lazy compare-and-contrast between the Pope and Dick Cheney. This just in: "the new pope views the Roman Catholic Church as the one true religion." No way....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2005 05:52 PM
I've done hundreds, if not thousands, of rock and roll interviews over the years. They're pretty easy. The first question is usually "what are your influences?" Then they ask what your favorite breakfast cereal is, and maybe something about Star...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2005 05:05 PM
I just completed yet another step in the book publishing process: reviewing the copyedited manuscript. They print out your book, and an anonymous copyeditor goes through it and makes corrections and notes about style, continuity, grammar, discrepancies, factual accuracy, etc....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 07:39 PM
This letter, written in pencil and green ink on two stapled sheets of notepaper, appears to be a report to a schoolteacher from someone who was charged with supervising the class one day. Perhaps a substitute, a student teacher, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 05:13 PM
Recent searches that have turned up in my referral log: when a girl pee's blood what does that mean telepathy how to turn it off fortune cookie cake contemporary whats the colors on turtles mean...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 04:24 PM
Every so often, someone will post a comment to a post from long, long ago. Sometimes they're just spammers hoping not to be noticed. Sometimes, these comments come from those who just googled their way in to an obscure corner...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 04:19 PM
From Johann Hari's latest piece on Galloway, Oona King and Bethnal Green and Bow: I asked Galloway how many Muslims had been murdered by his friend Aziz. The correct answer: even more than have been slaughtered by Ariel Sharon, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 03:30 PM
Plenty of good lines in this Galloway profile by A. A. Gill. (via Harry's Place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2005 05:13 AM
Here's a whole website dedicated to demonstrating "the futility of using Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check." I doubt that this really needed demonstrating, in fact, but for what it's worth I think we can consider it demonstrated. According to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2005 06:40 PM
...and so am I. I quite enjoyed this wedding announcement, as a look into a strange yet distantly familiar world. (Veiled Conceit's vitriol seems a bit over the top to me, though - just my opinion, there.) The main point...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2005 05:02 PM
This lego church is really something else. (via Jonah Goldberg.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2005 02:33 AM
This link was forwarded to me by former bandmate Aaron, who believes it's a sign of the end times. Those signs seem to be thick on the ground these days, it's true, but it's kind of hard to disagree with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2005 06:15 PM
Dear Friend, You know the feeling... It's that gnawing feeling that you aren't getting any younger. The world is quickly passing you by and your book isn't written or published or out there. If you don't act soon, it may...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2005 06:02 AM
Here's another installment of Ellie's (found) diary. (The first installment, and the description of this packet of found materials, is here.) This section continues the entry for 1 - 8 - 75. I just talked to Mario. He says he's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2005 05:15 PM
In re: School reading choices could spell disaster: Has anyone ever actually loved a book he or she was forced to read in school? And is it possible to get over it after a decent interval, or do you just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2005 03:45 PM
Greg from the Talent Show says it's the funniest video ever. I'm not saying he's wrong, and he makes a good case, but "funny" just doesn't seem to cover it. If there is a place where kitsch intersects with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2005 04:46 AM
Found at La Mancha Plaza in north Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2005 09:10 PM
From Bookslut's interview with Ian Rankin: Being a frustrated rock star -- and lets face it, most male crime writers are -- its terrific to actually get up there with proper musicians and play some gigs versus standing up in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2005 05:20 PM
This is another piece from the collection of found stuff mentioned below. It is a letter, written in blue ink on eight pages of stationary from the La Posada Inn in Santa Fe New Mexico, to "William A. O." from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2005 12:05 AM
This is from an enormous packet of stuff I got for $3 at an Oakland junk/antique store. Most of it dates from 1964-5, and concerns one William Spires, who apparently ran a gallery called Pro Arte at the time. Materials...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2005 02:45 AM
The mother of all personal ads: WHERE N THE HELL ARE THE AVERAGE LOOKING SLIM OR BIG OR CHUBBY OR THICK OR GIRLS I KNOW THERES 1 GIRL OUT THERE THAT HAS ALOT MEAT ON THE TUMMY AND A BIG...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2005 02:10 AM
Harvard's sexiest librarian has lost her case. While it is a sad day for those of us who have been discriminated against because of our sexiness, I for one intend to keep up the fight....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2005 07:14 PM
I'm in the minority, I'm sure, but Terry Castle's hilarious kiss 'n' tell account of her life as a Sontag groupie actually made me feel ever so slightly more positively disposed towards la Susan than I was before reading it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2005 04:59 PM
So I finished the fourth draft of King Dork earlier this week. It appears that it's going to be the final one, more or less - though I guess you never know. There's a whole other phase of copy editing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2005 05:29 PM
This story has been making the rounds: a high school student in Chula Vista mounts a successful campaign to replace one the school's passing bells with "Slow Ride" by Foghat. "Every story sounds better with the name 'Foghat' in it,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2005 04:48 PM
Michele recently wrote a thoughtful little essay about her own sense of "buyer's remorse" with regard to her vote for Bush in the election. I imagine there are quite a few people teetering on that particular edge these days, though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2005 05:39 PM
Sorry I couldn't help out, but I hope whoever arrived at this site via this query eventually got what he was looking for....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2005 03:39 PM
Too sexy for Harvard, yet arguably not sexy enough for the TGI Friday's cocktail lounge. (The title of this post comes from the original article, here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2005 02:07 PM
So, the MTX is playing on Friday, April 1st in Santa Cruz at the Beach Boardwalk. At 6:30 pm., they say. We'll be playing on the Summer Bandstand: start at the Cocoanut Grove arcade, go past the Pirate Ship, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2005 07:32 PM
This guy has me all figured out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2005 09:29 PM
The tragic history of the Ice Capades, via Sheila O'Malley. I never saw the Ice Capades in person, but I still feel I lived the experience through the numerous television commercials. Same goes for the Lippizzaner Stallions (which is still...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2005 04:47 PM
I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, the comments on this blog are now working, more or less....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2005 04:52 PM
From Craig's list NY (via Gawker): 800 pages needs to turn into 350-400 pages. HELP! Writer seeks editor with book editing experience and loads of reading knowlege and familiarity of topics pertaining to spirituality, NLP, meditation, hypnosis, and the spiritual...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2005 02:23 AM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2005 01:10 AM
Here's a summary of the embarrassing/amusing public snark-a-thon between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley over the ratio of female to male writers on the LA Times opinion pages. There's nothing new for those who have followed it all, except, perhaps,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2005 01:29 AM
The title of this post is a quote from Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. The issues are, however, quite serious: why are women under-represented in the little drawings featured in IKEA assembly instructions? And are the clothes drawn on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2005 04:46 AM
Sheila O'Malley turned up this quote from Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng): Here's the problem with Write what you know: What too many aspiring writers know, it turns out, is that a suburban American adolescence causes vague feelings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 09:40 PM
A shopping list found in a Biblical concordance at the Berkeley Public Library: Milk Tide Shaving Cream Hamburger? Broth P-Nut Butter Shoe Inserts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 08:53 PM
If you're not familiar with the recent Ken Livingstone antisemitism controversy, Harry's Place has been all over it. Anyway, it looks like Red Ken has a new defender....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 08:50 PM
Meet Dschinghis Khan: a natural offspring of those days a long time ago when all signs were mercilessly pointing toward disco... With its unconventional use of complex historical problems and extravagant costumes, the young artists had obviously hit the nerve...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 07:35 AM
From craig's list: over 40 burly guy... looks 30, seek to join form or jam with drummer, possible singer, and either guitar(s) or bass etc... not looking to do sell-out crap... looking for short to mid-length project, or weekend house...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 07:26 AM
Found on the street. This is a school assignment from a kid named Robert, perhaps for a speech or presentation? It is computer-printed in large type on a half-sheet of paper. This is an ornamental gourd. It is moldy, lumpy,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 07:19 AM
I missed this last week on kausfiles. (Scroll down to "Open book/PC Hell"-- hey what's with the godfather of blogging not having permalinks to individual posts? I guess it's kind of charming, in a quaint old world way): Jada Pinkett...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2005 05:47 PM
Lots of folks have linked to that Independent article with the surprising headline: Was Bush Right After All? Clive Davis notes and quotes a classic bit of rhetoric in the main editorial, which is behind subscription: Yes, it was heartwarming...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2005 03:40 PM
Williamsburg "hipsters" rage against the machine. I like this bit: "All our favorite coffee shops will become Starbucks, and our cute little North Seventh pharmacy will become Duane Reade." For anyone needing more convincing, the women pull up illustrated renderings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2005 01:32 AM
An overheard conversation: Man: ...and at some point you've got to wonder why all of these so-called accidents are happening to Democrats, and never to Republicans. But if you ask the question publicly, they marginalize you. They say you're crazy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2005 09:30 PM
I found this "to do" list written on a post-it somewhere in North Oakland: fix washing mach. Yosemite bagels go to church...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2005 05:07 PM
The Queen meets Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, whom she asks: "have you been playing a long time?" "We're all from Surrey," said Clapton....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2005 04:29 PM
Since December, patrons who order Jack Daniel's whiskey at Gino's, the Sellwood restaurant known for its pasta and mammoth Caesars, have been asked to try a brand with no affiliation to President Bush. (Brown-Forman, the company that distills JD, supported...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2005 03:54 PM
Sound advice from Jonathan Freedland in today's Guardian: the call for freedom throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a sound and just one - even if it is a Bush slogan and arguably code for the installation of malleable...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2005 05:18 PM
Found in front of Art's Crab Shak in North Oakland....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2005 05:31 PM
... as soon as I realized my mistake, I screamed and pressed the mute button, but not before I heard the sound of a Legacy of Dissent being strangled by Corporations... As I mentioned earlier, there has been some trauma...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2005 04:31 PM
Here is a found Valentine, from Kesha to Ferrari. To: Ferrari The relationship we have is like something I've never had before, something I thank god for giving me. We have had times good & bad but we have more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2005 06:23 AM
Ladies: how to kiss your man if he's secretly gay; or if he's about twelve; or, if you want him to run from the room screaming. via the president. (title comes from this related piece of disinformation.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2005 02:15 AM
Maybe I should have known it all along, but I just realized that one of my all-time favorite things in this world is the way Mick Jagger mispronounces Oklahoma City in the Rolling Stones' version of "Route 66." (The ultra-British...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2005 02:00 AM
This is another peek into the world of Jean, Irene, and Eric that I mentioned below. Sadly, Fluffles does not make an appearance in this document. It's a letter from Irene to Jean, and it is quite long. But the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2005 04:12 PM
I'm aware that some people don't share and can't grasp my interest in "found" objects. But, for those who "get" it, here's another. For some reason, I've been hitting the found objects jackpot lately. This one came with quite a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2005 12:28 AM
More found stuff. I have been sitting on this for awhile, because (a) it's the greatest bundle of found materials I have ever had in my possession, and part of me almost feels like keeping it to myself; (b) there's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2005 02:41 PM
Sooner or later, and one way or another, pretty much everybody ends up writing books for young readers....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2005 04:02 PM
Last week I noted a packet of found materials from the lives of Julie and Kelly. Here are a few more items. item 6 A receipt from Trader Joe's, dated 08/07/04, listing these items: MORETTI LAGER BEER GANACHE CHOCOLATE TORTE/FRZN...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2005 07:52 PM
Well, maybe it's no big surprise, but my blog exorcism didn't end up casting out all the demons after all. Maybe I said patris when I should have said filii. I'll keep trying. But in the meantime, a rather nasty...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2005 07:09 PM
From the Alternative Tentacles e-newsletter: A short time ago East Bay Ray faxed Jello Biafra a proposal to sell the DK's version of "Viva Las Vegas" to one of TV's all-time worst programs on TV's all-time worst network- "American Idol"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2005 05:11 PM
Have you ever found yourself wondering: would a traditional Hopi be able to understand the Mr. T Experience song "Our Days are Numbered?" Ron over at Blog of the Hurricane has the answer, in a essay he wrote for his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2005 02:38 PM
I guess this is Found Stuff day over here at Dr. Frank's What's-it. Today I found a hoard of wedding cards, Christmas cards, birthday cards, and other random stuff from the lives of two people named Kelly and Julie. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2005 07:42 PM
Another found item. This is a transcription of a fragmentary letter found in north Oakland. It had been torn up, and this is one of the pieces, so one side has the left bits missing, while the other is missing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2005 04:00 PM
I've had occasion to comment on Neil Clark's unique brand of totalitarian nostalgia before. While I doubt he will ever again meet the standard set by his groundbreakingly perverse "Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience," I still keep rooting for him. Perhaps...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2005 03:19 PM
Well blow me down and call me Willie. I've just learned that Dan Treacy, who is as "back" as I suppose anyone can ever be, has a blog. Excerpt: i worked for swansong records..the led zepp dudes in 1977 after...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2005 02:46 PM
Long-time confidante and all-around great gal Tristin reviews the Manchurian Candidate remake, summarizing the film's "message" thus: they are mobilizing against us, fellow boomers, we must re-subscribe to the Nation RIGHT AWAY...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2005 02:04 PM
Thanks to Michele and her formidable horde of webette associates, I have learned that the posting problem is most likely a bug in the preview function of my Movable Type. It works fine if I don't preview, which is what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2005 03:33 AM
Thanks for all the comments on my cranky Whole Foods/organic homily. I hadn't realized there would be such strong opinions on the whole thing. There's another comments-thread on the subject of Whole Foods and my post over at Matt Welch's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2005 03:19 AM
Test 2. another test, without using preview....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2005 03:10 AM
Hey, sorry for the weird, truncated entry below. For some reason, my MT set-up isn't allowing me to include links. It just cuts off everything after the first well, since it's being cut off, I can't type it or the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2005 02:05 PM
Thanks for all the comments on my cranky Whole Foods/organic homily. I hadn't realized there would be such strong opinions on the whole thing. There's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2005 01:54 PM
I've never been an "organic" kind of guy, even though I live in a place where everyone is always falling over themselves to be as "organic" as possible at all times. It's not that I'm hostile to the organic people....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2005 07:27 AM
Well, once again rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Still working on the book, which is occupying most of my mental energy - high volume blogging seems to work best when you don't have anything better to do,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2005 03:24 PM
Be sure to view the slide show of images from one of TV series discussed in this article about a North Korean crackdown on long hair. Excerpt: The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2005 05:49 PM
Computer-printed in huge, bold, Times New Roman, filling an entire sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper: RULES: 1 - At the end of the game, each team member will get to eat all the almonds that he or she...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2005 05:29 PM
Well, maybe I wouldn't go quite that far. But I am back in the USA. England was fine: lots of relatives, quaint customs, rickety telecommunications infrastructure, heavy, stodgy, greasy, delicious food, strong beer, five TV channels, one of which never...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2005 05:19 PM
Merry Christmas, folks. See you next year - if there is a next year! And can I crash on your couch, assuming we're still allowed to have couches?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2004 05:45 PM
This is a school assignment of some kind. On the reverse side it says in large letters: "Found It!" At school I learn about busniess. I want to thankyou for teaching our class how to play the busniess game. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2004 01:03 AM
I've been reading The Voices of Guns, a lengthy journalistic account of the whole SLA story published in 1977. It's not particularly well-written even when it's not rambling and repetitive, but it is still as fascinating as its subject, of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2004 11:33 PM
My blogging has been slow, thin, and fitful mostly because I'm spending my laptop time working on my Young Adult Novel. Or I'm supposed to be. It's "finished," but not done. When you write a book, you don't just do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2004 05:06 PM
Hugo Chavez has been awarded, and has accepted, the prestigious Gadhafi International Human Rights Prize for 2004. The award is "in appreciation of his stances." Previous International Human Rights Prize recipients include Fidel Castro and Louis Farrahkan. (via Marc Cooper,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2004 08:13 PM
I just finished reading Bill Ayers's memoir, Fugitive Days. It's a puzzling book. The first 2/3 tells a straightforward and more or less typical story of the "making" of a 60s radical consciousness (all-American privileged childhood; stint at an oppressive...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2004 06:25 PM
Sorry for the silence. I've been involved in some bizarre literary activities and just couldn't fit any blogging in. This quote has been making the rounds, and it isn't bad, so I figure I may as well join the party....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2004 03:33 PM
A worthy cause. (thanks once again, Tris.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2004 02:42 PM
David T. over at Harry's Place discusses the new Animals at War memorial, dedicated to "the millions of animals which have been killed in conflict while serving their country."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2004 06:55 PM
Continuing the theme of the previous post, I saw the Patty Hearst film yesterday (Guerilla: the Taking of Patty Hearst.) It's not really "about" Patricia Hearst, nor really even the history of the SLA, though the SLA story is sketched...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2004 03:09 PM
I just finished reading Bringing the War Home, by Jeremy Varon. It's a parallel narrative and analysis of the story of 60s-radical terrorism in the US and Germany, and it's by far the best thing on the subject that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2004 04:27 PM
I got a kick out of this story: a tax dissident places an ad in USA Today taunting authorities; high-speed chase ensues. The in-chase cell-phone conversation between the fugitive and another tax protester named Cindy is probably my favorite part:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2004 02:56 PM
Craigslist-diving is almost as rewarding as apologies.com-diving or practically any other sort of web-diving. It's impossible to keep up with all of these windows into other worlds, and this sad fact, owing partly to my obsessive-compulsive temperament no doubt, provokes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2004 02:32 PM
Apology accepted!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2004 04:11 PM
Simon Hoggart reports on a recent meeting of the Impeach Tony Blair Movement, a motley crew of Conservative politicians, Lib Dem spoilers, fringe agitators, and Celebrated Artistes. Sadly, some of the most colorful characters on the list (George Galloway, Boris...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2004 03:54 PM
Further background on Theo van Gogh from Salon.com....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2004 07:47 PM
From apologiesaccepted.com:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2004 06:12 PM
An invigorating "appreciation" of Israel, or perhaps rather of Israelis, from Julie Burchill. Even whilst bracing myself for the storm of anguish unleashed whenever anyone types the I-word, I can't resist quoting this incidental bit, because I've certainly "been there":...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2004 04:45 PM
As I've noted before (here and here) I'm quite a fan of the Maoist Internationalist Movement's film and music reviews. Here's the review of The Incredibles, which, as it turns out, "leans solidly fascist." The MIM reviewer also has a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2004 01:39 AM
Clive Davis quotes the following anecdote from Richard Pipes's Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-belonger: I entered a streetcar in Leningrad and to buy a ticket took out the loose change from my pocket: mixed with Soviet coins was a Kennedy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2004 08:42 PM
More from Oliver Kamm on the Chomsky Cult. UPDATE: Here's Kamm's follow-up post, which includes some cranky correspondence from the elusive and rather excitable Michael Hardesty....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2004 03:35 PM
I have a friend who is a member of a Berkeley parenting message list, and she occasionally forwards some of the best ones. A common dilemma among these parents: worries that their male children are displaying disturbing signs of masculinity,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 08:55 PM
I enjoy Oliver Kamm's formidable attacks on Noam Chomsky as I enjoy all of his writing, not only as informative lectures, but also as tightly-constructed masterpieces of understated, withering rhetoric. Even when I don't link to them in fact, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 07:50 PM
Johann Hari interviews G. Gordon Liddy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 04:36 PM
Andrew Sullivan parses out William Kristol's "Thanksgiving Message."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 03:58 PM
Wanna see a photo of Hungary's ambassador to the US jamming with Tommy Ramone at the Hungarian Embassy? Go here. The US ambassador to Russia is on drums. They played "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Beat on the Brat," and "Let's Dance." (via...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 03:43 PM
This fellow, a presenter on Britain's Channel 4 news, appears to view the Iraq conflict primarily as an "ideological and military clash of Christian fundamentals with Islamist fundamentals." He believes the Islamist "fundamentals" might receive more favorable press if they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 03:23 PM
Here's a huge collection of anonymously-posted love letters (via metafilter.) The title of this item comes from this one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 12:51 AM
I don't know quite what to make of this tale of two American Episcopal priests, married to each other, secretly "Druids," who apparently managed to slip this Mother Goddess ritual into the official Episcopal Church USA website before public exposure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 06:02 PM
The heroine, Whitney Blake, is a 30-year-old singleton looking for love and writing a diary. Like Bridget Jones, Whitney battles with her weight and assorted neuroses. Unlike Miss Jones, however, she is a virgin whose life is free of heavy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 05:31 PM
David Aaronovitch cites a new ICM poll which reveals that "most Britons agree that there is much or some truth in the claim that the Bush administration knew in advance about the 11 September plot, but decided to let it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 03:14 PM
Scroll down to this young lady's list of heroes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 02:55 PM
Its about time we instigated a prestigious award for the first world leader to tell Bono to get lost. Here is the U2 lead singer, talking about his chat with Gerhard Schrder: Germanys bumpy economy was making Chancellor Schrder nervous...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 02:49 PM
This AFP photo of a "British hooligan in the streets of Belgium" has this caption: The typical Briton is polite, witty and phlegmatic, but lacks a certain style and has a dental hygiene issue while having an occasional drinking problem....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 02:44 PM
I know that statistics can be manipulated to serve any ends, and I have no confidence in the universal applicability of any poll, particularly when you're talking about context-less pieces of micro-data. And having graduated from a supposedly elite university...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2004 04:43 PM
"Islam is terribly misunderstood ... Personally, I think it's a good religion," he said. "And I'm an atheist." (via Blog of the Hurricane)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2004 04:18 PM
The best stories have a beginning, a middle, a violent climax, a deceptive resolution with a hint of worse to come, and finally a satisfying, ironic punchline. This one (via Richard Bennett) has it all. I can't wait for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2004 03:45 PM
1.) Check out this virtuoso three-year-old xylophonist: her beautiful expression makes this an excellent performance. (via Harry's Place.) 2.) This probably shouldn't have cracked me up quite as much as it did, but what can I say? I'm a profoundly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2004 04:38 PM
More from Robert Kagan on the US/Europe divide, with an emphasis on "the genuinely elusive and malleable concept" of legitimacy: Discovering where legitimacy lies at any given moment in history is an art, not a science reducible to the reading...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2004 02:40 PM
I guess what Robert Fisk is implying here is that American or pro-American forces may have murdered Margaret Hassan in order to make the "insurgency" look bad. He also implies that the real insurgents only remove the heads of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2004 01:26 PM
More on the San Francisco state of mind, written in reaction to the quote from Fat Mike in this article. Excerpt: San Francisco is an island surrounded by a bubble shaded by a giant rainbow flag sheltered by the First...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 10:45 PM
TNR's Peter Beinart notes that the Democratic Party seems unusually complacent in defeat, pointing out that post-defeat "unity" is not necessarily a virtue. He really has a point: many Democrats appear to believe that the thing to do in 2008...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 09:08 PM
This was part of an intriguing packet of documents I received as a birthday present from a generous benefactor. It was found in San Francisco on the street. It is only the tip of a marvelous iceberg, but here it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 06:15 PM
Welcome to the first and only adult site made by and featuring a cast of sexy vegans and vegetarians! Veg Porn is alternative porn and sex-positive culture for herbivores and those who love them, and we think you'll find something...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 03:38 PM
Of all the Sorry World photos out there, this one has a poetry all its own: (via Bill Quick) UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2004 04:39 PM
George Galloway's libel case against the Telegraph has begun. Favorite bit so far, from QC Richard Rampton: "he himself freely admits, he put his foot in his mouth by making some remarks which were open to interpretation - and needless...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2004 04:25 PM
Intense hypnotherapy is, apparently, the answer to "post-election selection trauma". I have an idea that Norm Geras's prescription would be just as effective (though admittedly, less hilarious), but then I would, wouldn't I?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 05:28 PM
Way back when I was considering whether to pursue an academic career, a wise and beloved professor took me aside and calmly explained that someone like me (white, male, "classically" liberal, non-Marxist) did not have the barest prayer of ever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 04:28 PM
It's true. I can go to New York and order sauted fiddle-head fern on my hamburger and no one bats an eye. And while I'm at the restaurant, where the bill will come to around half the price of an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 03:09 PM
Unless there's some kind of glitch in the translation, this bizarre article comes rather close to expressing approval of the murder of Theo van Gogh, and accuses him of "abusing his right to free speech." Why it should appear on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 07:05 AM
Congratulations, Christ Opher. The irritating usenet-y comments of your alias Deep Storm have finally irritated me enough to kill-file you, which I suppose was your goal. Takes me back to my college days......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2004 10:20 PM
Here's an interesting 3-D election map. The Chicago area, as per tradition perhaps, appears to have had more than its share of voters, but I'm assuming that's just a trick of perspective or the curvature of the globe or something....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2004 10:15 PM
According to Andy Bowers of Slate, the Guardian's notorious Operation Clark County ("a crazy British plot") really did influence the election: [G2 editor Ian] Katz ... said he knew all along that the letter-writing project could backfire. So, did it?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2004 08:39 PM
David Aaronovitch discusses the seemingly widespread notion that the 2004 election is best understood as a Philip Pullman/gnostic parable, a spiritual war where the bad guys won. (He has a slightly different notion.) Also, Harry provides some perspective on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2004 04:14 PM
Matt Welch has a hilarious post on how true blue, bred-in-the-bone Blue State elite-types put on "jes plain folks" costumes in order to help dramatize their gloat-a-thons over the election results. James Taranto killed him a bear when he was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2004 01:59 PM
Norm Geras anticipates and laments four more years of this: Had John Kerry won on Tuesday, you can be confident of one thing. This would have been widely hailed by left, liberal or progressive opinion as a triumph and vindication...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2004 06:24 PM
From this site, via Instapundit....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2004 03:14 PM
I was listening BBC Radio 4 over the internet this morning and I heard a report on this. At first I wondered whether it was part of a radio drama, rather than news, but it turns out it's true. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2004 06:20 PM
I wish Andrew Sullivan really did do a Van Halen Award....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2004 04:47 PM
I don't have time to dwell on it (and a good thing, too) but the Guardian's threat to flood the Clark County, OH electorate with hectoring and, quite likely, largely incomprehensible letters continues in the face of not altogether unanimous...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2004 03:05 AM
Quote of the day, from the winner of a contest for college journalists sponsored by Newsweek and MTV: Sometimes I feel that no matter how I vote, there will still be war, crime and poverty. via Cathy Seipp, who has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2004 06:09 PM
Will Shetterly, author of Dogland, is auctioning off some slots in his new novel. Bid here for the dedication; and here if you want to be an actual character. There's also a raffle. I'm getting a vague J. Peterman/Kramer vibe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 06:58 PM
The government agency in charge of airport security spent nearly a half-million dollars on an awards ceremony at a lavish hotel, including $81,000 for plaques and $500 for cheese displays, according to an internal report obtained by The Associated Press....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 06:32 PM
If you missed Jon Stewart's one-man assault on Crossfire, here it is. via Ken Layne. UPDATE: I can't resist pulling this out of the comments. Aaron points out the Washington Post's account: "You know what's interesting though?" Stewart shot back....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 01:04 PM
I've read a few reviews of Team America, and the reviewers all seem to be trying pretty hard to persuade themselves that the movie isn't all that funny. Well, I just saw it and here's my review: it is very,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 02:57 AM
William Gibson adapts a classic Soviet era joke....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2004 05:52 PM
If you've got nothing better to do for the next fourteen minutes and forty-nine seconds, this LotR-based Michael Moore parody has its moments. (via Cold Fury.) Or, if you prefer, there's this Schoolhouse Rock imitation, "inspired by the writings of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2004 05:14 PM
My only comment on the debate: the questions were terrible. They should just eliminate the middleman and let Sally Jessy Raphael moderate next time, rather than just feeding her questions to a doddering, tooth-sucking, half-wit "newsman." Or Montel Williams. He...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2004 03:17 PM
Some things that sound too good to be true end up actually being true, though not very often. According to this, this one "checks out." A guy on Jeopardy was cheated out of $200 when Alex Trebek rejected his response...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2004 02:36 PM
H. D. Miller says this is the best blog, ever, and it's pretty hard to disagree with him....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2004 05:36 PM
If you live in Clark County, OH, you run a serious risk of receiving unsolicited letters from Guardian readers telling you how to vote. They're handing out names and addresses from the registration rolls. The authors of the four most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2004 03:02 PM
First the movie stars. Then the rock stars. Now it appears that Kerry/Edwards has the hotly-contested novelist vote all sewn up. via Roger L. Simon, who happens to be one of the few dissenters. By the way, if the Amazon.com...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2004 05:39 PM
This : That....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2004 05:28 PM
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About has been on my reading list for awhile now, though I haven't got round to it yet. Somehow it managed to escape me till now that the author, Guardian columnist Mil Millington,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2004 03:18 PM
I'm talking about that guy that pops up every two and half minutes to tell you to stop weighing yourself and how you think you're losing fat when all you've lost is meaningless weight. He got on my last nerve...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2004 06:26 AM
This quote from this interview piece seems like something of a disaster for the Kerry campaign. Democratic partisans will downplay it, and the Bush campaign may well end up over-playing it, but there's still a fair chance that it could...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2004 02:16 AM
The Pagan Case for Re-electing President Bush via Accidental Verbosity...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2004 05:26 PM
From Jen Online, the magazine for Mormon teens, here's a page of Modest Clothing "fashion fixes". Example: It's easier to find cute baggy overalls than it is to find jeans that aren't low. So think about looking for overalls or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2004 03:44 PM
According to ABC's post-debate poll, 85% of Kerry supporters thought their guy won, 2% thought Bush won, and 12% thought it was a tie. Among Bush supporters, it was Bush 84%, Kerry 1%, Tie 13%....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2004 12:01 AM
So in-between the pre-game show and After Hours, there was this debate, and it was, if nothing else, great television. It was high drama, with a lot of yelling, interpersonal tension, and a twist to separate Act I from Act...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2004 07:21 PM
Has anyone else noticed how much the pre-debate coverage on all the cable news shows kind of resembles MTV's TRL? UPDATE: Now I'm watching MSNBC Debate After Hours and it's reminding me of a PBS pledge break......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2004 01:09 AM
Like a lot of people, I've always vaguely disapproved of parents giving their kids pretentious first names. No one I've known who has been saddled with one has ever liked it much. It reflects poorly on the parents - it's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2004 06:30 PM
Ken Layne points out that there have been a whole lot of explosions in the globe in the last 24 hours. More than usual? I haven't been checking, so I don't know, but it kind of seems like it......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2004 04:44 PM
Item: the city of Livermore suddenly realizes that the mural-style floor mosaic they commissioned from a Miami artist for the public library misspells the names of eleven famous people, including Eistein, Van Gough, Michaelangelo, and Shakespere. Artist blames the city...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2004 03:50 PM
The Case of the Purloined Monkey, via Ken Layne....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2004 04:27 PM
A grumpy Guardian reader reacts to Glenn Reynolds's latest column: A load of typical America drivel, that lacks any historical and cultural awareness. Instead it is dressed up in pseudo-arguments and references to the constitution, that pile of mumbo-jumbo....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2004 02:53 PM
According to PopBitch: Al-Jazeera is going through a big re-branding exercise in an effort to become a CNN-like global news network. They're currently recruiting a big name presenter for their new flagship nightly news show. Among the applicants for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2004 02:26 PM
My favorite assessment of the VP debate comes from Matt Welch: I'll fourth the emerging consensus that tonight was basically a split decision, with Cheney getting the slight nod mostly because he's much more credible on reminding me of my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2004 12:56 AM
The traditional "how are you going to pay for it?" Republican taunt has a ludicrous ring to it these days. I'd have thought it wise for Bush not to "go there," as they say, if he could help it. But...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2004 04:24 PM
Kerry's line about passing the "global test" was a gaffe. As soon as he said it, everyone watching instantly thought, "wow, the Republicans are really going to have a great time with that one." Even George Bush, whose bulb has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2004 03:12 PM
This long review by Paul Berman has actually bumped Philip Roth's new novel up a few spots on my "to do" list. I can't remember the last time that happened. The end seems to have been chopped off, though....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2004 12:20 AM
I haven't seen the Metallica Get in Touch with Their Feelings movie yet, but it sounds like a hoot, judging from the quotes contained in this flippant comparison of this film to the Spinal Tap one. Example: "I'm used to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2004 07:11 PM
It's a funny old world, where domestic tranquility can be shattered by the Hutton Inquiry, only to be made whole again by a healing distaste for Ralph Reed....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2004 04:48 PM
According to this, one of the Beslan terrorists is a British citizen, who, along with two Algerians who were "based in London until recently," attended the Finsbury Park mosque....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2004 03:30 PM
Gene over at Harry's Place came across this one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2004 06:57 AM
"My guess is that it's an implant, not something stuck in his ear." "Someone should alert the Dems or the folks who run the debates. A scanning receiver in the building should pick up the signal. I assume the signal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2004 07:01 PM
Good column from Aaronovitch, on the debate and keeping your eye on the ball: And this takes me to what was the most worrying part of Kerry's thinking, as revealed in Miami. 'You know, the President's father did not go...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2004 05:39 PM
I admit, I found zefrank's emotive reading of a 419 spam message way funnier than I probably should have. via Hit and Run...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2004 11:18 PM
Harry over at Harry's Place provides an astute Brit's-eye-view of the debate, concluding: Of course American voters, who after all are who matter in all of this, have a whole range of domestic issues facing them as well and on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2004 03:21 PM
I don't feel up to attempting a full post mortem on the debate last night, but I will say I was shocked by how well Kerry came off. He didn't "win," by any means. But I had expected a train...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2004 06:40 PM
Do you feel like watching Another State of Mind again, with the director's commentary turned on? Neither do I, particularly. But if you do, Cathy Seipp has some inside info. on it. The commentary, I mean....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2004 03:40 PM
Kidnappers of French Journalists in Iraq Issue Statement Praising France via DailyPundit....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2004 09:09 PM
Sheila O'Malley posts a list of banned or "challenged" books, from the American Library Association's annual banned books week promotion. Of course, I am against banning books. Absolutely against it. No book should ever be banned or restricted. To any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2004 06:31 PM
Here's an interesting take on Foucault's notorious enthusiasm for the '79 Iranian revolution and his sub-career as a Khomeini apologist. via Andrew Sullivan....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2004 02:45 PM
J. D. Lasica examines the notion that the Google News robots accidentally tend to aggregate right-ward. One theory on why a search for "John Kerry" yields more negative polemical articles than you might expect is this: mainstream news publications refer...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2004 04:21 PM
Admittedly, I'm new to this whole book-writing thing. But that didn't prevent me from affecting a kind of knowing, self-important, on-the-inside attitude toward this essay on writers whose books never quite get all the way finished. At any rate, ingenue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2004 04:39 PM
Johann Hari interviews Chrisopher Hitchens. Norm Geras takes a hi-lighter to the words of Guardian columnist Jonathon Steele. A stimulating review/overview of Norman Sherry's Graham Greene biography. Cathy Seipp on the adaptability of contrarian impulses learned in early childhood. Ken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2004 04:10 PM
via Instapundit today. A special new crime in which a certain class of defendants shall be given an "opportunity" to prove their innocence to the state rather than the other way around? To an unschooled, naive legal eye like mine,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2004 08:39 PM
Like a lot of people, I really couldn't care less about the substance of the typewritergate allegations. You mean George W. Bush avoided serving in Vietnam and got help through family connections and was kind of a fuck up? No...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 05:30 PM
Perhaps it's in poor taste even to post this, but it's been cracking me up ever since I happened upon it (via Fleshbot.) So I can't resist. Go here. Be sure to click through all the "mores" for the full...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 04:52 PM
If you haven't happened on it already, you might want to check out Ben Weasel's lengthy interview with me. (There are supposed to be 23 installments, of which 11 have been posted so far. The first is here, and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 04:46 PM
Well, folks, I let the blog evaporate, and I apologize. A stretch of hard and fast living in Rotterdam, a final final tax extension deadline, and a young adult novel all got in the way. It happens. Thanks to all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 04:24 PM
1. "The US has 13,000 career sociologists, a potential for extraordinary intellectual hegemony." 2. "In absolutely negativizing disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific medical system of knowledge can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 25, 2004 03:48 PM
Lord knows, it's been done before, but this little dictionary of literary "reviewese" is pretty funny. You could compile a similar list for music "reviewese," of course, and there would be many overlapping terms. They even tend to drop some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2004 05:51 PM
So we've been kicking around the idea of putting out a "best of Mr. T Experience" compilation some time next year. Ideally, it should be no more than 16 tracks, and be listenable as an album, rather than an archival...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2004 04:05 PM
Johann Hari met Antonio Negri for a drink in London, and was able to turn their nutty conversation into this amusing column....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2004 02:19 AM
So here's some more detail on my Euro-shows next week. The Rotterdam Rumble is the big one, but the others should be fun, too. On the pop quiz thing, I'm supposed to play a medley of rock and roll/pop songs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2004 06:32 PM
Quote of the day, from Jessica Cutler, in this piece on her inspiring rags to riches story: "I was only blogging for, what, less than two weeks?" she says. "Some people with blogs are never going to get famous, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2004 04:52 PM
I got a kick out of this fluffy interview with Ray C. Fair, whose "econometric" analysis has, apparently, predicted the outcomes of presidential elections with greater accuracy than public opinion polling. ("The average mistake of the equation is about 2.5...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2004 04:43 PM
Madonna gave the VIP guests at the launch party for her Re-invention world tour a gift with a personal touch - special cocktails cooled with Kabbalah water. The singer, who launched her tour in California last month, gave her special...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2004 04:07 PM
Check out Nelly's P.I.M.P. scholars program. Pimp stands for "Positive Intellectual Motivated Person." I did not know that....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2004 02:39 AM
I guess this kind of counts as a "found" letter. I got a wayward text message on my mobile phone today. I'm not necessarily discounting the idea that it could be a hoax by someone I know whose number I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2004 02:28 AM
No wonder everyone is so bright and chipper in England......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2004 06:48 PM
Madonna to open Kabbalah school in New York: The school, to be named the Kabbalist Grammar School For Children - The K School for short - will teach primary age youngsters the beliefs of the Jewish faith. Sure it will....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2004 06:35 PM
I suppose this topic will eventually become tiresome (and maybe it already has for some) but I'm not quite all the way tired for some reason. This from the popbitch tip sheet/email, via gawker: "I was getting my makeup done,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2004 06:06 PM
My sister got married last weekend, and a great time was had by all, as far as I could tell. (Congratulations again, kids, by the way, if you ever read this.) I took quite a few pictures while I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2004 03:33 PM
Being a musician means constantly kicking yourself for the poor choices you have made in your "life." Or, well, I guess everyone does that. And does everyone also continually find themselves looking longingly at the gainfully employed, no matter how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2004 03:19 PM
I suppose I disagree with practically everything Naomi Klein has ever written. This article isn't an exception, exactly, but I think she has a well-formulated point about how "progressives" tend spin themselves into self-caricatured irrelevance when it comes to George...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2004 06:11 PM
Thanks, Beth....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2004 05:23 PM
I suppose it was only a matter of time... (via Gawker.) UPDATE: "The power of Kabbalah abandoned poor Kimora Lee Simmons this week..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2004 02:26 PM
So, believe it or not, I'm playing at the Waterfront in Rotterdam, Holland on Saturday, August 28th. Check it out: the Rotterdam Rumble, under the auspices of Stardumb Records. The Groovie Ghoulies are playing on the Friday, plus lots of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2004 08:58 PM
Britney plans a Kabbalah wedding. But the family wants to incorporate Baptist elements into the ceremony as well, in order to "make everybody happy."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2004 04:44 PM
I estimate that I have officially requested that God bless Ken Layne around a dozen times, and the unofficial, vague, semi-conscious nods in that direction have been even more numerous. Well, I just realized that he has started posting blog-like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2004 01:51 AM
I generally find something new to amuse me each time I go in to a Borders. Perhaps it's the diet book that winds up in the History section because it's called The History of Flab and How to Rewrite It...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2004 08:56 PM
It appears that Michael Moore has been publicly slagging Pete Townshend for refusing to grant permission for the use of "Won't Get Fooled Again" in Farenheit 911. Here's Townshend's version of the story, from his online diary (i.e. blog.) He...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2004 07:52 PM
Some hilarious stuff from Ben: (a) the Wikipedia entry for Screeching Weasel, which concludes: "...their lyrics reflected [Ben] Weasel's Maoist political orientation..." I can't wait to read the MIMs review. and (b) these quotes from an interview with Bad Religion,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2004 02:45 AM
Hey, the MTX is playing this Saturday (7/17) at Slim's in San Francisco. With the Dollyrots and Fenway Park. Try to make it if you can, and so will I....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2004 03:04 PM
For the love of God, can someone out there who knows explain to me how to turn off the automatic formatting and real-time correction routines in Microsoft Word for OSX? And make it stay turned off? I keep thinking I've...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2004 06:31 PM
A solar-powered Britain sounds like a kind of joke. Along the lines of: The Jamaican bobsled team. The Kansas Naval Academy. The Salt Lake City Porn Industry. The "Welcome to France" sign at the French tourist information center. That sort...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2004 03:13 PM
Matt Welch has a couple of great photo essays documenting his trip to Romania. Fascinating, and genuinely funny - I laughed out loud several times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2004 02:08 PM
There's another new, rationalized, politically-corrected "translation" of the New Testament floating around. It's called "Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures. I've been hearing a bit about it, and I finally stumbled on some stuff about it on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2004 06:21 PM
A Catholic lawyer has filed heresy charges against Sen. John Kerry with the Archdiocese of Boston, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate of bringing "most serious scandal to the American public" by receiving Holy Communion as a pro-choice Catholic... So if...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2004 02:46 AM
I've been a little out of the loop lately, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is old news to everybody else. But I just learned (via Virginia Postrel) of this case, where a "writers' assistant" on the writing staff...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2004 06:29 PM
If you're interested in this type of thing, here's a vigorous denunciation of Michel Foucault, the evil he hath wrought, and on the wimmyn and myn who love hym. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death. When...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2004 03:31 PM
I was poking around at the local used book store, and I found a book called Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che, by Max Elbaum. I'd never heard of this particular book, though I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2004 11:50 PM
Madonna reveals why she has chosen to be a prominent celebri-spokes-mystic for the ersatz, strip-mall American Kabbala favored by many of today's most glittering socialites: "it's incredibly punk-rock."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2004 03:51 PM
Hey, guess what? The MTX is playing Friday June 18th in Sacramento for free. Cesar Chavez Plaza, 9th & J Street. 6:15 - 7 pm. Free, all ages. OK....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2004 12:58 AM
Star and Al's wedding page. Although Star had anticipated this moment all weekend long and had dreamed of it all her life; the surprise and joy on her face was real!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2004 12:53 AM
Gary Farber examines some of the sci-fi movie reviews by the Maoist folks I mentioned earlier. (The title of this post is my favorite of his deadpan comments.) The chuckle to effort ratio you get from reading random chunks from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2004 05:00 PM
''I don't understand the base system at all,'' Jesse said, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. ''If making out is first base, what's second base?'' ''We need to establish an international base system,'' Brian said. ''Because right...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2004 04:03 PM
I flipped through and watched a bit of all the rote, canned Reagan retrospectives that were flooding the TV yesterday. TV news was well-prepared for this; everybody had been sitting on the copy for the last ten years, waiting for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2004 05:14 PM
Somehow I stumbled on these pages of "Maoist" music and movie reviews from the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Just reading at random was good for half an hour or so of decent amusement. The primary consideration in these reviews is whether...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2004 02:48 AM
Coupla funny letters to the Guardian, via Norm Geras. The first is a bitter complaint about "the silence in your pages over the current dissent in Britain" from one John Pilger. The mind reels. Here's the second: When I first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2004 07:58 PM
Here's a pretty good anecdote to put in your "silly school stories" file, if you've got one. A teacher is reprimanded for explaining the scriptural allusion in a line from The Merchant of Venice, and is instructed by the principal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2004 06:38 PM
I suppose I'm as amused as anyone about the story of the 35-year-old member of a Clash cover band who was investigated and questioned by a Special Branch officer because he texted lyrics from the song "Tommy Gun" to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2004 01:27 AM
Mickey Kaus: Note to Kerry: I like Biden too. He'd be a better candidate than, say, you. And he has that moving story about his coal mining ancestors! But he's still a loose cannon, no? ... And I suspect that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2004 08:05 PM
Sometimes, listening to certain pop songs can actually pull me out of low-level depression. I'm not talking a vague or subtle change of mood: I mean a slight, but quite real, mental change that I can almost feel physically. There's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2004 06:54 PM
Yesterday, when I was on BART headed into the city, there was an unusual announcement on the loudspeaker. The 19th St. and 12th St. stations in downtown Oakland had been "temporarily closed because of civil unrest." The train was to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2004 02:42 AM
Gary Farber catches a classic piece of dead-pan reality-warp from the Guardian's John Sutherland. Fritz Hollings's and Charlie Rangel's much-discussed mischievous, administration-baiting "draft the rich kids" bill (S89 and HR163), clearly intended as a marginally clever prank rather than a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2004 04:17 PM
I don't know if you've noticed the spam that turns up in the comments of this and other blogs. These messages plug all the usual stuff: Viagra, Cialis, Propecia, home refinancing, Blousant, on-line casinos, penis enlargement, "gay animal sex," etc....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2004 05:06 PM
Does the DMV have people whose job it is to examine requests for personalized license plates and screen out risque or mischievous ones? I'd heard that they do, but if so some must slip by them sometimes because yesterday in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2004 02:56 PM
I want to believe... UPDATE: As Georgina points out in the comments, the relatively benign photo of "Tony Clifton" down towards the bottom of the pseudo-Andy blog has been replaced by some extremely gross images. Resist the urge to scroll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2004 04:56 PM
So if you're not doing anything this evening you might want to stop by the Cafe du Nord for this: Sharing picaresque tales of love and longing are technology and sex scribe Annalee Newitz, literary agent Arielle Eckstut; comedian Kamau...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2004 04:40 PM
I haven't seen Troy yet, but if the bits described by Roger Ebert are at all representative, it should contain a great deal of unintentional comedy. And that's the best kind. Example: in the midst of what has been traditionally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2004 06:44 PM
When you're in a band, people often present you with pictures they have drawn of you. Quite a few examples double as school projects of some kind. Some have been drawn from album art, some from life, some from memory....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2004 08:02 PM
Sorry I went AWOL for awhile there. Every now and again, I need a break to restore the tissues, or however you phrase it. I'm not all that sure about the overall effectiveness the tissue-therapy angle, but on the outside...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2004 12:57 AM
Stephen Pollard discovers (a) that there's a Norwich Peace Council (Canaries Rule OK); and (b) Melanie Griffith's official website. (a) probably wouldn't make me giggle quite so much if I hadn't spent quite so much time in Norwich, but since...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2004 09:23 PM
Well, I'm just about off to Philadelphia. Here's a recap of those solo shows. All are with me, Phranc, Ian Brennan, Lysa Flores and others: Wednesday, April 28..............PHILADELPHIA North Star 8-11 PM $8 Thursday, April 29.......WASHINGTON, DC Velvet Lounge 9PM-Midnight...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2004 07:21 PM
If you're like me (and there's no reason to suppose many of you are to any great degree) you will find that this will, somewhat mysteriously, cheer you up just a bit....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2004 10:07 PM
From Richard Bennett's blog, I happened on this book exercise, which has generated a pretty good chain of randomness (just click back through all the vias): * Grab the nearest book. * Open the book to page 23. * Find...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2004 08:05 PM
Here's another "found" letter. It was found near the MacArthur BART parking lot. The letter is written in blue ink on both sides of a single sheet of white typing paper, folded over several times. The first page (at least)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2004 12:10 AM
As I mentioned earlier, a Holocaust Never Happened group posted the url of this weblog on the web page of their "revisionist" conference in Sacramento at the end of the month. (It all seems to stem from a single reference...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2004 12:35 AM
"A one-trick pony can be a resplendent, germane beauty..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2004 06:03 PM
It turns out that, due to the trademark overabundance of miscommunication for which this operation is justly famous, the show that was scheduled for Sat., April 10th at the Anarchy Library in Downey, CA is not happening. Or rather, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2004 05:55 PM
"So Cobain would have become Dr. Frank. Have you ever listened to that guy's music or read his blog? He makes Blink 182 sound challenging..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2004 04:22 PM
Here's a run down of upcoming shows, with a few more details thrown in. As far as I know, this is all accurate. As a few astute scenesters and fun-seekers have pointed out here and there, some of these venues...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2004 09:47 PM
1. Sadly, the BBC has now corrected its best spellchecker-generated typo in quite some time: ...as humbled fugitives from Marshal Petunia's defeated Vichy government gathered around General Charles de Gaulle and prepared for revenge... (Well-spotted by Liver Karma.) 2. A...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2004 06:48 PM
Old news to most everybody, probably, but to recap: A while back, I posted the lyrics sans music to a song of mine called "She Runs Out when the Money Does." There were quite a few people out there who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2004 08:07 PM
Hey, did you realize that mystery novelist Anne Perry (author of the Monk mysteries) and the girl played by Kate Winslet in the film Heavenly Creatures are the same person? I didn't, till now....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2004 01:09 AM
One of the hazards of having a public web site is that you have no control over who hotlinks your url. Absolutely anyone can do it, including the most disturbing, demi-human creeps. It's entirely up to them. and there's nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2004 06:35 PM
So here's the deal with upcoming shows: This Friday (March 26) at the Boardwalk in Orangevale (near Sacramento) with the Groovie Ghoulies, Helper Monkeys and Riff Randalls. Thursday, April 8: The Kensington, San Diego Friday, April 9: Pitzer College, 1050...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2004 02:38 PM
I don't know why I read this stuff. Here's the quote of the day, from Wilson Bryan Key, Media Sexploitation: The question of who is saying what to whom in rock music is one of the most intriguing aspects of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2004 05:00 PM
Here are those east coast solo dates. (People who have attended this thing in the past will notice it's a much shorter list than usual-- the reasons for this are too boring to go into. It's sad that we won't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2004 04:28 PM
We're playing on Friday March 26 at the Boardwalk in Orangevale (near Sacramento) with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Helper Monkeys and the Riff Randalls. All ages. 8pm. Should be a fun night. There are also a couple of southern California...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2004 06:36 PM
Glad to see the trolls have largely cleared out of the comments routine. I haven't posted for the last week because I'm still in the process of depressurizing, getting used to "normal" life. Plus I haven't been able to think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2004 12:44 AM
Here's how the world looked to me for approximately six to eight hours of each day while on tour for the last month or so: And here's how it looks now. Back home, and moving much slower than 85 miles...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2004 01:49 AM
I don't really know anyone from my high school anymore, but occasionally I'll get a cordial email from a former classmate who happens on my blog or band. A recent one of these mentioned the latest high school reunion, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2004 03:35 PM
Well, I did a pretty good job with regular updates for awhile there, but eventually I succumbed to the usual tour zombification process I've mentioned before. The last show of the tour proper was Monday night in Phoenix. We just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2004 03:01 PM
Just a quick note, just in case anyone who will read this today hasn't figured it out: the show today (2/29) is in Birmingham at Cave 9. (The Anniston club has closed down. Some listings, including mine-- sorry!-- never were...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 29, 2004 02:29 PM
This guy managed to track down the original soap ad (from a c. 1971 Look magazine) that we swiped for the cover of the album Love is Dead. The last thing I ever expected to see. Kinda cool....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 29, 2004 01:48 PM
We shouldn't have tried to drive to Greensboro last night, but it was only snowing lightly in Carborro, NC, and getting a jump start on the next day's drive is always nice when you can swing it. But we weren't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2004 08:53 AM
Favorite moment from our show in Brooklyn the other day: during the second encore, when I played a solo version of "I Believe in You" and looked into the crowd and saw several couples making out while they were swaying...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2004 01:58 PM
The last days have been thoroughly crazy. Crazy drives, crazy shows, crazy Keystone Kops routines courtesy of me and my entourage. I met the Blog of the Hurricane guy in Detroit. Cleveland rocked, just like the re-tooled song says. Rochester,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2004 02:35 PM
The Onion was going to do this one, but real life beat them to it. (Thanks for sending the link, Jill.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2004 01:49 PM
There's much to criticize about my whole deal, I know that, but I honestly can't ever recall having been slagged for "lame lyrics." Until now. Here's another take....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2004 04:31 PM
The Alcatraz Wars (1999 - c. 2002) have long since settled into an uneasy truce, with both sides more or less agreeing to disagree and to try to get along together as best they can. It's an intractable problem, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2004 03:31 PM
Ben wrote a sweet little post about the other night in Chicago. I love the final question in the penultimate paragraph. Maybe we should put it on a Tshirt or something. Ben has a lot of complimentary things to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2004 02:15 PM
We had a couple of good nights Monday and Tuesday. Monday was Minneapolis. A great city, if also a frozen, virtually uninhabitable wasteland. We stepped out of the van. Then we stepped right back in, thinking that wasn't such a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2004 03:45 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2004 07:22 AM
Alternative Press has a couple of recommendations concerning Yesterday Rules. The first is for you: buy it used. The second is for me: take some Ritalin. (I get credit for my sonic adventurishness, but it seems as though they'd prefer...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2004 03:29 PM
We still have a small backlog of MTX cover songs that people have sent in. Eventually, we'll get them all up on the site. (We just got a "We are the Future People of Tomorrow" from a guy in Germany--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2004 05:28 PM
If you drive a van with California license plates through the midwest or the south, you just have to get used to being pulled over repeatedly by curious cops who just want to get a look inside. Sometimes they're upfront...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2004 04:11 PM
Yes, yes, fish, barrel, context, etc., but I can never resist these "We are the Geniuses: Admire Us" quotations. This one comes from a brilliant Duke professor, via Andrew Sullivan: "We try to hire the best, smartest people available," Brandon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2004 03:34 PM
We've got a day off to drive from Seattle to Denver. I have nothing to say about it, but I wanted to mention that the address I had listed for the Climax Lounge (at the "shows" link) is incorrect: it's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2004 07:03 PM
How many times have I read The Inimitable Jeeves? A conservative estimate would be around thirty or forty times. That's the great thing about P.G. Wodehouse: you can read the entire book from page one to the end, then immediately...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2004 06:04 PM
The gods seem to have decided to do what they can to make each MTX show as "intimate" as possible. I don't know why. But they're up there on that big mountain, playing an insane game of chess upon a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2004 07:02 PM
I'm starting to understand, just a bit, why people with jobs end up blogging so often. Whether or not you have anything particular to say about whatever may or may not be going on, and whatever job you might have,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2004 05:53 PM
I don't want the last post to leave the wrong poor impression: I had a great time in Sacramento, despite the feeling of impending vocal doom. The Helper Monkeys are a great, energetic trashy rock and roll band in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2004 06:24 PM
Day one went okay, despite the title. The show was pretty fun, if chaotic. We don't have our act together yet with regard to loading, unloading, merchandise, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the monitors were quiet, which is a disheartening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2004 05:38 PM
Well said, Ben. I remember stopping a show in the middle of a set because some refigerator-shaped goon had injured his second cute little girl (by sudden drop body slam) after being warned to cut it out. Result: prima donna...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 06:54 PM
So the tour begins. I'm going to try to blog from the road, though that can be more difficult than it sounds, as I've explained before. Starting today, though, things are going to be pretty crazy, especially in the first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 05:10 PM
Here's the info about tonight's show in Sacramento: Saturday - 2/7/2004 Capitol Garage, Sacramento, CA 1427 L. St., Sacramento doors: 8:30, a/a with the Helper Monkeys and the Losing Streaks Give dese people air! And following is the updated show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 03:45 PM
This parody of the Democratic Underground discussion board is quite funny. Excerpt: I disagree, halfempty, this is exactly what is going to make people realize that Bush* really is like Hitler and then everyone will turn against him and then...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2004 07:41 PM
Alias meltdown, I mean. From now on, I want all you guys to call me Elvis....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2004 04:06 PM
In honor of St. Valentine's Day, Lookout is ratchetting down the prices of all MTX merchandise. 10% off everything, for the entire month of Feb. Music to ruin your every mood......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2004 03:33 PM
My band has never been featured, nor any of my records ever reviewed or mentioned in Rolling Stone or Spin. That's no big surprise. Ever since I've been paying attention to pop music, Big Media has always almost totally ignored...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2004 03:19 PM
From the Lord of the Eagles of the Mountains: This election is not going to be simply about which one of these candidates you believe in, trust more, agree with more, and so on. The broader question is: given that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2004 04:18 PM
Just a note to any Mac users among you: if you've been looking for a good newsreader for OSX, you need look no further than Unison. I tended to use the MT version of Newswatcher in OS9, but the OSX...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2004 03:35 PM
A vs. not A. (via Libertypunk.) UPDATE: FYI/FYA, I just came across this, via Geoff's comments. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win..." Well, three out of four ain't bad....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2004 03:58 PM
Well, it wasn't quite an Insta-lanche, but this blog had a pretty big jump in traffic last night, due to the fact that someone linked to it from this Clay Aiken discussion board thread. The question being debated in that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2004 07:23 PM
Steven Rubio has some kind things to say about me in this post about small-time musicians who don't know when to quit. Erm, I mean s.-t. m's who selflessly soldier on because they love the music, regardless of how permanently...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2004 05:53 PM
Just to pull something out of the comments to this item, Ben had a great answer to Dave Bug's question about how the Democratic contestants each stack up against Bush in the election for "swing voters": To put it in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2004 04:17 PM
If you're in the mood for a cranky flame war, you could do worse than this exchange between the redoubtable Kathy Shaidle (of Relapsed Catholic) and a fellow who runs a "Catholics for Dean" website. It all started when the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2004 10:26 AM
I never know how to characterize my politics when it comes to US domestic flim-flammery. Despite the fact that I sprang from the womb a registered Democrat, and am quite likely to remain so (owing to sheer inertia as much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2004 02:15 AM
Vaguely related to the apparently still-burning question "what is punk?", here are a few more random Yesterday Rules reviews that have somehow managed not to escape my attention: Here's one from good ol' Ed Masely from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2004 02:26 PM
Well, all this political mumbo jumbo is fine and dandy, but now back to what really matters. To wit, my own retarded attempt to publicize myself, my band, my band's new album, and my band's upcoming tour. The big show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2004 03:40 AM
My hero Paul Berman seems to have the same sort of conversations that I have. And, though he does a much, much better job of expressing himself plainly and clearly in such conversations than I have done, yet somehow mine...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2004 07:49 AM
I almost missed it, but thanks to commenter Ted, I didn't. Check out Heather King, Joe's sister, talking about going to see the Queers on NPR's All Things Considered. It's great in so many ways, not least because, well, "I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2004 06:45 AM
I learn from Jackie D. that Billy Corgan has a blog. He's blogging about the recording of his solo album, in fact. Hi... We started a few days ago (the 15th) to get it together for my first solo album...some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2004 12:32 AM
Nat Hentoff continues to hammer away at Castro's most recent crackdown on dissidents. This piece is about the 10 "independent librarians" among the Cuban dissidents, who were sentenced to 20+ years in the gulag for circulating subversive literature like 1984...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2004 11:20 PM
Favorite bit from the latest in the SF Chronicle's popular Bush = Hitler series: While the German concentration camps were being built and Jews were being persecuted, in 1936 Nazi Germany hosted the Olympic Games and put its best face...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2004 05:25 PM
By the way, we'll be doing a little acoustic set cum interview tonight (26 Jan.) on KSCU Santa Clara, CA. ("The Coctail Hour" with Nicole Coxe, DJ Twilight; 103.3FM; 6-8PM.) Also tomorrow on KSSU, Sacramento, 1550 AM, sometime between 11am...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2004 09:23 PM
I disagree with Atrios more often than not, but I'm in complete agreeance with him on this. Ordinarily, the chances would be pretty good that I'd never end up hearing it, but I'm about to go on tour within reach...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2004 03:49 PM
Matt Welch is right that it would best serve the interests of the Democratic Party and the country as a whole if at least one more of the joke candidates were to drop out now. (So that "the overall wacko...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2004 04:26 PM
The Centre for Research in Modern Philosophy is hosting a conference on Noise Theory. Not intentionally a joke, we must assume. What, you ask, is "noise theory"? Beats me. You'll have to attend NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 to find out. If you're in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2004 03:49 AM
"Love is dead, but it sure left a good looking corpse". Also from this "classic music review" by Dom Passantino in Stylus Magazine: "the Ramones are the punk Bagpuss." (That will only amuse Anglophiles, and actual Brits or those married...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2004 06:42 PM
If you're weird in just the right way, you'll enjoy this massive list of palindromes from Jim Kalb. (via George Wallace.) I read each one, enjoyed them all thoroughly, even all the NASA-based ones. There were even a few good...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2004 07:52 PM
I suppose it's impossible to do long strings of interviews as a musician and avoid coming off like a big dummy sometimes. At least, it seems to be impossible for me. Is that really me in there, claiming to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2004 04:20 AM
Here's a lengthy and fairly remarkable stream of ruminations sparked by the new album. (Scroll down to "My Stupid Life as an MTX Fan.") Or, more accurately, sparked not by the album itself, but rather by the experience and process...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2004 04:18 PM
Maybe I'm the last to know about this, as about so many other things, but up until a few minutes ago I was totally unaware that Bob Mould has a blog. Really....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2004 10:42 PM
Here's some updated information on the upcoming MTX shows. Besides filling in some details, there are two major changes/additions: --we've added a show in Sacramento on 2/7, Capitol Garage --the 3/3 show has been moved to Fitzgerald's in Houston, TX...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2004 03:12 PM
Sorry for all the bulletin board-style posts, but I've been kind of busy this week. Here's another couple of items: We're playing tonight on KALX in Berkeley (90.7 FM) on the Rick Sylvain show. "Full" electric rock combo rather than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2004 05:30 PM
Hey, thanks Michele! So I'm going to be doing another radio interview/acoustic song thing today on KUSF at around 2pm. (With Carolyn; 90.3FM; 2PM. Live performance, interview. Broadcast live on the internet at: kusf.org.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2004 04:13 PM
The best Onion headline in quite awhile....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2004 02:39 AM
Michele explores the mystery, sings the praises, of "Strawberry Letter 23." Sublime nonsense. And that's the best kind....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2004 05:48 PM
It's the official Release Day, and Ken Layne has commemorated it by posting a real sweet review of Yesterday Rules on blogcritcs.org. God love him. Ken also informs me that it's also supposed to go on Cleveland.com, for some reason....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2004 05:28 PM
I've never quite got around to mentioning the MTX website. Ted just revamped it to reflect the new album and all, and it looks pretty great. We've never been very good at the whole band website thing. That is, we...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2004 04:45 PM
So last night I was on Live 105 FM with Aaron Axelsen. We did an interview, or rather, he asked me questions and I babbled some semi-coherent non-sequiturs as though in response. It was like one of those Democratic debates...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2004 03:48 PM
I'm not sure, but this, by one DJ Pusspuss from the San Francisco gay magazine SF Spectrum, may be the first published blurb/review of Yesterday Rules. It's the first one I've seen, anyway. And here's the second. College-rock tones, dude....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2004 11:52 PM
Well, here's some band/album release info. for a change. Updated tour info. follows at the end. I'm going to be a guest on the Aaron Axelson "Soundcheck" show on Live 105/KITS on Sunday night. (105.3 FM, January 11.) The show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2004 05:24 PM
Remember when "sex -- even when not so great or someone got their feelings hurt -- fell under the category of experience, rather than injury and trauma" in the university world? Neither do I, but I've heard about it. Laura...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2004 06:25 AM
I lost track of how I arrived at the link (sorry), nor do I know how long its current form will last, but this is pretty weird....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2004 06:09 AM
A good column from Jonah Goldberg on the ubiquitous Bush = Hitler topos. Of course, this comparison reflects poor judgment and willful (we must assume) ignorance of history; and propagating it is of questionable merit as a political strategy on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2004 07:43 PM
Are you among those sophisticated souls who have, after a great deal of serious thought, reluctantly reached the conclusion that the only possible explanation for GWB's 50% approval rating is that 50% of the American people are simply too stupid...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2004 05:23 PM
Ally came across my weblog, and she's not too impressed: I am incredulous at how someone so incredibly boring (about a 9.8 on the richter scale of boredom...off the charts, almost) could come up with cute, funny lyrics like "i...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2004 04:32 PM
So there's this Mazda commercial that invokes the age-old Twins Fantasy. (Two slick beautiful cars you will never be able to afford, but imagine how it would be if you could: they would be kind of the same, yet different,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2004 04:27 PM
Surrounded by upturned chairs and an abandoned turban, Sabah Al-Kaisey surveyed his ransacked office yesterday. The American troops who burst into his mosque on Thursday morning had smashed down the front gate, broken the air conditioners and ripped up the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2004 07:34 PM
Emily Jones has a new url. The theme is LotR-derived, but the posts remain more or less in the grand Hawk Girl tradition....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2004 04:33 PM
Start with a caricature (the Bush administration always eschews diplomacy, seeks unilateral military solutions to every problem, and wants to invade everybody); point out some illustrations of the caricature's inaccuracy; call this a "policy shift." Offer sober analysis. (Of interest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2004 04:28 PM
If you're like me, you'll find something in each of Sheila's three match.com anecdotes to get a kick out of. Out of which to get a kick? Whatever, just read 'em....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2003 05:18 PM
David Aaronovitch, in a column comparing Paso Robles to Bam, concludes: Following the fall of the Berlin wall there was, as the philosopher John Gray put it, a "false dawn" of the New Age of Liberal Democracy, in which all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2003 04:57 PM
This happened during the Christmas lull, so I missed it till now. Revolutionary Cells member, Baader-Meinhof associate, and convicted terrorist/murderer Hans-Joachim Klein, whose controversial 2001 trial served as the framing device for Paul Berman's brilliant essay "The Passion of Joschka...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2003 01:22 AM
Check out this more or less usenet-y Christmas eve comments board snipe-a-thon between Christopher Hitchens, Sean Wilentz, Richard Wolin, Todd Gitlin, and others. (I have no idea who Irfan Khawaga is, but he wins the award for snarkiest and most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2003 07:35 PM
Johann Hari responds to extreme Chomsky-ite criticism of his important, seemingly unobjectionable, article on politically-engineered famine in North Korea and the work of Dr. Vollertsen. "First of all," writes one of the Medialens commenters, "I'd have Hari arrested for inciting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2003 04:17 PM
The Philosophical Cowboy (whose blog I should really be checking out more often) quotes this passage (via Tim Oren, via Kevin Kelly) from a book on "artmaking": The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2003 02:23 AM
If you haven't checked out Jonathon "I Hate Bush" Chait's Dean-o-phobe blog, you probably should. I appreciate the unusual combination of apoplexy and articulateness, which continues to develop as time goes on. But here's a more temperate quote from early...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2003 08:27 PM
Hang in there, babies....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2003 05:00 PM
Madeleine Bunting on the Christmas Conspiracy-- sounds like the Bunting family is in for a swell time this year....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2003 06:23 PM
Tony Blair will seek to use the diplomatic breakthrough with Libya to secure similar concessions on weapons of mass destruction from Iran and Syria. Ministers believe that his New Year offensive will restore his fortunes. Secret "back channel" talks, which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2003 05:27 PM
The formidable Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings has an interesting article in the American Spectator, asking whether a Democratic administration really would have the ability or the inclination to "fix Iraq better" than the Republicans, as all the credible candidates...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2003 05:14 PM
Norm Geras presents two conversations about Israel and Jews that will probably be familiar to any American who has spent any time in London. I've heard them, practically verbatim, dozens of times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2003 06:30 PM
Either you love those articles which trot out and denounce examples of Bad (Academic) Writing or you don't. I do, and fervently, but I admit that such denunciations tend to resemble one another and rarely make points you haven't heard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2003 05:33 PM
From Rebekah's MTXStarship.com page updates section, God bless her: The dates for the tour will be up as soon as I find out what they are. Make sure to tell all of your friends about the exciting MTX news! Hell,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2003 03:04 PM
Thanks for all the song requests: it looks like the clear favorite is "I Believe in You," so consider it done. It's at least theoretically possible that we can do most of the others, too. One tip in advance: the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2003 06:01 PM
Several bizarre tidbits in this account of Saddam Hussein's presumably final novel in today's Telegraph: Saddam Hussein spent the final weeks before the war writing a novel predicting that he would lead an underground resistance movement to victory over the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2003 05:42 PM
Check out this hobbit-sploitation hip hop group. I like the video....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2003 04:51 PM
...I love you in real life, not just in this song that's coming out of me you fall around me in a perfect harmony, so meant to be... ...I know I've seen you somewhere in eternity or paradise, a flower...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2003 07:48 PM
I'd say Christopher Hitchens has a pretty clear understanding of his own role in the public debate on Iraq: Most of the leftists I know are hoping openly or secretly to leverage difficulty in Iraq in order to defeat George...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2003 04:47 PM
Yeah, so I let this blog go dark again for a little while there. It's not so much that I've been that much busier than I've been during many of those times when I have been able to keep up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2003 04:01 PM
I'm with Jackie and Natalie: say what you want about Donald Rumsfeld, his statement about "known unknowns" is quite plain, and perfectly comprehensible. What's confusing is how an organization that calls itself the Plain English Campaign can have failed to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2003 06:02 PM
Noam Chomsky attacks Johann Hari, with some typically bloated, semi-coherent sludge-prose posted on Medialens (comparing him unfavorably to a Stalinist commissar and accusing him of being incapable of comprehending "moral truisms.") As Johann says, it speaks for itself, and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2003 05:36 PM
Harry's Place rocks: there has been a slew of great posts with interesting comments threads over the last couple of days. Rather than link to each of them and say "indeed," I'll just recommend starting from the top and working...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2003 03:18 AM
Someone recently left this comment on Stephen Pollard's blog: I went out with Harold Pinter's niece in 1960. Hackney Young Socialists. Nice, romantic girl. If only these were orange groves she said, staring at the street lights in Clapton High...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2003 06:10 PM
Harry speaks the language: It just so happens, for a series of reasons, not least of which was the September 11 atrocity, that the Americans have decided to adopt another strategy to the one that served them during the cold...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2003 05:19 PM
British Spin has an amusing riff on British anti-Bushism as a matter of manner and style: A clarification here, the vaunted sense of British fair play means fair play just for the British. When ruling the world, we were entirely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2003 05:56 PM
I'm not sure why, but there has been a sudden spike in "eight little songs" orders. This blog has been getting an unusual number of referrals from live journal urls lately as well, which seems to have something to do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2003 12:39 AM
David Pryce-Jones is a gifted writer and historian, and smart as a whip, yet somehow he managed rather spectacularly to get the wrong idea on the definition of the verb "to fisk," as it is used in the "www arena."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2003 07:48 PM
Speaking of Gore Vidal, pieces of this article on the history of anti-Americanism and on our own contemporary celibri-crackpots keep coming to mind. It's by Ian Buruma, and it was linked all over the place a couple of months ago,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2003 06:46 PM
Another relatively crazy interview with Gore Vidal in the LA Weekly. I say relatively, because it doesn't quite meet this standard. Anyhow, with a little help from the passive, softball questions of Marc Cooper, Vidal addresses the important question on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2003 04:26 PM
Over at Harry's Place, Johann Hari gets in touch with his inner Appeaser and his inner Imperialist and lets them battle it out. I try to have these internal arguments with myself, but I usually find it impossible not to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2003 06:08 PM
Norman Geras points out this post on Butterflies and Wheels, which serves up a few fingers of some high grade, top shelf academic gibberish from a recent essay by frequent Dutton Prize honoree Robyn Wiegman. This bit is about Forrest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2003 07:14 AM
Mark Steyn riffs on Rod Stewart ("his material is ageing in inverse proportion to his birds") and knighthoods for rock stars. Apparently Rod is a bit miffed that he isn't a knight yet. It is hard to see why Rod...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2003 05:19 PM
Redundant as it may be to duplicate an Andrew Sullivan post, I find I simply can't resist requoting this classic bit of contemporary Wodehouse-ish-ness from the House of Parliament Home Page: Hereditary Peers By-Election Result Nominations for the by-election to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2003 08:10 AM
Lookout Records has posted an mp3 from the upcoming MTX album. It's called "She's not a Flower," it's track #1, and it's downloadable here. It's sort of funny how I learned of the fact that the mp3 was up. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2003 04:05 AM
Much to disagree with in this column by Mary Ridell, perhaps, though not its thesis ("retreat is not an option".) I'll just quote a few of the good lines: Peace is slippery to define. To Samuel Johnson, it was the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2003 06:00 PM
A complex, powerful and challenging exploration of the roots and meaning of the erstwhile and continuing varieties of antisemitism by Natan Sharansky. Excerpt: As for Western Europe, there the reputation of Israel and of the Jews has undergone a number...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2003 04:49 PM
Interesting attempt by David Aaronovitch to spin Eric Hobsbawm as another flavor of Orwell. Nice try, though I get the impression his heart's not really in it. Here's the interesting part, which is only distantly related to the topic of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2003 04:19 PM
A German politician uses an ugly, repellent analogy to argue against collective German Holocaust guilt, saying that blaming the "German race" for Auschwitz is like blaming the Jews for the Russian revolution. "One could describe Jews with some justification as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2003 03:38 PM
"The real threat to Iraqis is coming now from Western defeatists," writes Johann Hari, challenging the reliably defeatist writers of letters to the Independent to "dare" to claim that Iraq's Marsh Arabs would be better off now if Saddam Hussein...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2003 05:33 PM
My first and continuing inclination regarding the Gregg Easterbrook antisemitism flap was and has been not to touch it with a barge pole. I will say, though, that Steven Weiss of Jewsweek has the best treatment of the subject I've...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2003 05:45 PM
I've never heard of the Miss Earth Pageant till now, but I'd say I'm as impressed as anyone with Miss Afghanistan, even if she has lived in California for the last seven years and attends Cal State Fullerton. America 100,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2003 07:03 PM
It's a long-standing tradition for songwriters to snatch titles from novels-- "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" are the most famous examples I can think of now. You don't necessarily have to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2003 05:40 PM
I have certain questions for the candidates that only TV campaign ads can answer. Such questions as: Have you ever had a picnic with minority schoolchildren? Do you like to quickly walk down hallways while surrounded by people holding clipboards...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2003 07:20 PM
Ben tells a typical tale of song licensing sleight of hand, with a rather atypical happy ending....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2003 05:42 PM
Eccentric British journalist and tireless defender of totalitarianism Neil Clark returns with another weird column in the Guardian, on the "neo-con induced Arabophobia" which he affects to believe is driving Anglo-American Middle East policy. It is of a piece with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2003 12:29 AM
A good one from Howard Kurtz: From the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he 'didn't want to see any stories' quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2003 01:13 AM
Good news for "song poem" people: a Song Poem Christmas album from Bar None. There are a couple of sample mp3s on the promo page, as usual. "The New Year Song" is pretty great, if you enjoy the sound of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 10:33 PM
As H.D. Miller points out, maybe somebody ought to explain to all those who are buying Michael Moore's latest book at Wal-Mart that they're screwing up the BfC Wal-Mart boycott promotion....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 07:39 PM
Back when I started posting and pre-releasing demo versions of songs in progress, Dave Bug of Geek Life had an interesting suggestion: post lyrics without music, discuss, then post the actual song and examine how it compares with the "head...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 06:09 PM
OK, my friends, here we go. The album is called Yesterday Rules. Here's the track list: 01 She's not a Flower 02 Fucked Up on Life 03 Oh, just have some faith in me 04 Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer 05...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 01:56 AM
It looks like this site was affected by the big denial of service attack on Hosting Matters. Looks like we're back up now, at least temporarily. I was all ready to post something, but I couldn't log on, and now...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 01:52 AM
One of these days I'll have a free moment and enough presence of mind to write a little something about the whole mini-tour. In brief: some of the shows may have been a bit more "intimate" than we might have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2003 07:59 PM
That TV Smith/Dr. Frank mini-tour I mentioned earlier starts today in San Jose. I just talked to TV on the phone to make arrangements-- a mildly surreal experience. Seems like a nice guy. We're going to be traveling down the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2003 08:38 PM
Vaguely apropos of Open-mindia, here's a pretty interesting article on Bay Area political exceptionalism. Why is the Bay Area the only sub-polity in the state that still wanted Gray Davis to be the governor? The article tries to answer in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2003 05:44 AM
The great Johann Hari has now joined the blogger group over at Harry's Place, debuting with a comment on North Korea, stepping off from this much-linked and -critiqued Gary Younge column....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2003 12:15 AM
Diana Rigg, introducing tonight's Inspector Lynley Mysteries episode, described the stormy personal relationship between the Inspector and sidekick Sgt. Barbara Havers, mentioning that she will occasionally even go so far as to call him a ponce. Which, she explains, "is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2003 06:30 AM
I'm not entirely persuaded that it isn't a "troll" or a joke or something, but nevertheless, this post from the Democratic Underground forum cracks me up: In order to win we must understand the way the average American thinks. I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2003 10:34 PM
Did you know that Sheila Kuehl, uber-feminist, Santa Monica state senator, and now freshly-embittered Schwarzenegger antagonist, is the Sheila James who played Zelda on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis? I didn't, till Richard Bennett mentioned it, but then I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2003 10:33 PM
Todd A., whose Popshot.net zine morphed into Americanzine.net while I wasn't looking, is doing some major cyberbusking: thirty songs in thirty days. Apparently written day by day and from the looks of things mostly inspired by various hot girls he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2003 06:11 PM
Has anyone ever been totally happy with his own album? Can anyone ever be totally happy with anything? I think the answer to both questions is probably no, though a good friend of mine, arguing to the contrary, recently alluded...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2003 02:55 PM
I'm doing some solo shows in mid-October with the legendary UK punk rock singer/songwriter/genius T.V. Smith. He's the guy behind the short-lived but extremely influential band The Adverts, best known for the brilliant single "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" and the classic...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2003 06:54 PM
Via Greg McIlvaine's studio blog, here's an interesting article on the drawbacks of the growing trend of ever increasingly loud CD mastering. And speaking of studio blogging, Ken Layne has been at it as well, documenting the recording of his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2003 05:49 PM
From Friedman's column on French perfidy: What is so amazing to me about the French campaign - "Operation America Must Fail" - is that France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France. Let me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2003 05:21 PM
It's world of laughter. A world of tears. A world of hopes, and a world of fears. It's a world where they have drive-through milk stores, if you can believe that. And it's a world where, apparently, the following actually...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2003 02:50 PM
To my surprise, and believe it or not, this interview with Tucker Carlson almost makes me want to consider reading his kiss and tell book about cable news, though that's the kind of thing you think and almost never wind...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2003 02:19 PM
In keeping with the notion of trying to stimulate discussion and interest by letting bits and bobs of the album and album related stuff slip out gradually, and since I mentioned it below as a thematic touchstone, I'm posting the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2003 04:24 PM
Independent columnist Johann Hari has written some of the best and most interesting post-9/11 commentary, and is one of my favorite writers. Now he has a spiffy new website. It includes archives of his articles, which is nice as the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2003 03:52 PM
Harry Hatchet provides some interesting, insightful commentary on the newly complicated intellectual, moral, and emotional world that confronts Leftists/"Internationalists" in the post-Cold War era. The springboard is this article by Roger Burbach, which casts post-9/11 US policy as a failure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2003 08:24 PM
I've never been a great one for commemorations and anniversaries and what not, though I say it with deep respect for those who feel differently when it comes to important matters. If I were capable of coming up with a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2003 05:02 PM
The album, so far, sounds Really Nice. Still working like crazy on finishing it up, of course, but it's looking good. We'll have a few more "all-nighters," and probably bash away at it right up till the last second before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2003 03:08 PM
So I'm back in the USA, with a touch of jet lag, a still-unfinished album and a sheaf of obsessive compulsive notes (as I explained earlier.) We're really going to have to get cracking finishing it all up-- we've essentially...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2003 02:50 PM
I've written a bit here and there and now and then in this blog about the glories of rural Norfolk's scenery, though I suppose I really mean "atmosphere" rather than scenery per se. That is, it's not so much the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2003 01:34 PM
Matt Welch has a great article on the role of blogging as an alternative alternative in the Columbia Journalism Review. It goes without saying, really, that the reason I noticed it is because it contains a link to this blog,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2003 10:18 AM
One of the nice things about visiting England is that I usually get to see my friend Chris. I know him through my wife, who knew him when they were growing up in Norwich; he has London roots, however, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2003 06:22 PM
On the general theory that it is as well to know which tunes the devil is playing, I usually pick up a copy of the New Statesman each time I visit England. (I used to read it more often on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2003 11:05 AM
The other day, two five-year-old boys were sitting on stone steps near the Russell Square park. I didn't catch what they were talking about, but I did hear one of them demand, with feeling and in that fuzzy, Damien Omen...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2003 02:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2003 09:18 PM
The original plan had been to have final mixes for every song by the end of last week, reserving one day before mastering to fix little things after having mulled it over. That would have involved a solid week of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2003 07:46 PM
So here I am in London. It's been over a year since I was last here, but I've spent a great deal of time here over the years. The little corner of London where I've always stayed (and where I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2003 11:51 AM
Hey, I really appreciate the latest wave of "eight little songs" orders. (I guess it was spurred by the Lookout site and maybe a bit by the Lileks link.) I'm going to mail out all orders I receive through the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2003 03:40 PM
Once you enter the studio, you rarely, if ever, come out again. But on those surreal occasions when you do, it looks like this:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2003 02:50 PM
I can't vouch for the integrity of the methodology, but at least some of the people have spoken on this important matter. I would like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2003 05:40 PM
Wow, an Insta-lanche and a Lileks-wave all in the same twenty-four hour period. Traffic has quadrupled (at least.) Thanks, fellows. Master of the Blogosphere Lileks has posted a couple of techno-samply songs he cooked up on his mac. Check 'em...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2003 05:31 PM
This is probably the strangest time in the gestation period of an album: where the tracking trail-off elides into the initial technical, set-up part of the mixing. Usually, I'm there for every single, tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing second (which I vaguely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2003 05:08 PM
I never knew about the Anti-Modulation Movement till a few days ago. If I had known, I'm pretty sure I would have made certain that the arrangements on the new album included a good handful of extreme, final chorus step-ups....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2003 04:04 PM
Richard Bennett clearly and ably explains the basics of the various "machines" in California politics. He's dead right here: The Repubs can either use this election to reincarnate their party into relevance, or to finish it off altogether. If the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2003 05:22 PM
Kevin and I changing the things we can change, accepting the things we can't, etc.: All the amp talk has alarmed at least one correspondent, who is a bit concerned that the guitar sound is going to be "all Alcatrazed-out."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 15, 2003 07:16 PM
I'm still intending, as I mentioned before, to write a little essay on the bizarre superstitious habits and tics singers use to so as to avoid jinxing the vocal recording process. I've never met a singer who isn't at least...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 15, 2003 06:29 PM
Here's a whole website devoted to the anti-modulation cause. What, you didn't know there was an anti-modulation movement? Neither did I. In case you don't know, a modulation in a pop song arrangement is where the song changes key at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2003 05:32 PM
I'm a little dazed from the journey through the fires of hell (i.e., Arizona.) Don't get me wrong: I had a nice time in hell (Arizona.) Hell (Arizona) is beautiful, with many very sweet people. But the fires of hell...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2003 04:07 PM
It was 111 degrees in the shade this afternoon in "downtown" Tempe....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2003 10:05 AM
So I have this song called "Oh, just have some faith in me." We've been playing it (trying to play it) for the last couple of years, but could never really get it right at the practices. We tried it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2003 05:54 PM
At that Lookout anniversary party at the Parkside awhile back, I ran into Alex, an old college friend I hadn't seen in quite awhile. We subsequently exchanged a few emails, as you do, and she sent along this page from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2003 04:55 PM
Spaceland, the club we played last night, is located down the road from Matt Welch's house, so I had a chance to hang out with Matt and his wife, the lovely and talented Emanuelle (whom I had never met in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2003 07:00 PM
Lord only knows what Kevin and I might have been arguing about here. Or maybe we weren't even arguing. I think this is from around the time that we had all but decided to cut "...and for my next trick"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 7, 2003 12:35 AM
Bobby J. singing, napping: The great cymbal over-dub of '03: When in doubt, try the magic vocal glasses:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 7, 2003 12:22 AM
I'm planning to post some more recording updates and comments on this or that aspect of the recording process (including the bittersweet feeling of having finished the tracking, while the character of the end product nonetheless remains largely unwritten/unmixed and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 7, 2003 12:07 AM
Oliver Kamm has a couple of good posts (here and here) on the Baader-Meinhof Gang/Red Army Fraction. They were provoked by a post from that Beatnik Salad guy from Manchester, who somehow managed to come away from the recent Channel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2003 08:26 PM
Rebekah (who did/does the massive, no-longer-much-updated mtxstarship.com website) forwarded a couple of pretty good emails she received at her site address. One of them was from a guy who said "that song with no words, something about a girl shopping"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2003 04:25 PM
One of the better extemporaneous ideas (as opposed to those that had been plotted for months and years beforehand) was to have a crowd of folks shouting the "take that letter" lines in "The Boyfriend Box." Someone said "it'll sound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2003 04:03 PM
That's a vintage Chinette, for the "classic" sound....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2003 03:51 PM
We finished all the tracking. On schedule. I'm spent, but not insane or suicidal or anything. (No more than normal, anyway.) Weird. Never happened before in the history of my pretend recording career. Tracking was two weeks with two days...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2003 03:44 PM
Yesterday was back-up vocal day, though we did a few keyboard tracks and some percussion overdubs in the midst of everything. In many ways, the back-ups are the most frustrating part of the whole recording experience. My vocal arrangements can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2003 06:10 PM
A couple more pics. Kevin Army trying to turn my retarded onomatapoeia into a kind of reality: But there's nothing like a Wurlitzer:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2003 04:46 PM
As I feared, I lost a bit of momentum on the day off. That is, yesterday there was an abatement of the mania which tends to take hold when you're recording, and which is absolutely necessary for doing your best...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2003 04:16 PM
Distressed guitar, tasteful decor, and high fashion-- the perfect combination:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2003 07:52 PM
I tried to practice and work out some of my keyboard parts yesterday, but I was in crash mode and really couldn't concentrate. I knew the thing to do was relax, but I couldn't figure out how. So I did...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2003 05:24 PM
Because of circumstances beyond our control, we had to take yesterday off. Everyone needed a rest. I sure did. I believe I've started to crash a bit, and my main worry now is that I may be unable to rev...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2003 03:54 PM
Here I am during that first vocal session: The sunglasses were laying around at the studio and I started wearing them to amuse people, as you do. I said "whose are these?" and Mark Keaton said "they're yours now," adding...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 06:04 PM
We had three things on the agenda yesterday: acoustic guitars, e-bows, and finishing out the lead vocals. Sharkbite has really nice Taylor acoustic (probably the best-sounding acoustic guitar I've ever held in my hands) but for some reason we could...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 05:13 PM
What do you do when the swell little old Fender combo has a blown speaker? Well, you could remove it from the casing, set it on top of a semi-functional AC30 and connect it to its speakers: It will sound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 09:39 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 08:53 AM
My guest spot as Smugglers vocalist at the Great American Music Hall: The MTX at the GAMH. The guy in the baseball cap is Vova from Moscow. I think he's the first Russian kid to make it out to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2003 05:50 PM
I can usually tell what's going on in these studio pictures from the shirt I'm wearing, but I honestly can't tell by looking at it whether this was taken during my retarded monkey episode or not....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2003 05:33 PM
Lookout Records has put up a page devoted to the new album. So far all it has is some links, the photos I've already posted here, and the XML feed from this blog. (There's a link and summary for each...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2003 05:03 PM
Hmm, how to characterize yesterday's session? As usual, Ted played some great, great, brilliant guitar on several tracks with seeming effortlessness. Then we started to examine the song "Sorry for Freaking Out on the Phone Last Night." That was one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2003 07:54 PM
The tuning demon seems to have left the building. Yesterday was extremely productive, and we ended up with the basic guitars on all but one song. Towards the end of the night I did some scratch vocals. These are for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2003 05:27 PM
Kevin on the left, me on the right, and Bobby's '77 Telecaster Deluxe in my quivering but not-yet-defeated arms. It's a great-sounding guitar, and it stays pretty well in tune, but arguably the most wonderful thing about it is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2003 07:17 PM
Yesterday's recording session was a bit off-kilter because everyone was still a little wrecked from the previous night's show. We got a lot accomplished, nonetheless, finally finishing all the bass, putting down the sketchy basics of some of the sound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2003 05:45 PM
I had a really good time at the show last night (and I'm still feeling a bit of that lingering g. t. even now.) I don't have time to give a full report right now. The Queers cancelled, but the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2003 07:26 PM
I was going to do some blogging today, but a massive Lookout Party aftermath headache has made even the sound of the keys a bit too much for me poor little head. I better get over it fast, though-- tonight...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2003 11:16 PM
Today is going to be a little strange at the studio. We're going to try finish all the bass and get to work on the guitar overdubs. Then I've got to head over to the Parkside for the Lookout Party...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2003 05:29 PM
Here I am with Jym listening to the playback of a drum track-- I think it was "She's not a Flower." " To my amazement, we actually managed to finish all the drum tracks today. Some of it still needs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2003 10:15 AM
Sloven? I don't know why I took a picture of this, but it's the Sharkbite couch with some of my ADAT demos strewn about. This is the stuff I recorded at home (some of which I put out on that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2003 07:21 PM
Here's the MTX bass player, Bobby J. I think he'd just done the bass track for "Oh, just have some faith in me." Was it rockin', aggressive, innocent yet jejeune with a soulful been-around-the-block, Slade-o-centric joie de vivre, an oddly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2003 05:21 PM
We got a lot done during the second day of tracking, though it didn't feel like that was what was happening while it was happening. Trying to judge sounds and weigh the merits of the performance of parts that are,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2003 04:58 PM
MTX guitar player Ted Angel in the medium guitar room with Rickenbacker guitar and Vox amp. My favorite old Silvertone amp is over on the right....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2003 05:03 PM
Most recording studios I've worked at have some kind of "vintage" board that was acquired from somewhere else, some other studio that either replaced it or went out of business. (And of course, older is better in perception and reality:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2003 04:41 PM
As I suspected, yesterday proved to be a bit chaotic. Much of the day was spent getting the drum sounds, which is probably the most mind-numbing, peace-of-mind-shattering activity of the whole process. But you have to do it. We "got"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2003 04:08 PM
Today is going to be a bit hectic and crazy and chaos may reign, so I'm not sure how much you'll be hearing from me. Just moving all our stuff into the studio is going to be a big, complicated...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2003 05:19 PM
Over at Dean's World, Don Pesci argues the case for revoking Walter Duranty's embarrassing Pulitzer Prize. I agree with the impulse, and I wouldn't be sorry if the prize were to be rescinded. However, part of me believes the lesson...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2003 05:06 PM
Is Bush a conservative? Of course not, in many ways. Andrew Sullivan spells them out in this article with the sub-hed "the liberal within". Beginning thus: it may sound like a stupid question but the dizzying mix of policies that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2003 04:19 PM
Yeah, so in view of all this talk about titles, I decided to ditch the "blogs of war" pun. Boring....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 08:22 PM
Kamm again, on silencing critics....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 02:51 PM
The Philosophical Cowboy links to this article on that cockamamie "brights" nonsense. If you don't know about it, you're probably better off, but Moira Breen, Natalie Solent, and countless others have written on it, if you're interested. In brief, "bright"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 01:17 AM
Let the cheap jokes begin. I know this is a serious matter ("Bomb ingredients seized at house of MILF rebel") but man, is that ever an unfortunate acronym for an Islamic terror organization. (via Inoperable Terran.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 12:16 AM
Earlier today, I heard a KPFA dj say this Mark Morford column was "beautifully written."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 11:52 PM
Dean Esmay was feeling a bit testy on his birthday (many happy returns, sir, by the way.) Testy, perhaps, but still sharp: The other day, I quoted a phrase I'd seen floating around a bunch of places online. It turned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 07:16 PM
Figuring out the right title for an album is tough. I often like to pull out lyrics, as they can make great titles. The problem: sometimes the song from which you pull the lyrics doesn't end up on the album...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 06:14 PM
I've been meaning to mention: Rick Heller was in town this week on vacation and we got together for lunch the other day. He is just as smart as his blog and is as well-spoken as it is well-written. We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 04:29 PM
Here's a kind little review of "eight little songs". We're going in to the studio on Tuesday, and as always, I can't quite tell the excitement from the dread. Most of the first day will probably be devoted to setting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 04:12 PM
I hadn't seen this in a while. Thanks for the memories, Michele....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 02:56 PM
Here's another nice essay by Oliver Kamm, continuing the eccentric "leftists for Bush" theme. He cites three statements by leftish Bush-Blair antagonists and opponents of intervention (Noam Chomsky, Gerhard Schroeder, and a humble UK blogger) noting how each fits "neatly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2003 05:49 PM
Moira Breen gets all the best comments: Ecto-genesis shall manumit masculine males and sexuality from womanacles (i.e. accusatrices + dominatrices + genetrices + votaries of Artemis or the Erinyes or Hecate or Hera or Themis or the X-tian God-dess et.al....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 10:58 PM
Great thinkers of our time-- Noam Chomsky. (Link requires subscription or pay-per-view, if you really want to...) That's presumably not a joke, but rather a featured story in the New Statesman by a celebrated Slobodan Milosevic apologist. He sent me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 10:43 PM
The MTX is doing a brief run down south and a little east, four shows with Stay at Home Bomb. (That's Alice Bag's new band-- "vocals, rhythm guitar, feather duster." Heh.) Thursday, August 7 Spaceland LA Friday, August 8 Chain...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 04:05 PM
Tony Blair's popularity in Britain may have taken a bit of a hit because of the war, but my mother-in-law over there still always refers to him as "our Tony." Over here, my wife and I call him that as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 03:34 PM
I'm pretty much with Bill Quick on this: If we weren't at war, and I weren't certain that GWB will do a far better job of waging it than any Democrat, I'd vote against him for the rest of my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2003 07:18 PM
Somehow I managed to miss Harry Hatchet's nice little piece on the blogging experience in the Guardian. Till now, I mean. Cool. I think most people who have given this whole blogging deal a shot would agree with this: When...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2003 04:00 PM
Ken Layne reports on "Hollywood's Hottest", allegedly a video compilation of the naked scenes (and only the naked scenes) from various movies. Kind of like a video/film version of Celebrity Skin. Anyway, the comment: Maybe the heat is getting to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2003 02:39 PM
Dave Bug has a really terrific idea that I've never seen proposed before: I'd like a database of all Billboard Top 40 songs since 1950 or so. I'd like the records in that database to list the rhyme scheme pattern,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2003 10:29 PM
There have been some great observations about marketing, gimmickry, artwork, "value-added" material, recording budgets, the value of songs, etc., etc. from Layne and Ben along with many of the usual crew of commenters in the comments to the post below....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2003 05:50 PM
It's pretty clear to me that people who make this sort of anti-copyright argument have never been within sneering distance of an actual recording budget. At least, that's what I always think when I hear people toss out phrases like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2003 07:48 PM
This blog began life as an unapologetic warblog, but, like so many things, it has had a will of its own and has refused to remain focused. (I've tried to improve that faulty attention span of mine, to no avail.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2003 09:33 PM
Pieter K., an electronic music writer/producer, has some interesting comments on the songwriter/audience issue I brought up in the post about Bob Mould and Kevin Army. (Coincidentally, he inhabited the same mid-eighties MRR pre-Gilman milieu from which Kevin and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2003 04:22 PM
Ken Layne's taking pre-orders for his home-made CD. I've been listening to mp3s of much of this stuff for the last couple of months. The material has become embedded in my brain. Now it's your turn. The best songwriters aren't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2003 07:50 PM
Oliver Kamm writes of the trend among British journalists to use the term "neoconservative" as a "pretentious synonym" for conservative. He's right, as so often, and the article he cites as an illustration of this is indeed an illustration of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2003 04:51 PM
We suspect that James Taranto are just being disingenuous when they claim to be surprised that it's so hard to find anyone who is willing to defend Michael Savage. They are, of course, absolutely right that those who likened the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2003 10:30 PM
Ben Weasel gives Norman Mailer ("some old guy from New York who has written a lot of really long books") a good, well-deserved, entirely fair dressing down for poor writing. To illustrate, Ben pulls out two undeniably awkward, amateurish, pretentious,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2003 09:41 PM
The first day of recording is fast approaching. I'm glad but it makes me nervous, like an exam-- I've been studying for it for the last three years, reviewing for the past few months, cramming for the past few weeks,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2003 05:26 PM
Jonah Goldberg has as low an opinion of Gray Davis as I do, and as practically every other Californian does, but he has the right idea on this recall business: it's my sincere belief that American democracy and republicanism will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2003 09:24 PM
I just stumbled upon the story of John Bonnell, an English composition professor whose off-color vocabulary and unorthodox teaching methods have continually landed him in hot water with his college. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the case, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2003 03:57 PM
I saw Bob Mould at the Great American Music Hall the other night. I don't get out much, and even though I dearly love BM's music and have found delight and inspiration every time I've seen him play, I don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2003 08:55 PM
Noting that we share an enjoyment of goofy campus censorship stories, esteemed comrade Aaron forwards this example. It's a pretty good one. The facts are these: one Steve Hinkle, a Cal Poly student and member of the College Republicans, attempted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2003 01:43 AM
Seamus Heaney has been down so long that it looks like up to him. Or to put it another way, he has some mad love for Eminem. You know, the guy who "created a sense of what is possible." That...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 07:05 PM
For anyone who has been following the Dissident Frogman's Missing Flags Saga, here's the Frogman's final word. Explanations, and apologies galore. His trouble has dissipated....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 05:25 PM
Here's a run down and summary of the recent controversy between Israel and the BBC, and of the case of Amit Duvshani, the Israeli graduate student whose application to an Oxford Ph.D. program was rejected by Professor Andrew Wilkie on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 03:40 PM
I never had a comments routine on my blog before I switched over to Movable Type a couple of weeks ago. Even though I thought they were kind of cool, and part of me envied those who had them, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 03:20 AM
Rick Heller, who runs one of my favorite blogs, Smart Genes, noted my post on ideological de-linking. He often manages to distill into one or two sentences things that I'll fumble with for page after rambling page, and here he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2003 02:03 PM
The Dissident Frogman discovers French anti-Americanism at its most inappropriate, at the Muse Mmorial de la Bataille de Normandie. According to his eyewitness account, all American flags appear to have been purged from the premises. He includes photos of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 11:55 PM
From Dennis Miller's spiel on Fox News: Senator Robert Byrd's recent speeches have been so demented, I'm afraid he's suffering exhaustion from burning the cross at both ends. Let's face it, if Byrd were your grandfather and he went off...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 10:23 PM
P. J. O'Rourke reviews Hillary's book in the Weekly Standard, and as always, he's got more good lines than the Navy's got marines. Here's an excerpt from the initial section on how "a mere ream of paper could not contain...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 09:00 PM
I'm sure this will get a lot of blogospheric play, and get run into the blogospheric ground in pretty short order, but it's still new enough to be funny to me. According to the Associated Press, Dennis Kucinich has promised...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 08:17 PM
Even magazines yearn to breathe the air of freedom. (Thanks for sending the link, Lynn.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 06:36 PM
Matt Welch's recent column on immigration was not particularly provocative, mostly factual, and like all of Matt's writing focused more on raising interesting questions than upon advancing a pre-determined ideological conclusion. There was the barest smidgeon of waving a red...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 04:24 PM
Liberty Punk's Geoff points to this massive comment thread at over at Right Thinking. If you want to see some of the goofier music piracy apologists in action, you can find them there. (Ben Weasel and our Matt from Vegas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 03:20 PM
So I don't know if anyone has noticed but I've been slowly working up to changing the appearance of the blog, bit by bit. When I first moved from blogger to Movable Type (thanks again Michele!) I used the pre-packaged,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 09:12 PM
Ben has a follow-up post to his original essay on copyrights, internet theft, etc., where he summarizes and answers the arguments of some of the comments it provoked. Well-worth a look. Photodude's recent post on this sparked a cranky comment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 07:42 PM
First off, this post has a warning label: Cigarettes are called "fags" in England. It seems only prudent to mention that, for the benefit of those who might not realize it. Slang can cause confusion. The first time you overhear...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 04:36 PM
Michele has landed herself in the middle of another de-linking fix, this time owing to some rather less than adulatory comments about Strom Thurmond. I, like many others, first discovered Michele's blog via an InstaPundit post about the last round...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2003 07:02 PM
It's not easy being France's full-time Headscarf Mediator. Herewith the tale of a 16-year-old Muslim schoolgirl who refused to remove her head covering during school hours, the Headscarf Mediator's efforts to broker a deal, a three week stand-off, and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2003 04:37 PM
Well, not so elusive anymore, now that Sheila O'Malley/Astray has rambled over to new environs. Check her out-- she's one o' the best, as they say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 11:15 PM
Speaking of song-poems, Treacher reports that, as I might have known but didn't, Lileks wrote an extensive, track by track review of the Bar None comp. when it came out. And if this account of the strange, sad, amazing life...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 11:04 PM
Mona Baker's spirit lives on, at Oxford. Apparently. UPDATE: I had my doubts about the letter's authenticity when I first saw the LGF post (hence the "apparently.") It appears to have been genuine, though. Professor Wilkie has issued the standard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 09:22 PM
Maybe I haven't managed to take over too much of the world, or make anything like a dent in America's collective media consciousness or popular culture, but things seem to be going pretty well in Fairfield County, CT. Thanks, Mike!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 07:55 PM
I keep meaning to mention, for those of my readers who may not know, that Reid Photodude Stott has been engaged in the fairly thankless task of championing and arguing for preserving the rights of individual copyright holders for years...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 09:28 AM
As InstaPundit says, this is an interesting take on the whole file-sharing dilemma: For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 01:47 AM
I'm just trying to imagine Italian TV without sexy. Er, sexist. Uh, ism. Or a cold and uninviting Sun, where page four directly follows page two. Or what our television world (face it, the only world you really care about)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 11:09 PM
Or postcard rather. This postcard was addressed to a former resident of my building, who has long since moved out. It's been sitting on top of the building's bank of mailboxes with a stack of other pieces of "return to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 10:25 PM
Harry Hatchet throws clear, cold water on Ted Rall's latest lump of hyperbolic Third Reich-invoking gibberish. (Bush's Willing Executioners! Shame on you, Mr. Rall.) Rall, of course, is only one of many purveyors of myriad versions of this absurd exercise....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 07:27 PM
Upcoming shows: Lookout Records is putting on some shows to mark its 15th anniversary, July 25th - 27th. (15? No way. Yes way.) I'm playing solo on Friday, July 25th at the "Launch Party" at thee Parkside Lounge in San...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 05:03 PM
So I just had a TV crew in my little hovel, taping me as part of a segment on internet downloading of music, sparked by this. I have no idea how much they're going to use, but they taped me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2003 10:37 PM
Looking for info. about John Trubee, I stumbled on to The American Song-Poem Music Archives, an entire site devoted to the "song-poem" genre. There's a full explanation on the site, but in brief, what they call "song-poems" are what results...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2003 05:58 PM
Ben has posted a very sweet review of "eight little songs." I'm blushing....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2003 07:04 AM
My friend, tireless supporter, and benefactress Michele has a new comics-related group blog, Four Color Hell. And here's a parody of her main blog-- not exactly a work of genius, but it made me smile a bit. (The Treacher parody,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2003 06:54 AM
As always, I'm late to the party, but I just learned from Jim Henley that the New Criterion now has a blog. He thinks it's "just wrong." Maybe. But if so, it's wrong in a pretty engaging way. Anyway, wrong...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2003 04:55 PM
Harry's Place has moved here. The Talent Show has moved here. The Edge of England's Sword has moved here. (I'm late with that one-- sorry Iain!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2003 03:08 PM
Roger L. Simon on those elusive WMDs: To complain about the absence of WMDs at this point would be like having liberated Auschwitz during WWII only to grouse that there wasn't any cylon-b in the concentration camp, just dead bodies....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2003 07:03 AM
There's no transcript available, so this is all from memory. The quotes and descriptions below are merely how I recall it, making no claim as to strict accuracy. OK? Anyhow-- Tonight's Fox News Watch had a brief segment on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2003 09:40 AM
Tim Blair catches Robert Fisk, ordinarily protected these days from blogospheric/cheapskate scrutiny by what Tim calls a "cash firewall", in the act of invoking the Wolfowitz "swimming in oil" quote that caused the Guardian so many headaches, and required a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2003 08:46 AM
Andrew Motion, Britain's Poet Laureate, embarrasses himself, the birthday boy, and everybody else in the room with this "rap" to mark the occasion of Prince William's 21st birthday. Hey, neat! A rap! I'm down, homeboy: Better stand back Here's an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2003 01:13 AM
Noted by Steven Rubio: Gary Huckabay, A's fan and Baseball Prospectus raconteur, on the kind of person who wears caps with the colors of both the A's and Giants, offered for your perusal as the two local teams prepare to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 06:25 PM
I've been missing Moira Breen since she disconnected herself from my window into her world. Now it appears that she's back in business. Huzzah!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 05:30 PM
The great Johann Hari weighs in on the Iran democracy movement, and the strange disinclination of many on the left to muster much enthusiasm for it: The students of Iran are trying to foment a second Iranian revolution - one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 03:43 PM
We just watched the "Criterion Collection" DVD of Straw Dogs (which has long been one of my favorite films, though I hadn't seen it in quite awhile.) I gotta say, the commentary by film critic Stephen Prince (author of Savage...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 03:18 PM
Pretty much, anyway. Here's Ben's promised, fiery (and terrific) essay on how the the "totally free music" conceit and internet theft impacts The Little Guy. I wrote a bit about this last year (and received tons of abuse for it--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 09:31 PM
Oliver Kamm previously noted the use of the pernicious Wolfowitz "it's all about the oil" hoax quote in an anti-war bulk email called "Were we lied to?" Now he's been phoning up the activist group's Management Committee, demanding that the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 04:01 PM
Eric blogcritics Olsen has a great, rather moving MSNBC piece on Warren Zevon and his new album "The Wind." I haven't heard it yet, and I can't wait. My friend Tristin had an advance copy and she said it's beautiful....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 03:02 AM
When I first read about the jolly "gas chamber hiss" heard from Chelsea supporters (and others-- one commenter says he heard it from Arsenal as well) I thought: you know, that sounds familiar. I've never actually been to an English...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 02:25 AM
Yikes! I knew I'd break this thing eventually. I was trying to import my old archives (following this step-by-step) and things seemed to be going well. Then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. I'm not sure what I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2003 06:08 PM
Herewith, some further chuckles from Amazon World's Amazon.com reviews digest: "yes, i am a woman. yes, i was born a lover of poesy, water, and the small heartbreaks that consume our lives..." "Fahrenheit 451 is the worst book I have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2003 10:30 AM
Here's an article on those anti-Semitic Chelsea vs. Tottenham football chants mentioned below. Apparently the "kill the yids" chanting is sometimes augmented by "an elongated hiss, supposed to emulate the sound of the gas chambers." Swell... (via au current's Jackie,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2003 09:12 AM
Even though I have to admit I'd get a kick out of having my state governed by Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and while I'm as disgusted with Gray Davis as anyone, I'm with Deborah Saunders on this recall business. As Saunders points...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 09:39 PM
Harry Hatchet questions the contention that socialists, by definition, can never accurately describe themselves as libertarians. This essay and the ensuing exchange in the comments section between Harry, LibSam's David Carr, Peter Cuthbertson, and others is worth a look if...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 05:26 PM
Oliver Kamm savors the irony: a political email circular from Our World Our Say: Action Against Conflict bearing the title "Were we lied to?" prominently features the bogus Wolfowitz quote that the Guardian had to withdraw. If you haven't started...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 04:32 PM
I'm truly sorry I missed this debate on Radio 3 amongst George Monbiot, John Lloyd, and Samizdata's Perry de Haviland. The comments to this post give you the basic idea. "Species awareness" indeed....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 04:04 PM
Cinderella provides this classic Adam Michnik quote, his own translation of an excerpt from this interview in Die Zeit: Die Zeit: Juergen Habermas is of the opinion that the "normative authority of the USA" lies "in ruins". In the end...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 02:31 PM
Michele has my favorite take so far on the Bill O'Reilly vs. The Internet brouhaha. It's de-linking writ large. Heh. UPDATE: This is pretty great as well....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 05:45 PM
I was wondering why the downloads of "democracy, whisky, sexy" spiked a bit over the last couple of days, as did orders for "eight little songs". Here's why: Glenn Reynolds included those links in this MSNBC entry about the power...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 05:19 PM
Ladies and gentlemen: I am no longer the most famous punk rock affiliated blogger. That would be the illustrious Ben Weasel, whose new, just-started blog, Weasel Manor, is here. He originally told me his idea was to "share his musings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 04:46 PM
OK, so sometimes anti-Semitism is hard to pin down, and even when it's pretty clear that there is some sort of anti-Semitic phenomenon at work, it's complex and subtle, difficult to characterize and understand how it functions and to what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 10:22 AM
Deliberately mispronouncing someone's name, or pretending you don't remember it, is a time-honored method of casting aspersions or belittling someone. Every girlfriend I've ever had has had snide little nicknames for all of the previous girlfriends she's known about, often...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 09:25 AM
Mohammed al-Douri, Iraq's colorful U.N. ambassador during Saddam's last days, has given an interview with BBC World. The gist: Saddam deserved to be toppled, but that he "would have preferred" that the Iraqi people rather than US and British military...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2003 05:16 PM
Amazon World is a cool new blog dedicated to "highlighting some of the more interesting user reviews found on amazon.com." There are some good ones on the main page, including this review of The Great Gatsby (from which the title...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2003 04:19 PM
Oliver Kamm takes on Eric Hobsbawm, historian, professor, Communist and author of this article originally published in Le Monde and excerpted in Saturday's Guardian. Howbsbawm has some priceless quotable lines, like "theoretically the Americans do not aim to occupy the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2003 07:38 AM
Ben left a note in the comments to my last posted "found" letter alerting me to this excellent e-zine devoted to found items. (Open Letters was another great one its day, but sadly the online site where you could download...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2003 01:25 AM
It's a bit "last week" and all that, but I've been thinking about this Christopher Hitchens column ever since I first saw the link in a distant, long since archived InstaPundit post. Hitchens notes yet another possible angle to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2003 09:51 PM
This interesting, amusing and fairly innocuous article by Jeet Heer about the Trostkyist past of many advocates of the war in Iraq sparked this histrionic tirade from Arnold Beichman. Granted, the headline of the original article was provocative ("Trotsky's Ghost...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2003 05:57 PM
I found this letter many years ago near the Andronicos on Telegraph and Carlton in Berkeley. It's written in black ballpoint on what was once heavy off-white paper, but it had been folded and re-folded over and over. Dear Fred,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2003 03:50 AM
So thanks to Michele (and through the good offices of Dean Esmay) I have this slick, new Moveable Type blog instead that rickety, sputtering, retarded, unwieldy blogger/blogspot blog. It's just like living in space. In fact, it's so space-age and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2003 12:57 AM
Test, test... [guitar strum]... is this thing on? [strum strum] Okay, rock and roll!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2003 04:41 PM
Fan Letter Everyone else's favorite new blog is mine, too: that would be the blog of Oliver Kamm (to which I was first directed by Harry's Place.) Remarkably wide-ranging, thoughtful, lucid, elegantly composed, full of common sense and dry, ironic...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2003 09:12 AM
The Palestinian prime minister said Monday he will not use force against militant groups under any circumstances, despite their stated determination to derail a U.S.-backed peace plan with attacks on Israelis, including two weekend shootings that killed five soldiers... Abbas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2003 09:31 AM
Ken Layne has a lot of stuff about the old New York Times, including this anecdote: When your whole journalistic game is Serious & Sober & Working for the Good of Society, you can't survive becoming a national joke. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2003 09:00 AM
One of the two blogger-proprietors of the Atrios-endorsed Tom DeLay-hating, Krugman-boosting, Stinging Nettle is named "DrFrankLives." The blogosphere is a big tent, and there's room for multiple Dr. Franks, I guess, even if one of them has a tendency to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2003 11:01 AM
Matt Welch has posted a kind little blurb about my "eight little songs" self-release. I believe it's the nicest thing ever said about it by someone other than my mom. (Plus, there's some classic Layne-ishness in the comments-- check 'em...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2003 09:51 AM
Lord knows, I don't have the room for it. And Lord only (if even) knows why, but for some inexplicable reason, I want one of these. (Maybe the reason is that I would like to have the room for it?)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2003 09:51 AM
Apparently the Florida woman who insisted upon her right to remain veiled in her drivers' license photo might have had good reasons other than modesty, religious fervor, and civil libertarian concern for wishing to remain in disguise: Following her 1997...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 12:17 PM
I don't know if you've been following the whole Tucker Max/Miss Vermont shebang (so to speak.) I followed the links when I first saw them on InstaPundit, was amused-charmed-aghast-bewildered-nauseated-and-giggling like everyone else, but also at a loss for words. Ken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 09:12 AM
Angelo Codevilla's critiques of the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror have been the clearest and (to me) most interesting and persuasive of all the post-911 commentary. Here's his latest, "When the Cheering Stops": In a nutshell: President...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 08:46 AM
Geoff over at Liberty Punk stumbled on this discussion board: GOPunk.com. (Not Go Punk!, you understand. GOP + Punk.) From the GOPunk FAQ: Let's make one thing clear: today's Democratic Party is a vile socialist organization, thriving on hate, fear,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 03:19 PM
"Masculinist Discourse"? (via Richard Bennett.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 01:11 PM
Stirring debate at the House of Lords: Fears that government may not have a finger on the pulse of modern technology were exposed in the House of Lords yesterday, as some Lords debated unsolicited spam email, while others discussed the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 12:16 PM
I still prefer Alistair Matthew Engel is leaving America, aiming one last trademark, supercilious kick at the "cybermorons" who have criticized him for cluelessness about his ostensible area of expertise. As he has discovered, Americans are a funny, inscrutable bunch:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 09:41 AM
David Aaronovitch comments on the latest survey on What Women Want (ostensible result: ersatz soft-focus romancin' with an assortment of film and tv characters.) Quite properly pronouncing it to be "nonsense," he produces his own list, based on "several decades...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 08:45 AM
Greg from The Talent Show sure drew a different lesson than I did from Kevin Mattson's Dissent article on the Left's Michael Moore problem. With respect, I think it's more than just a matter of Moore's "sloppy and crude style,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2003 01:38 PM
This is pretty funny. University of North Carolina-Wilmington professor and all around wise-acre Mike S. Adams decided to test collegiate attitudes on "diversity and tolerance", deliberately violating a university prohibition against faculty political endorsements by placing a "Clinton/Gore'96" sticker on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 08:22 PM
Euphemisms 'R' Us Michele notes that her daughter's school has replaced the term "Foreign Language" with the acronym "LOTE" ("Languages other than English"). Presumably this sounds more cuddly and inclusive to some ears, but to mine, the phrase is mostly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 11:15 AM
Neal does Sid: For the first time ever, I saw Bill sob. I went behind his desk and rubbed his shoulders. It was going to be OK, I told him. "Don't worry about these people," I said. "They have no...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 10:25 AM
Salam Pax loves the Guardian and wants to marry it Well, not quite. Jeff Jarvis notes some, er, creative editing in the Guardian's interview/article/teaser on Salam Pax....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 09:33 AM
Reason: Sheer Idiocy Rather improbably, by my lights, Tim Blair's blog has been banned in Croyden. "Reason: hate speech." You've got to wonder whether these Croyden milquetoasts have ever heard actual "hate speech." Not that the term "hate speech" refers...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 08:35 AM
That article on so-called "Hipublicans" continues to reverberate. Brink Lindsey, noting Julian Sanchez's question about young conservatives versus libertarians and the subsequent strident comments it sparked, has an interesting comment of his own: I'm reminded of a question I've asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 01:15 PM
Another great column from David Aaronovitch on British lefty flirtation with and denial about anti-Semitism. He addresses, among other things, a curious phenomenon (that I've often noted, particularly in Britain): people will auto-excuse their own antipathy towards Jews, on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 08:54 AM
Sweet Gay Jesus It sounds like a hoax to me, but Tim Blair is all over the story of the Melbourne academic who has devoted his professional life and a considerable sum of public money to "proving" that Jesus was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 07:43 AM
Mabye Someday Digging through my stuff looking for something or other, I came across another "found" letter. This appears to be the second page of a longer letter, written on lined paper torn from a school notebook in what is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2003 04:12 PM
Bizarro Blogosphere I know this may a bit rich coming from a retrograde, as-yet-unupdated blogspotter like myself, but is anyone else having trouble loading blogs today? I haven't been able to access Glenn, Michele, Jeff, or Bill all day. In...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2003 12:19 PM
Clueless is as clueless does Wilson Quarterly editor Steven Lagerfield reviews Gerald Graff's Clueless in Academe: Mr. Graff flirts with the notion that there might be something wrong with today's scholarship that accounts for students' difficulties--things like impenetrable jargon, needless...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2003 10:33 AM
"Our Moorean Dilemma" That's one of the sub-headings of this interesting essay by Kevin Mattson on the drawbacks and pitfalls of Michael Moore's brand of Leftism. Eager to rescue the Left from the inanity and contentlessness embodied by "America's most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2003 08:57 AM
Totalitarian Nostalgia, Police State Chic "Berlin's Communist past has become more fashionable" these days, according to this article in yesterday's Independent. So they're considering re-erecting the 60 foot statue of Lenin that was pulled down after the fall of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2003 09:13 AM
From the New Republic's Notebook: MOTHER OF ALL CONDESCENSION "As the mother of a teenage daughter, I know, if you don't set limits around children, they'll test you, and we should have predicted that there would be the looting or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2003 09:12 AM
Grape Mrs. Carillon! Katrina vanden Heuvel imagines that Emma Goldman, were she alive today, would be "shaking it" with "radical cheerleaders" like the "Dirty Southern Belles, or Radical Teen Cheer. There is, of course, no way of testing this hypothesis,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 10:49 PM
One Step Beyond Here's spiked's Duleep Alliraja, on the much-discussed attempts to ban competitive "events" at British schools, and the notion that this represents "political correctness gone mad": The notion that political correctness has gone mad is a strange anthropomorphism....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 10:13 AM
Jeff Jarvis has a suggestion for Yasser Arafat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 09:58 AM
Better than "My Lovely Horse"? I just stumbled on this page about Austria's entry in this year's Eurovision Song competition (via Michael Jennings, by way of Natalie Solent.) The song is by one Alf Poier and to judge from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 08:19 AM
Ken Layne's cyber-busking again: check out "She Thinks She's Me", recorded on a boombox in a Gilroy, CA park. "My gosh, I'm married to a freak..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2003 09:37 AM
Cool kids Tim Blair and Damian Penny both have spiffy new Moveable Type sites. Volokh, too, by God. At this rate, I'm going to be the only blogspotter left......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2003 09:03 AM
Misdirected Openness As Instantman says, the author of this article on university campus conservatives seems to be straining a bit too hard to blame outside forces for the rightward trend he discusses even as he documents it, almost as though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2003 01:36 AM
Stephen Pollard reports on the New Statesman's cover story "outing" British "neoconservatives" mentioned below: the supposed six leading British neocons: David Aaronovitch, John Lloyd, Daniel Finkelstein, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, and yours truly. As usual, the piece itself completely misunderstood...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2003 09:24 AM
If you were trying to launch an effort to rebuild a sensible Left, to rescue "progressivism" from the loonies, eschewing residual New Left excesses and identity politics and attempting to revitalize true liberal, pro-democracy internationalism, to create (in Josh Marshall's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2003 07:23 AM
They just can't let go of the Jew thing... The New Statesman (the British paleo-left journal of "Kosher Conspiracy" infamy) has sunk to a new low, apparently launching a program of "outing" British "neo-conservatives". (i.e., exposing British Jews in high...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2003 12:09 PM
Another moderately surreal experience I stumbled on this clip of a D.C. group called Emocapella doing a kind of doo wop cover of one of my songs, "Even Hitler had a Girlfriend." It's from an "anti-Valentines Day Show" that appears...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 09:14 AM
Everything Must Go Head on over to Honest Jim Treacher's House of Items. He's slashing prices. If war makes you uncomfortable, and you ain't like it, Treacher's your man....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 09:08 AM
We will never have true dissent till we find a way to make it mandatory Emily Jones, commenting on the story of the Arcata City Council ordinance which imposes a $57 fine on anyone who cooperates with the USA Patriot...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 08:59 AM
mmmm, pie One of my mild regrets is that I was too "cool" to bother to show up for my university graduation ceremony. I don't know if they even had a speaker at it. But if they did, I doubt...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 08:58 AM
I think I know this guy... More proof that the Onion is great: BERKELEY, CA Nineties punk Drew Tolbert, 29, expressed scorn Monday for the punks of today, denouncing them as "phony poseurs unworthy of the word 'punk.'" "These kids...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2003 04:50 PM
Saddam's Fantasy Art Collection Found at one of his safe houses in Baghdad. (via Fimoculous.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2003 04:48 PM
I hate to keep harping on the subject outlandish judicial costumes, but it keeps coming up. Chris from Canada forwards this link to the "Supreme Court of Canada Collection," and adds: These outfits inspire neither respect nor fear. To me,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2003 10:41 PM
Cyber-busking, I mean. The last time I stood up in the blogospheric square with my virtual guitar and tried to foist unsolicited "entertainment" on digital passersby, my little operation got overwhelmed by a flood of Insta-gawkers and other looky-loos....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2003 11:57 AM
3 for 3 Richard Bennett posted three things on Sat. May, 17, and three of them are great: a clear, incisive (and to my mind right on) discussion of common sense, tax-cuts, and tax policy in California; a wry comment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2003 09:48 AM
More Wiggin' The subject of British judicial wigs and gowns comes up here more often than you might imagine. (My most recent post on it might be here, if this happens to be one of those rare moments when blogger's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2003 07:23 AM
According to Lee's Useless Super-hero Generator, I am: The unpleasant Shambling Fang Power(s): Matter consumption, Incomprehensibility Source of powers: Extra-terrestrial mutant home study course Weapon: Fungal Torpedos Transportation: Sea Donkey (via the still v. important Natalie Solent.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 07:07 PM
Snoozing, Losing, and Missing Ben #7 I'm bummed that I missed Matt Welch's TV debut as a Ben Affleck lookalike on the WB network. UPDATE: Matt explains it all in this hilarious (and, given the topic, surprisingly illuminating) column. Still...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 11:06 AM
Jonah Goldberg wades into the "what is a neocon" question. This is the first of what is apparently a series, but the telegraphed conclusion appears to be that the term has been used to refer to practically everything under the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 09:55 AM
Thought for the Day I want people to understand that I am not just the bourgeois-hating, working class revolutionary that everyone percieves me to be. I am also a lover of animals and hot young girls. --from a post on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 08:01 AM
Iraqi exile Hamid Ali Alkifaey had a good piece in yesterday's Guardian: No Iraqi can forget the moment when Saddam's statue was pulled down by Iraqis, assisted by US forces, in Baghdad. On that memorable day, April 9 2003, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 08:00 AM
"Was it her gorgeous red hair? Her killer body?" In case you haven't heard yet, Neko Case is Playboy.com's Sexiest Babe of Indie Rock....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2003 05:01 PM
This Bomb has no Title Political correctness has squelched the tradition of bomb graffiti in the US Navy. Strategy Page says: it was only a matter of time before a few pictures of irreverent chalk marks on 500 pound bombs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2003 10:00 AM
Punk Rock Communist Quote of the Day No link to the quote is provided, but here's how it's cited over at Harry's Place: PEACE! PEACE! "The world is living through a series of never-ending and incredibly quick changes. Shouting 'peace,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2003 09:58 AM
Bias Hounds "Media bias" doesn't send me into an apoplectic, sputtering tailspin like it does some people. Bias is normal. My feeling is, you notice it, object when it's offensive, laugh when it's amusing, and otherwise just go with it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2003 09:28 AM
I see London, I see France NZ Pundit turns up this headline from the dawn of WWII, demonstrating that France has always been France. Of course, it should be noted that England had, in essence, been France right up till...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2003 08:04 AM
Britney! Barbarella! The Kinks! Go! Go! Japan! Tea!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2003 07:29 AM
Flag Bashing Perry de Haviland provides a short, basically accurate, ironic history of the flag of a certain southern state....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2003 12:17 PM
They're talking about wig-reform again. British judges and other court personnel are required to wear outlandish costumes which include elaborate neckpieces and sashes and funny little powdered wigs. Americans find them hilarious, but Brits seem oddly fond of them. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2003 11:01 AM
Steven Chapman points out, and illustrates, that the BBC's quotations from Salam Pax have a been a bit "selective."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2003 09:33 AM
We Are Normal and We Want Freedom Hey, speaking of cyberbusking, I keep meaning to mention Ken Layne's recently posted mp3, a cool song called "Worried." Stonesey, tipsy, honky-tonky, homey, catchy, free-y-- what more could you ask for? Check it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2003 09:59 AM
Freedom of Expression Requires Ceaseless Censorship Julian Petley, chairman of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, on why Fox News should be banned from Britain: "I'm not in favour of censorship, but Murdoch would like to do with British...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2003 08:16 AM
Mimesis Kills On the subject of authors being mistaken for their characters (see post below, Song Talk), Dave from Geek Life sent along this link to the transcript of the interrogation of Langston Hughes during the McCarthy Hearings. This bit...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2003 07:57 AM
He's only stating the obvious, perhaps, but Jonathon Freedland's column on Tam Dalyell's not-even-thinly-veiled anti-Semitism is worth reading for its plain-spoken clarity alone. Dalyell's conception of the Likudnik Menace differs from Buchananite stateside versions in that he avoids euphemisms and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2003 09:21 AM
Song Talk I know I keep claiming that "normal" blogging will resume presently. I'm sticking to that story. The aftermath of the "democracy, whisky, sexy" cyberbusking experiment and the mini-tour has been a bit crazy. I got around 3,000 emails...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2003 07:56 AM
Folk Wraiths vs. the new New Dylans This site is starting to look more like a rockblog than a warblog lately. Sorry about that. Nothing wrong with it I suppose, though I imagine the thousands who still visit this site...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2003 10:03 AM
Big E, Little E, Pseudo E I know the internet has been around for awhile, but this is the first time I've ever felt any significant impact from it upon my own shows and tours. A case in point: at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2003 09:57 AM
A lot of bands stay at the Palace Hotel in Tonelle, New Jersey, as a lot of clubs have running deals. There's not that much more to say about that, except that that's where I'm typing this now. I think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2003 08:33 AM
Parting thoughts Well, you really know the war has finally wound down when Fox switches back to the All Michael, All the Time format. Soon, however, it will be Reconstruction Week: Fox executives Monday unveiled their latest reality-TV venture, Appointed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2003 07:11 AM
The lyrics of that song I've received quite a few requests for the lyrics to "democracy, whisky, sexy." If you're interested in that sort of thing, allow me to direct you to Captain Mojo, who has posted the lyrics as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2003 11:09 PM
Here's a really terrific essay by Matt Welch on Vaclav Havel, Prague, Orwell, and much else. If you don't know the story of Havel, the Plastic People of the Universe, Charta 77, and its crucial role in freeing eastern Europe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2003 07:45 AM
Marketing Dissent Michele has the right idea on the Dixie Chicks situation: The Dixie Chicks are more popular now than ever. They have made a career move out of a negative situation. Number one on Billboard, prime-time television interviews, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2003 06:39 AM
Cyber-busking Update Thanks very much to everyone who posted links to "democracy, whisky, sexy", and to everyone who bothered to stop and check it out. And especially to those generous souls who found it within themselves to toss some spare...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2003 05:09 PM
I Hawk the Songs The "democracy, whisky, sexy" song is now up on the Lookout Records site. (Scroll down to Cyber-Busking! for an explanation if that makes no sense.) I've updated the links below. Here's where to download the song....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2003 10:35 AM
Blog-a-lanche brings down server! I'm sorry if anyone's having trouble loading the page or the mp3 for "democracy, whisky, sexy." I'm working on a solution. It works occasionally-- if you want to keep trying, you can make a game of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2003 08:24 AM
Hey folks. Wanna hear my new song "democracy, whisky, sexy"? Go here. It's a totally free mp3, though, as always, you can tip your blogger/"singer"-songwriter if you feel like it (by clicking on the Amazon tip jar or pay pal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2003 04:16 PM
I've got to work on some songs today, so unless something goes horribly wrong I'll be doing that instead of blogging. But it's not really needed, since John Stewart has said, succintly, perfectly, what always takes me pages and pages...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2003 11:50 AM
Is there more to the Left than a dense, reflexive "anti-Imperialism"? There has to be, though sometimes it seems hard to identify. "The Left has lost the plot" is the title of this clear, well-stated recapitulation of the argument that,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 11:07 AM
Sullivan's Iraq invasion Von Hoffman awards (for spectacularly ill-timed wrong predictions) are up, predictable and amusing as usual. My favorite is from der Spiegel: Gruesome days for the German foreign minister: Every morning at nine, his staff briefs him on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 08:26 AM
Now they tell us This piece by CNN news chief executive Eason Jordan about how CNN had no choice but to act as little more than a propaganda arm of the Saddam regime while the monster was in power is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 07:53 AM
Hey, Matt. Great idea! On the outside chance that there's anyone who reads this blog who doesn't check Welch's blog first, there's a lot of great stuff up there now, including an absorbing, continuing tale (a couple of posts so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 06:28 AM
I gotta say, this little story from Eric Alterman about his friend Mike, Vaclav Havel, and the Curse of Lou Reed is the most entertaining thing I've read in quite awhile. Politics aside, good writing and an interesting story always...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2003 10:52 AM
Here's a detail I hadn't heard before: the US flag that briefly made an appearance on Saddam's head had been "recovered from the Pentagon during the September 11 attacks." I don't know if that's true. But, faux-pas or not, public...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2003 10:08 AM
War aims, anti-war aims Steven Chapman comments on the latest from Brendan O'Neill and Mick Hume, and I think he really has them pegged: Reading through these pieces, as well as all the rest of Spiked's war output, I get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2003 09:19 AM
Game Over This sort of thing seems to happen on TV just about once a day: Just before ducking into his posh doorway the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N. tells a reporter, among other things, "the game is over." Later...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 05:09 PM
Jim Treacher has another batch of protest slogans. I vote for: But Everything Isn't Instantly Perfect...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 12:19 PM
Perry de Haviland on the Saddam-toppling: I have just watched live on TV via SkyNews as US soldiers used an armoured recovery vehicle to pull down the huge statue of Saddam Hussain in the very heart of Baghdad, surrounded by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 12:15 PM
I don't know why I keep quoting-- you should really just go over to Harry's Place and eliminate the middleman. But here's a quote anyway from my favorite pro-Liberation man of the left: I really resisted the temptation to post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 11:55 AM
I like my nationlism a little on the blatent side The dramatic images of the most recent toppling of a big Saddam statue are as eloquent as pictures ever are, and have evoked memories of similarly-erected and -toppled statues of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 10:25 AM
Richard Bennett has gathered a short list of links to stories of cheering Iraqis. The best one, which I hadn't seen before, is this from CNN: in the Baghdad suburb of Saddam City, residents took to the streets to celebrate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 09:32 AM
Observe This Mary Riddell mocks "the brave 'rescue' of Private Jessica Lynch from the hospital ward where she was being treated with all available medical skill." Of course, as Steven Den Beste points out in a characteristically sharp and prickly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 09:17 AM
Lileks has a great extended rumination on the story of the 150 or so children who were freed from an Iraqi jail yesterday, beginning thus: Allied troops liberated a childrens jail today. I wish that sentence made no sense....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 08:04 AM
Wankers! Harry saw this on Sky News: Amazing television on Sky News for the past hour or so as David Chater wanders around the streets of central Baghdad chatting live to US marines and trying to talk to celebrating Iraqi...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 08:03 AM
Hang on to your feck Clarity on "moral clarity" from Ted Hinchman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 07:59 AM
The Crying of Lot 49 (via John Daley, who says his referral logs indicate that almost all who arrived at his site through Indymedia were from .edu locations. Interesting? Maybe not. All I know is, there's a twisted, complex web...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 07:18 AM
An assertion of your beliefs Apocalypse House, from Harden Structures, Inc.: The Apocalypse House by Harden Structures Incorporated is designed specifically for: climatic catastrophe, nuclear blast, nuclear fallout, biological agents, chemical weapons, fires, floods and conventional weapons assaults... At Harden...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 06:34 AM
Fug Big Media "Blogging isn't creating a new underground movement as much as it's creating a new batch of Norman Mailers." Well, now, that's just what we need... The quote comes from this interesting take by Steven Rubio, from a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2003 11:58 AM
Preaching the 11th Commandment From an interview with André Glucksmann: Glucksmann: In these pacifist times, we have had long debates in Die Zeit. Joschka Fischer did not agree with me for a long time. In the end he conceded that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2003 09:17 AM
Do they know something I don't? In the past couple of hours, I've received over twenty-five pieces of spam about "pattern hair loss." I'm deleting as fast I can, but each message is replaced by two more, as though to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2003 12:56 PM
Bloggery, as he might put it: I just noticed that Daily Pundit's hit counter is getting pretty close to a million. Congrats in advance, Bill....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2003 12:06 PM
Patriotism is the new black? As I said below, the British can excel in writing even where they falter in social interaction. Here's a great, uplifting sermon on patriotic pride and the martial and moral virtues by Tony Parsons, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2003 11:55 AM
Cultural Chauvinism-- Theirs, Ours Jeff Jarvis saw the same BBC Newsnight that I did, and was not amused quite as much as I was. He has fisked the docu-clip, but didn't comment on the discussion afterward, which was where most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2003 09:14 AM
I think all the suitable puns on the name "Kerry" have already been used as titles at one time or another You know, I enjoy over-reacting to politicians' rhetorical infelicities as much as the next guy, but this pundit-manufactured brouhaha...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2003 12:22 PM
C. D. Prince fisks a once-popular song....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2003 12:21 PM
You can't say that on television! Good and evil, I mean. The other day I wrote a little thing about Old Europe's tendency to look to a sensationalist caricature of evangelical Christianity as way to elucidate a US foreign policy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 04:11 PM
Close but no bouquet? With all the customary disclaimers about never believing what you read, this is the first report I've seen of Iraqis welcoming US soldiers that actually mentions the proverbial flowers. (And this is Reuters after all.) Or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 02:31 PM
Imperia are hard to do Stephen Chapman has this comment on the latest from Paddy Ashdown's Bosnia: Europeans are as willing to take over other people's countries and run them as protectorates as any Rumsfeld... I'll wager that the EU's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 02:30 PM
Never trust anyone over 30....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 09:47 AM
"In a world torn apart by the monotones of bullies and buffoons..." Howard Jacobson, on why the peace movement never quite persuaded him: I was ripe, if anyone was, for the plucking. Any decent peace movement could have picked me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 09:22 AM
I think they probably could have come up with a less ho-hum headline than "Armored Force Comes Under Fire" for this remarkable and dramatic piece of news: An armored force of 50 American tanks and other vehicles wheeled suddenly into...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 09:19 AM
Terrible Doubt Johann Hari talks sense once again: Nobody nobody, not the anti-war movement nor Jacques Chirac nor George Galloway was able to adopt a position towards Iraq that wouldn't result directly in the deaths of innocent people....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 08:18 AM
Letter from Gotham posts a reminder of this classic column from Michael Kelly. I miss him already. Also from Diane, a prediction that the taking of Baghdad will be "seduction, not rape." She means, more subtlety than blitzkrieg. Let's hope...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:19 AM
Hoax According to Snopes, that "where do they find young men like this" story that caused many lumps to rise in many throats, is a cyb-urban legend. Apparently, Martin Savidge never filed such a report. There's no indication of how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:05 AM
More banal evil Every bit of news from the field is suspect, perhaps, but, for what it's worth, here's the latest sign of grim goings-on in Saddam's Iraq. It sounds like someone converted office space into a make-shift mass grave....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:04 AM
Oh, my God. I'm speechless. Michael Kelly has been killed. I've been reading his stuff since his New Republic days. You read a person's writing over the years, you really feel like you know him. He was a decent, honest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2003 02:53 PM
"One is tempted to say the destiny of America is in the hands of a small group of Protestant bigots." So says an editorial quoted with apparently unintended irony from Le Monde (a daily newspaper from a nominally Catholic nation)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2003 02:04 PM
I find I can't come up with a suitable comment on this document of a remarkable Japanese TV show intended to teach kids about the war. Japanese TV always looks a bit like this, even the programming aimed at adults....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2003 08:09 AM
Our long national nightmare is over Those idiotic commercials with the "end terrorism by boycotting dope" message have finally been canned. "The campaign wasn't working." Now there's a surprise. Come to think of it, the airwaves have also been blessedly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 09:55 AM
Sublime Ridicule I know it's meant as devastating sarcasm, but I find this Rumsfeld "poetry" strangely charming....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 09:07 AM
Another good one from LT Smash, "heard on the street": "Did you hear about the bus?" One of the local men is talking to me. He's referring to an incident in Iraq, where a large van attemted to run a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 08:40 AM
Idealists in Hawks' Clothing Stephen Pollard, my favorite British left wing neocon (really!) and proprietor of one of the best weblogs around, has a good piece in today's Independent on what to many is a counter-intuitive squabble: that between the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 08:33 AM
Our Wonderful Guys I've been seeing links to this anecdote floating around for a couple of days, but I only just got around to clicking in. Go ahead, it's not too long. If you can read it without getting at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 08:29 AM
Of Rosbeefs, Yanquis, and Frogues Here's the latest report, which includes a picture, of the appalling desecration, complete with swastika, of the war memorial at the British cemetery in Etaples. I'm not even going to try to gather all the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 01:02 PM
"The Baath Party were bad people, they used to hurt people inside the police station. "You say bad words about Saddam, they take you in there and you never come out." Royal Marines uncover evidence of torture at an Abu...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 09:58 AM
The Revolution may not be leak-proof Gregg Easterbrook has another interesting piece on inter-services squabbles about the future composition of US forces and Army leaks apparently intended to influence them. Easterbrook points out that the argument is really about the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 09:30 AM
Professional Journalism The main point of this lengthy, sophomoric, error-ridden BBC essay on whether Tony Blair is a neo-con (linked by many including OxBlog and Stephen Pollard) is to demonstrate that its author has no earthly idea of what he's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 09:01 AM
Favorite headline in quite awhile: US WAR PLANNERS LACK PROFESSIONALISM: BELGIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (via Stephen Pollard.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 08:46 AM
Toxic Fog Syndrome Matt Welch rings some apt alarms regarding "Patriot II," concluding: One does not have to believe that Ashcroft is a Constitution-shredding ghoul to find these measures alarming, improper and possibly illegal. Glancing over the list above, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 08:39 AM
As long as she ate the mouse she can neither see nor hear, she's like dead, now sing. Bill Quick comments on this post, and argues that the national sport of Clinton-bashing (erstwhile and continuing) was a valuable public service...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 07:58 AM
Amusing protest slogans by Treacher: My fave: "BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION! That's my argument!"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 07:18 PM
let slip the... Okay, I really didn't want to post anything on this, but I'm getting tired of the emails on the subject, so: Of course, I am aware of blogsofwar.com. blogsofwar.com is run by a guy named John Little,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 01:38 PM
Anti-Julieism Salty blogger vs. salty communist, er, I mean columnist: Your big mistake, Saddam old man, was not calling yourself a Communist. You could have had exactly the same power, exactly the same control, gassed exactly as many Kurds, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 11:57 AM
It will end in disaster... I don't think it "means" anything, but this page of "told you so"s by Guardian columnists really does look like the ones that greeted the on-line clicker during what nobody realized was the final phase...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 08:29 AM
"Hi. My name is Matt. I hate America but I have to live there because of my job as a foreign correspondent. And believe me, these people are quite foreign indeed. I suppose I'd rather be writing about cricket, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 08:26 AM
Steven Chapman counts his bin Ladens: War in Afghanistan was supposed to yield "1,000 bin Ladens." Now Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak claims the war in Iraq will yield "100 bin Ladens." That's a total of 1,100 bin Ladens - but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2003 08:53 AM
A simple recommendation Whatever your position on or feelings about Gulf War II, you owe it to yourself to take the time to read this long, thoughtful, beautiful essay by Bill Whittle....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2003 09:52 AM
Hallowed be thy name Julie Burchill accuses the NIONists (as Steyn has been calling them) of self-indulgence. It's been done before, but this one is particularly scrappy and perfectly calibrated to irritate every single reader who doesn't immediately say "amen"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2003 09:00 AM
Weird and/or disturbing recent google searches that brought people to this site. Each one implies an intriguing, unarticulated story: i want to stay up to date on the war in iraq now sine me up today where can i find...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 03:42 PM
What San Francisco might look like if the lunatics were really running the asylum: It's too bad the cops felt they had to arrest 2,400 people and clear the streets-- better the city saved all the money that's going to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 03:26 PM
Achieving Parody Yet more clever silliness from Mark Steyn, on the media quagmire: After little more than a week, is this war coverage in trouble? Already questions are being raised about whether the media's plan was fatally flawed. Several analysts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 01:24 PM
William Kristol cheers on the Gephardt liberals, vs. the "Dominique de Villepin left": The Gephardt liberals are patriots. They supported the president in the run-up to this war, and strongly support the war now that it has begun. It would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 11:04 AM
From William Gibson's blog (via Samizdata) the following heard on Sky News: "Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton", UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 11:07 AM
War Monkeys A Moroccan publication accused the government Monday of providing unusual assistance to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq by offering them 2,000 monkeys trained in detonating land mines. The weekly al-Usbu' al-Siyassi reported that Morocco offered the U.S. forces...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 11:01 AM
Here's an interesting rundown of claims and counter-claims about incidents in the war. Predictable result: no one really knows what's going on, and every report should be regarded with skepticism. Many see this as a "bias" issue (that is, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 08:00 AM
Steven Chapman watches Question Time, freaks out, makes a couple of good points, captures the moment for posterity....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 07:10 AM
You'll inspect our weapons when you pry them out of the cold, dead hands of our terrorized conscripts... Lord knows, he's preaching to the choir, but Andrew Sullivan "gets it," as he might put it: One lesson of the ferocity...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 06:50 AM
"Violent racist attacks quadrupled in France in 2002 to the highest level in a decade, and more than half of the assaults were aimed at Jews, a national report said Thursday..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 06:44 AM
Funny stuff: Leaders of the anti-war movement announced Tuesday that as the war progressed in Iraq, the movement was headed into a "dangerous quagmire". Angela Hassle-Moore, leader of a recent protest march stated, "We have lost our focus. What are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 06:17 PM
Who knows? Near Basra, Iraq: British military interrogators claim captured Iraqi soldiers have told them that al-Qaeda terrorists are fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein's forces against allied troops near Basra. At least a dozen members of Osama bin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 05:13 PM
Peter Beinart comments, approvingly I believe, on the kinder, gentler war. He's right about the irony implied in his subtitle-- in the war as in much else, Bush's Clintonian streak is something few of his critics, and hardly any of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 05:10 PM
According to this Sky News report, the distribution of food and water in the southern town of Al Zubayr had to be halted because Iraqi forces fired into the crowd: Reporter Ian Bruce, who is travelling with Scots unit Black...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 10:08 AM
Who will boo the booers? Michael Moore says the people who booed his Oscar speech weren't booing him, but rather booing the other people who were booing. But what if the people who were applauding were actually applauding the ones...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 11:30 PM
The perspicuous in pursuit of the depraved Many have linked to this, but only Moira Breen was clever enough to describe it as "auto-Godwinization"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 11:24 PM
"You are obviously trying to get around the fact that you are Canadian." eBay seller refuses to ship to countries that don't support the Anglo-American war effort; hijinks and amusing quotations ensue. (via Angela Gunn.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 09:10 AM
Steven den Beste makes a point about the embedded reporters that I've never seen raised before: There's been a lot of speculation about why the government decided to embed reporters in major military formations. Probably there were a lot of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 08:58 AM
Hey, thanks to the kind souls who have been hitting the paypal button, and particularly the anonymous tip jar donors whom I can't email directly! Wow. Much appreciated....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 08:38 AM
I find this extensive rumination on the meaning of "Not in Our Name" (from spiked's Jennie Bristow) to be rather brilliant: Why go for 'Not in my name' rather than something shorter and to the point - like, for example...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 08:19 AM
Excellent, original take on the media war from Tim Cavanaugh. When it's CNN vs. Al Jazeera, Jazeera wins....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 07:59 AM
Jim Henley provides a good, thoughtful summation of where the war stands as he sees it, focusing on the nexus between psychology, politics and tactics. I think he's probably right about this: the Iraqi regime doesn't realize it's doomed. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 07:33 AM
With friends like these... Look who's linking....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 06:16 AM
The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 06:13 AM
What's the matter? Afraid of a little competition? Is it funny that the weblog section in this New York Times war-media roundup features the Command Post prominently, yet failed to include the url? Yeah, just a little....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 05:33 AM
When the familiar keeps reminding you of the abominable Sheila Astray explains, at length and with eloquence, why New York and America won't "get over" 9/11....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 05:19 AM
Media-wars in Old Blighty The Guardian reports that "the BBC's coverage of the war has come under fire from one of its own correspondents in the Gulf": Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent... accused the BBC's coverage of exaggerating the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 05:07 AM
Post-Warblog Warblogging Harry has changed his nom-de-html from Steele to Hatchet. He's got a bee in his bonnet about the term "warblogger," which is fair enough-- a lot of webloggers don't like the term. I don't care about the term...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 01:48 PM
The Basra uprising appears to be for real. Fox News says the information comes from British central command as well as embedded Sky reporters. Fox is also reporting that Fedayeen are posing as US soldiers, firing on Iraqi regular troops...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 12:56 PM
Two can play at that game Now don't choke on your freedom fries or anything, but "a growing number of restaurants in Germany are taking everything American off their menus to protest the war in Iraq." There follows a list...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 12:47 PM
The Guardian discovers Salam Pax, wonders who he is, etc. (via Mary Madigan.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 10:20 AM
David Aaronovitch tries to puzzle out why the anti-war movement in Britain, even at its low ebb, has been "so bloody big." As he says, it's not at all obvious. He has this observation along with an anecdote about a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 08:07 AM
Here's your daily link to the Command Post, which is shaping up to be the most comprehensive breaking news warblog; and now there's an op-ed area....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 07:43 AM
Urban Combat An interesting observation from Jonathon Marcus on the BBC warblog: I think British forces are very reluctant to move into Basra, after all this is a largely Shia city they believed they would be welcomed in. But the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 07:17 AM
Oh, Please... Paul Krugman: By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 06:56 AM
Déjà vu all over again More anti-semitic thuggery at the Paris Peace Demonstration. (via MIF.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 06:21 AM
Merde in France reports on French war coverage: The pro-Saddam press coverage in France has gone way over the top. Televised news on TF1 and France2 (state TV) are all but openly rooting for Iraqi victory. A GI resting on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 11:08 PM
Where is Raed? was featured on CNN Headline News today, and they even mention Diane's blog by name. I was skiving at my neighborhood bar today and I was rather taken aback when it came on the screen. The blogosphere...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 08:21 PM
Michael Moore at the Oscars You know, I was just as surprised as anyone else that Michael Moore's speech about fictitious-ification or whatever at the Oscars was received with less than total enthusiasm. I'm sure many, maybe even most of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:59 PM
British Spin and Harry Steele respond to American BBC-bashing. Both of them hit the heads of many nails....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 10:55 AM
Salam Pax had no internet access for a few days, but he continued his amazing journal and has now been able to post the material. Powerful stuff: Today's (and last night's) shock attacks didn't come from airplanes but rather from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 10:08 AM
"U.S. troops found Cipro, used to prevent anthrax infection, among high-ranking Iraqis taken prisoner"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 09:52 AM
Those Insidious Papists The country's at war, there's unrest in the streets, the threat of mass-casualty terrorism looms, the economy is rocky-- but some folks still have time to worry over whether St. Patrick's Day violates the Establishment Clause. (via...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 09:28 AM
Jonah Goldberg posts an interesting letter from an army judge on the subject of SGT Akbar, capital punishment and field court martials, and the 101st....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 09:28 AM
Want to see Ken Layne's running commentary on Saddam's latest speech as it was broadcast? Start here and work your way up. Want to read his commentary on Michael Moore's Oscar appearance? Of course you do. Start here and... Oh...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:55 AM
No matter how dubious and fake-looking Saddam's TV appearances may seem to us, they're working in Iraq, sending the message that it's not yet safe to oppose Saddam from within. According John Simpson on the BBC warblog, anyway: Ordinary Iraqis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:39 AM
Wish I could do that... Lileks on the spirit of the BBC: the reporter wanted to flip a particular switch that makes right-thinking people nod sagely: the passionate idealist clich. Its one of the interminable resonances of the class of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:11 AM
There's another smart update on "the Trots," nihilism, the SWP, etc. over at Harry's Place. Excerpt: I find the psychology of this interesting. These people will deny they have taken sides in this war but they are lapping up Al-Jazeera...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 06:43 AM
"Journalists... challenge the establishment, while conservatives want to conserve it." There is a style of blogging (and of blurb journalism in print) that might be described as "pull-quoting with ironic caption." It's most satisfying when the person being quoted is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 06:40 AM
Manufacturing Dissent There is a private elementary school in my neighborhood, the gates of which are currently festooned with adorable hand-made anti-war posters. I happened to be walking by last week when they were being put up. It was clearly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 07:24 PM
Alternative Depravity These people really are beyond all help. (via SDB.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 06:56 PM
Re-route In case you haven't caught it yet, the Command Post is now here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 06:49 PM
The chem-weapons factory discovered near An Najaf is "huge," according to a senior Pentagon official, via Fox....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 06:46 PM
Poseurs for Fragging Steven Den Beste posts a photo of a demo sign which reads: "We Support our Troops when they SHOOT their officers," and has some pointed comments. "Don't they understand," asks Den Beste, "what their own sign really...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 05:52 PM
A Soldier Gone Postal? The word on the US soldier who perpetrated the Camp Penn. grenade attack is that he is an American Muslim convert. Jim Lacey, the Time Magazine reporter at the camp, offered this speculation during a phone...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 08:27 AM
Here's my impression of Aaron Brown conducting a live interview: Um, now, hmm, well I hesitate to, to, you know, ask, but you understand, um, I'm just ah doing my job, and you're doing yours, of course, we both know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 07:45 AM
I can't find anything on the web yet, but Fox and CNN are reporting that an American soldier is suspected in the Camp Penn. attack. UPDATE: According to this, "a soldier assigned to the brigade is in custody"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 05:55 PM
Pyrotechnics Say what you want about Robert Fisk: the man certainly can write. This report from the center the Baghdad assault is about as gripping and powerful as gripping and powerful get. Example: Along the streets a few Iraqis could...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 11:07 AM
Kanan Makiya's letter to Iraqi "friends in Europe and the United States" on the challenges facing Iraqi democracy (included in the latest post to his TNR-hosted weblog) is as compelling and sobering as everyone says it is. Too powerful to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 10:55 AM
Yet more supercilious Bush-whacking blather from Richard Dawkins. As Jeff Jarvis points out, Dawkins appears to be putting his own sentiments in the mouth of Osama bin Laden. Bush is bin Laden's ally, and the most formidable weapon in Osama's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 10:31 AM
Defenestration Interruptus? Popshot.net turns up this snippet from an interview with Robbie Williams: Any embarassing celebrity run-ins of note? I was at a party and completely and totally off my face -- mushrooms, Ectasy, all sorts of shit. And I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 10:07 AM
It's not funny anymore Never mind the kryptonite locks: they found an abandoned backpack containing twelve molotov cocktails amidst the post-demonstration debris on 11th and Howard. (via Michele.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 09:11 AM
Late to every party I keep meaning to mention Jeff Jarvis's excellent breaking news warblog-- probably the best one out there. And the Michele-sparked Command Post group warblog is quite a buzzmachine itself. Check 'em out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 08:51 AM
Confused is the word The Cracker Barrel Philosopher has turned up this remarkable quote from a Not in Our Name activist: "Saddam is a very confused and mixed up man," said activist Elise Bontrager. "And I think maybe that he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 07:39 AM
"A nation of moaning sissies..." Noel Gallagher waxes political: "Whoever is the British Prime Minister is tied to America. It's been that way ever since the Second World War, and even Tony Blair can't change that. Politics is like football...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 07:22 PM
"The commander of Iraq's 51st division and his top deputy surrendered to United States Marine forces today, according to American military officials..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 03:13 PM
Stephen Schwartz fires an erudite and withering rhetorical volley against the blogophere's most notorious Buchananite, Justin anti-war.com Raimondo-- "America's most exquisite Jew-baiter." Schwartz excoriates Raimondo for anti-Semitism, Stalinist tactics, admiration of Japanese militarism, feeble intellect, poor understanding of Zen Buddhism,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 02:17 PM
From the BBC warblog: I'm with US Marines who have been sent in here, along with British Marines, to secure oil wells. They are close to completing that mission. This is the region which produces more than a half of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 12:25 PM
MTV News Speaking of news networks and so forth, I find myself straying rather more often than I'd ever imagined to MTV. I find it fascinating, both for the novelty and for the call-ins and interviews with young viewers: a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 11:11 AM
A disturbing report from David Pryce-Jones, via Rich Lowry: "The Turks have moved their forces to the border, and there are the first reports that they've crossed the border. They've claimed it is a humitarian mission. The Kurds will fire...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 10:02 AM
Gigglechick caught a pretty good Rumsfeld crack: a reporter asked why "we strayed from the warplan" Rumsfeld responded "the last I checked, YOU don't have the warplan... and I find comfort in that." (via Sheila Astray.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 09:06 AM
Don't let that mask fool you For what it's worth: ABCNEWS has learned that witnesses at the site of a Baghdad suburban residential complex have told U.S. intelligence officials that Saddam was observed being taken from the bombed complex on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 08:23 AM
William Saletan has been watching the United Nations Security Council on C-SPAN: The council was meeting to discuss the latest update from weapons inspector Hans Blix. Blix was downcast because, having been forced to leave Iraq a few days ago...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 07:44 AM
Do rabbits do that? Gore Vidal on Tony Blair: "How embarrassing for Blair, Prime Minister of that once great country, to be yapping like a rabbit in support of our war," said Vidal to yells of support....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 06:56 AM
To be pitied or censured? Michael Moore appears to be suffering from False Consensus Effect....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 06:38 AM
Life imitates Simpsons, once again Welch says CNN is "the early loser of the media war," and it's hard to argue with that: When I turn to Fox -- which I am not normally inclined toward -- I might see...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 05:40 AM
Yuck: In a unique form of opposition, some protesters at the Federal Building staged a "vomit in,'' by heaving on the sidewalks and plaza areas in the back and front of the building to show that the war in Iraq...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 06:11 PM
Tim Blair heard this call on an Australian radio talk show: The [call] came from an older woman named Jill. Her family had migrated to Australia after WWII. "I wish we'd had politicians in the 1930s with the guts of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 05:59 PM
The International Divorce Court Andrew Marr, posting on the BBC warblog, writes that the European Summit in Brussels "could not have been worse": Tony Blair and President Chirac have at least briefly shaken hands but they spent most of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 05:31 PM
"Il s'est comporté en putain parisienne..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 04:43 PM
Great post from Matt Welch stepping off from this American Prospect article, wondering whether bought and paid-for Saudiphiliacs are "leading the charge" against the "cabal" of neocons in the government. A trend worth tracking, indeed....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 04:33 PM
I finally got around to watching this Insta-linked docu-clip by Evan Coyne Maloney. The strange thing about this montage depicting the loony extremes of the San Francisco protest milieu is that it barely scratches the surface of SF bay area...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 01:00 PM
Partially Obscured by Wings Doc Searls comments on the Heritage Foundation's canny spambiguous bulk mail (I got one) and the dearth of peace-bloggers. A lot of folks expressed irritation at what has been seen as an attempt to co-opt the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 09:49 AM
"What we need is a bloodbath..." Peter Cuthbertson quotes a sampling of some of the uglier sentiments from this Guardian message board's discussion of whether Britons ought to "support the troops." I have to say, I've heard worse; and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 07:54 AM
Wet Paint Like everyone is saying, there's not much to say. Watching CNN is like watching water evaporate. The blather of news network talking heads evokes the meandering inanity of a PBS pledge drive: "...to show your support for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 07:11 AM
Maybe it would have been funnier if he'd been wearing a dress... Another feeble attempt at humor by notoriously unfunny Independent columnist Mark Steel: As mothers reach out to touch their dying children they'll be thinking, "Thank God Clare [Short]'s...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 05:19 PM
"George Bush is a mo-o-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-r-o..." An anti-war protester, trying to hang a banner, has fallen off the Golden Gate Bridge. UPDATE: According to this, it was an intentional, rather than merely effective, suicide. He gave the police a statement, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 03:33 PM
Le fiasco, c'est moi The sands continue to shift in the aftermath of Germany's ill-conceived alliance with "Operetta-style Gaullism." In Berlin, a reporter talking to a German official heard that the Schroeder government initially believed Iraq was a one-issue crisis,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 08:55 AM
Three men of "Western European origin" have been found with home-made bombs in a Sussex flat near Gatwick. Local residents said they thought the men worked at Gatwick Airport. Pinakin Patel, the owner of Kandies Sweets in Langley Parade, said:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 07:56 AM
"THE first shots of the war have been fired," according to the Times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 07:38 AM
Hari's Place Harry Steele examines the future prospects of the Stop the War movement, now that the war has, at long last, lumbered into the category "situation: unstoppable." Excellent observations as usual. The springboard consists of Eve of War columns...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 07:26 AM
Podhoretz's Weird World, continued: AN hour after President Bush announced the United Nations had only one day to agree to the enforcement of U.N. Resolution 1441, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix blithely announced he was considering a trip to Baghdad....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 08:39 AM
Isn't that just like a man? Madeleine Bunting psychoanalyzes notorious male Tony Blair, and the commentators who misunderestimated him: Could it be that a largely male commentariat has such a gendered perception of emotions (broadly summed up as "women have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:43 AM
Shoe the Children From this report on accused kidnapper/weirdo/maniac Brian David Mitchell: Mitchell was described by his stepson, Derrick Thompson, as a "weird" man who had talked to God in the desert after taking 10 hits of LSD. "They said...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:38 AM
Here's an impassioned op-ed by Kurdistan Prime Minister Barham Salih, pleading to the British Left to support the invasion of Iraq should be required reading: Regrettably, many are denouncing a war that would liberate Iraq. Like those who shunned us...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:12 AM
Gary is keeping tabs on all the blogoshperic commentary on the neocon/anti-Semitism debate-- just go to his page and follow the links that look interesting. Max Sawicky has a good discussion of the matter. I think this sums up a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2003 02:12 PM
More on anti-Semitism Here's Kevin Drum's response to the commentary on various blogs in response to his neocon/anti-Semitism question, including this concluding lament: It's simply not possible to take into account every possible connotation of every word you write, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2003 11:20 AM
Spot the Fictional Character Naomi Wolf versus Ali G. (via Briffa.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 11:44 AM
Thomas Nephew, still reluctantly hawkish, responds to some of the "balking hawks" who have been driven back over the fence by the recent diplomatic meltdown. I recommend reading the whole post, which is a smart and, I think, pretty accurate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 09:42 AM
Clark more Creep than Comic Harry Steele has some apt comments on the Neil Clark hatchet-job on Djindjic which I mentioned below. Having googled Clark and found the "Milosevic: Prisoner of Conscience" essay, Steele quotes the bit about the ecstasy-inducing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 07:32 AM
The Independent's Terence Blacker on Anti-War Chic: Unlike many protests in the past, from Vietnam to fox-hunting, the current campaign has the huge advantage of not involving the slightest risk to your person or your reputation. Marches are happy social...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 05:31 AM
Thin Ice CalPundit Kevin Drum wonders how to distinguish "legitimate criticism" of Jewish neoconservatives from anti-Semitism. The redoubtable Gary Farber offers a sensible answer. Drum distills the "relevant facts" into five statements that he appears to regard as self-evident, neutral,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2003 03:30 PM
Pinter or Ali? The New Statesman now charges for 100% of its content on the web, so I rarely encounter the writing of Neil Clark when I'm not in England. Clark is a genuine puzzle. If his determinedly perverse contrarian...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2003 10:54 AM
Another feather in his chapeau: Capping French glory was the news yesterday that babies in the Arab world were being named "Chirac," in tribute to the "peace-warrior President." In 1990, they were being called Saddam, and more recently Osama....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2003 08:43 AM
Beautiful Sore Losers Jonah Goldberg's new column is about Moran and his fellow conspiracy-theorists: that's why Moran, Buchanan, Matthews, Novak and more leftists than I can count should be ashamed. They've lost an argument. They lost it on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2003 11:28 AM
Yesterday I noted a call-in to NPR's Talk of the Nation that seemed bogus. A couple of readers who also heard it have written to say that it sounded fishy to them as well. One suggested that these themes (the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2003 09:18 AM
Oriana's Alamo Oriana Fallaci livens up the WSJ with indiscriminate blasts from her formidable rhetorical pepper-pot. You don't have to agree with all of it to take the meaning of her main point: I do not believe in vile acquittals,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2003 09:16 AM
By way of commenting on l'affaire Moran, Michael Kinsley has written one of those clever turn-the-tables columns at which he excels. Pro-Israel groups and lobbyists like AIPAC have power and influence, and aren't shy about proclaiming it, talking it up,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 10:44 PM
From Merde in France: Towards the end of a televised debate on 'American Hyperpower' (Monday night, France2) with special guest Hubert Vedrine during which every hateful stereotype and slanderous insinuation were used to depict American policy, Robert Kagan summed up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:55 PM
Bill Quick on GWB: Bush has become Bushy the Clown, wandering the halls of international diplomacy in big floppy clown shoes, humiliatingly begging for a crust of condescension from a circus audience that despises him, all the while beating himself...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:55 PM
Projection I just heard a peculiar call-in on NPR's Talk of the Nation. The topic was military families and the challenges they face in the current situation. There's no transcript available yet, I'm not sure if I heard it right,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:55 PM
Covering the Entire Market Andrew Sullivan gets some pretty good letters, like this: I'm out on the street smoking a cigarette and this black dude, wearing a "No War Against Iraq" T-shirt and a bag on his shoulder, comes up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:55 PM
Married to the Blogosphere Had this conversation with the wife today: wife: What's the matter? self: Just wondering about what's going to happen to Tony Blair and when the war is going to start. wife: Oh, you and your war......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:54 PM
This Washington Post leader zeroes in on the Jim Moran situation: Mr. Moran's comment will be used to concentrate the poison of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world where it remains virulent and dangerous. Jews in fact are far...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 10:20 AM
Eat Sand, Tree-hugger Fritz Schrank has a lengthy and balanced post on the many-levelled ironies revealed by this NYT article on a controversial plan to "restore" Presidio Park's "original" sand dunes by chopping down a small number of non-native eucalyptus...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 05:32 PM
I agree with Ted Barlow on the James P. Moran affair. I don't buy the "apology" for one moment. Why isn't it a "Trent Lott Moment," as Glenn Reynolds described it? In the Lott case, virtually the entire right-leaning punditocracy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 11:17 AM
"When Blair talks privately about the two sides in the current crisis, he does not mean the US and Iraq but the US and France..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 08:02 AM
Ferry Boats The Portuguese Foreign Minister tells it like it is: "Let us suppose Portugal, proper or its archipelagos, faced a threat, who would come to our rescue? The European Commission, France, Germany? "I think it would be NATO who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 07:38 AM
Unanswered questions Tony Benn recently participated in an on-line chat Q&A session with Guardian readers. As British Spin points out, he simply avoided questions that challenged his point of view, which is what generally happens in celeb-chats. However, he also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2003 11:01 AM
I missed this point by point challenge to conventional anti-war propositions from Nick Cohen in last week's Observer. Is being "stuck with cold war slogans" a barrier to understanding as well as to effective argument? You bet it is. Here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2003 12:02 PM
Winged Did you hear Lawrence O'Donnell's fascinating description of the Clinton White House on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday? Susanna over at Cut on the Bias has transcribed that section of the interview. It's something else, far more effectively damning for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2003 11:22 AM
A Sign of the Times Iain Murray points out this issue of the Weekly World News: Saddam's Secret Life! Hussein's a transvestite! His X-rated gay movies! He Hates Hummus!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 05:23 PM
Spot the "conservative" Richard Bennett, former hippie, responds to a trapped-in-amber "dude" from his college days: "Maybe the question is how come your politics are the same as they were in 1970, not why mine have evolved with all my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 04:15 PM
Hate Mail Revisited A while back I noted with some puzzlement the fact that almost all of the hate mail I receive tends to feature slurs against homosexuals. I don't get it very often, but when I do get it,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 01:50 PM
Don't be a Joey I read the first chunk of this Rod Liddle column on torture of terrorists a couple of days ago, but I must not have made it to the end. As Natalie Solent points out this correction...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 10:23 AM
Iranian expatriate journalist Amir Taheri on the origins of the first Peace Movement: today marks the 50th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death. The Soviet dictator was the father of the first "peace movement," which for years served as an instrument...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 09:30 AM
Round up the customary bedfellows Look who's writing op-eds for the Guardian now. Dark corners, indeed. UPDATE: Tim fisks Fidel. FURTHER UPDATE: Cinderella B.F. is on the case as well....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2003 08:34 AM
Straight Outta Central Casting, part xxxvi: Sparks flew at an emergency Islamic summit today, with Saddam Hussain's deputy branding Kuwait's junior foreign minister a "monkey". The virulent exchange began when Sheikh Mohammad Sabah al-Sabah, Kuwaiti Minister of Foreign Affairs, rose...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 10:39 AM
When Appeasers flame Slaughterers [LibDem leader Charles Kennedy] rejected Mr Blair's earlier comparison between those opposed to military action in Iraq and the people who appeased Hitler in the 1930s. Mr Kennedy said: "I don't think that using words like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 10:38 AM
You can do what you want with me, but let the dictator go... A Daily Pundit commenter has turned up this novel approach to anti-war activism: A Hawke's Bay woman has written a letter to US President George W Bush,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 10:36 AM
Each little Stalin does the other ones' will Johann Hari marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stalin's death with a superb column on contemporary Stalinists and their apologists: I don't raise this only in order to provide a diverting history lesson....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 09:00 AM
Andrew Sullivan discovers Mark Morford, and declares, not quite witheringly enough, that this column is "worth looking at from an anthropological point of view." The far lefties who assume you agree with them, the really angry ones who are somehow...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2003 07:47 AM
The Americanization of Britain, continued Stephen Pollard reports on academic standards and university admissions policy in Britain, which seems to be steering itself towards following the disastrous American model. The "flexible targets" are not identity politics-based, as in America, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2003 10:28 AM
Every Bit of Clothing Ought to Make You Pretty Tony Blair gave a brief interview to the Guardian yesterday, described, with a several quotable quotes, here. "At various points in the interview, he betrayed his irritation with his party's left...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2003 10:08 AM
Are you tired of watching Steven Den Beste run circles around straw man-wielding, otherwise ill-equipped, opponents and demolishing them bit by bit, at a stately pace, with relentless logic and cold hard common sense? Me neither. Here's a fine example....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2003 08:18 AM
Yeah, I read the Independent Here's a lengthy and stimulating rumination from Howard Jacobson on the tendency, the desire (maybe you could even say the need) for anti-war types to link Israel to Iraq, to adduce Israel as the instructive,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2003 08:38 AM
Another great column from Johann Hari, on Bush's AEI speech and the promise of democracy in the Arab world. I doubt he's right in including Syria in his list of repressive regimes that can be nudged towards incremental democratization through...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2003 07:04 AM
Matt Welch's tales of his days of Euro-busking glory beat all of these testimonials handily. He's got some good tips, as well. Here's one of mine: the cops at Paris Metro stations don't fool around. Sometimes they just yell at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2003 06:50 PM
PSA Bill Quick is having a pledge drive, so click on over and give what you can....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2003 06:29 PM
Bush's neo-con speech It's too bad he hasn't been giving speeches like this all along, but it's welcome nonetheless. After weeks of "leaks" and trial balloons about proposed scenarios for post-Saddam Iraq, the administration seems to have, at last, committed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2003 09:10 AM
The abnormal recreation of ignoble minds I didn't plan it this way, but today's posts lean severely toward the trivial. What are you gonna do? To continue: Polly Toynbee writes: There were few "Here, heres!" from the Labour benches yesterday...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2003 07:17 PM
"I'm begging, I'm hoping..." George Michael is worried that today's young pop-stars aren't sophisticated or politically knowledgeable enough to manage to come up with anything nearly as insipid as "Do They Know it's Christmas" or "We are the World." It...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2003 06:34 PM
"This is not a joke?" Here are some excerpts from the Dan Rather-Saddam Hussein tete-a-tete, including the debate proposal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2003 08:42 AM
It's about bloody time: President Bush intends to outline his postwar vision for Iraq and the Middle East in a speech tonight designed in part to showcase the administration's belief that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's overthrow would be a significant...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2003 08:27 AM
I asked God to send me a Lincoln, but all I got was this lousy Bush Paul Berman gets in touch with his inner Wolfowitz. Well, maybe not entirely, since he leaves Reagan off his list of Presidents who pushed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2003 11:08 AM
"A Pinter with blood on his hands," is how Andrew Sullivan describes Regis Debray, the author of the pompous and singularly unpersuasive "French Lesson" that appeared in yesterday's New York Times. ("'Old Europe'... now knows that the planet is too...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2003 11:16 AM
A nice little piece on being an American among anti-Americans in well-heeled Britain: in a way I'd been eager to deny, I sensed that the anti-Americanism around me wasn't the reasoned, rational position that many of its adherents made it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2003 09:25 AM
Don't Worry, said the Iraqi official Fifteen volunteers from the first 200 shields are moving into a bunker at the South Baghdad Electricity Plant in an effort to deter attack by America and its allies. However some of the shields...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 01:22 PM
They were all out of step but Jacques... Speaking of Steyn, here's his latest spiel on "Europe" (i.e. France) and the "Atlanticists" (practically everyone else.) Wrong or right, any argument that steps off from an Irving Berlin lyric is pretty...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 10:49 AM
Contrary to, erm, popular belief, I am not, nor have I ever been Mark Steyn....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 10:28 AM
Oh, dear God. (via Richard Bennett.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 08:44 AM
Stephen Schwartz, perhaps best known today as an expert on Wahhabism, was, like many of today's neo-cons, a red diaper baby, and a communist and New Left activist in his youth. He also, it turns out, went to Lowell with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 08:24 AM
Writing on the Wall Somehow I missed this terrific profile of Robert Conquest that appeared in last week's Guardian. (Airstrip One and Cinderella, once again, have come to the rescue, bearing links and comments.) Many details I hadn't been aware...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2003 02:08 PM
Define "Stupid" Samizdata's Dale Amon has sparked an interesting debate on the semantics and appropriateness of the term "voluntary human shields" in the comments to this post. He's right about the semantic point, of course: whatever these nitwits choose to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2003 10:58 AM
Heroes or dupes? Those are the only choices offered in the sub-head of this fascinating piece by Michelle Goldberg on "human shields" in Iraq. Reading the article, other, less charitable descriptions spring to mind. They mean well. But they also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 06:13 PM
Jokes that are funny Stephen Pollard heard this joke on Radio Four: How powerful do you have to be to mispronounce your own name and not have anyone tell you? Ask Colin Powell....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 11:41 AM
Lileks just watched some footage of prime-time Iraqi TV, and he notes that the "kill the Jews" sermons of radical Muslim mullahs are way scarier when you see the video. The wild-eyed sword-swinging gibbering maniac that he describes is straight...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 10:23 AM
Words to live by Maybe you were unaware of the controversy, but nevertheless, consider it noted that Katha Pollitt has finally conceded that she may have been wrong about the Bread and Puppet Theater after all: Let me apologize for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 10:22 AM
Knock it off, Hitch! DURING the many years I spent on the Left, the cause of self-determination for Kurdistan was high on the list of principles and priorities - there are many more Kurds than there are Palestinians and they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2003 06:58 PM
That's not hyperbole! That's genocide! I'm kind of a connoisseur of hyperbolic denunciations of hyperbole. The third paragraph of this Guardian leader is a pretty good one. You know the bilious spiteful hate-filled rightwing elite ranters in leather-elbowed armchairs? Well,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2003 06:42 PM
I keep meaning to mention, for anyone who hasn't happened upon it, that Paul Berman has written a response to the Michael Kelly column which appropriated the facts, though not the analysis, contained in Berman's old piece on Joschka Fischer....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2003 10:49 AM
Tolerate Liberal Democracy! You probably think you've read one too many essays on "what's wrong with today's Left," but if you can manage to fit another one in, I highly recommend "Can We Still Belong to the Left?" by blogger...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 10:26 PM
You've probably seen a few references to Ken Layne's little piece about the number of people who showed up for protests over the weekend vs. other important stats (like how many people went to church, Datyona, extreme sports, McDonalds.) And...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 01:53 PM
Arendt's editor, Eichmann's colleague It's well-known that the "de-nazification" program in post-war Germany was neither thorough (with regard to the regime's bureaucrat-perpetrators) nor effective (with regard to the hearts and minds of many "ordinary Germans" in the first years of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 09:32 AM
The Guardian's Jonathon Freedland correctly identifies the chief weakness of the current Peace Movement of which he is an unusually serious-minded member: a lack of convincing alternatives to the use of force as a means of removing Saddam. Outside of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 08:04 AM
Word circus fails to conceal coherence deficit Once again, the great Angelo Codevilla minces no words in this examination of the nature and reverberations of Bush's "unmade choices." The heart of this essay is a close-reading and analysis of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 07:09 AM
Hate Mail From Glenn Reynolds, I learn that Megan McArdle has been getting a whole lot of hate mail. She's pretty upset by it, it seems. I'm sure I don't get anywhere near as much hate mail as Glenn or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2003 02:23 PM
The Potential of Low-tech Chem-weapons Jeez, two girls in what appears to be a Springer-type altercation in a Chicago nightclub. One of them sprays some Mace. Result: 21 dead....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2003 08:32 AM
Interesting: It is unlikely that the war in Iraq will consist only of a land invasion. Rather, teams of special forces will be used to seize and secure strategic positions, such as the oilfields and the dams on the Tigris...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2003 07:55 AM
"More unsavory background on Joschka Fischer," is how this article has been described by practically everyone who has linked to it, usually without further comment. Actually, it's pretty much the same unsavory background summarized in Michael Kelly's cribbed-from-Berman column. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2003 12:00 PM
Guilty Men When I first saw the pic of the "Peace in Our Time" sign held by a protester at Hyde Park today, I just assumed it had been Photoshopped in by some mischievous prankster. I mean, how could it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2003 07:17 PM
Stop the War. But not really. I guess I went a little overboard in my grouchy post below, the one complaining about Eric Alterman. I find his tone and attitude extremely irritating, but I imagine many could say the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2003 06:56 PM
Beato-gate I hate to bring up Alterman again, but I think Matt Welch's comment on the Beato-gate scandal (details here and in Matt's post) is worth quoting: I make a point of not busting anyone's chops for what they do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 10:30 AM
I'm sure I won't be the first or only one to link to this arresting WSJ editorial illustrating the consonance of aims and methods between Saddam and Osama. Examples are furnished from the state-controlled (obviously) Iraqi press, complete with scans...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 07:50 AM
What the? Ralf Goergens makes a strong case that German and French gamesmanship on Iraq is motivated by "electoral and financial opportunism." I think he's right. One of his commenters, however, thinks there's more to it where the French and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 07:33 AM
TNR's much-linked "Wither Europe" is appropriately withering. If the days of France punching above its weight on the international stage are numbered, they do indeed appear to be determined to hurry the process along as best they can. As a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 06:40 PM
Several readers have emailed to let me know that Eric Alterman, to their own evident amusement, agrees with my view of Michael Kelly's warped presentation of Paul Berman's Joschka Fischer. "Say it ain't so..." "There must be some mistake..." No...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 02:55 PM
Of Morons and Multilateralists Daniel Drezner writes that the Bush administration's foreign policy has been far more "multi-lateralist" than it's given credit for. Many would object that this is insincere multilateralism, a cynical use of multilateral institutions as cover for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 12:18 PM
Steven Chapman succinctly describes the "Monbiot Plan" for Iraq: That's the one where a coalition of righteous nations (Narnia, Middle-earth, Neverland) does the business while America stands aside, hangs its head, wrings its hands, gazes at its navel, beats its...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 09:36 AM
Several blogs have noted this column, in which Michael Kelly calls attention to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's unsavory past as a generation '68/New Left radical. This column is largely a reprise of the "Fischer Affair" as detailed in Paul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2003 10:59 PM
Ron Liddle lands some punches in this complaint that the Anglo-American "special relationship" is often a one way street. Most acutely here: within weeks of September 11 2001, the US failed, astonishingly, to outlaw Noraid, despite having proscribed and seized...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2003 09:46 AM
Obstruction and other Skullduggery In today's Wall Street Journal, Khidir Hamza, erstwhile Iraqi nuclear scientist and co-author of the book Saddam's Bombmaker, reiterates two generally accepted (though often only vaguely described or illustrated) conclusions: (a) that weapons inspections alone can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 04:06 PM
Schoolhouse Iraq MEMRI provides this account of Saddam's military pedagogy. Socrates he ain't: Every few days, President Saddam Hussein meets with his son Qusay Saddam Hussein, the Inspector of the Republican Guards, and with his top military echelons to brief...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 08:43 AM
Stephen Pollard files yet another report from Brussels: Talking to senior Commission officials, MEPs and other such people, it's clearer than ever that the Franco-German drive to frustrate Bush reflects their own frustration at seeing their EU leadership role slipping...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 07:19 AM
David Warren has this interesting behind-the-scenes account of the recent NATO-rattling Weasels vs. Turks grudge match: behind closed doors, according to several diplomats who were present, a remarkable debate took place, in which not the Americans but the other European...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 11:09 PM
"Then Michael Jackson started to cry..." No comment. Good Lord. (via Daily Pundit.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 03:08 PM
I believe Bill Quick, back from his mercifully brief fishing trip, has the right idea here: I still think Bush waited far too long to attack Iraq, and most of his international problems stem from that fact. The endless delay...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 12:13 PM
Ouch. Christopher Hitchens lets him have it. (Chirac I mean-- "the rat that tried to roar.") We are all aware of the fact that French companies and the French state are owed immense sums of money by Saddam Hussein. We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 11:25 AM
Pawing Through Foreign Affairs Fouad Ajami's optimistic assessment of the possibilities for a post-Saddam Iraq rightly got a fair amount of blogospheric attention, but I only just now happened upon this stimulating essay by Michael Scott Doran, from the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 10:04 AM
Over at Layman's Logic, the Philosophical Cowboy has provided the Iraqis with a case for the defense in response to Counselor Powell's opening remarks. Check it out. He also posts an email which begins: Dear Sir / Madam, I am...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2003 12:33 PM
On the Ground in Old Europe Stephen Pollard reports on Old Europe's media coverage of Powell's UN presentation: I'm in Brussels at the moment. Just watched Colin Powell at the UN on CNN. I flicked over my TV as he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2003 12:14 PM
If the Kid's are Untied... In the midst of this otherwise unremarkable catalog of the preparations of anti-war protesters throughout Great Britain comes a moment of pure poetry. The article describes a student in Scotland screening a t-shirt: The white...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2003 10:05 AM
In short... Volokh is right: the Sun is wrong. Free speech for everyone....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 03:53 PM
Did you hear about that woman who waltzed through an unmanned security checkpoint at SFO and boarded her flight with unscreened carry-on baggage? She was arrested when her flight arrived in Baltimore. By the time airport security sprang into action...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 12:04 PM
"Poor Colin. He used to be so smart..." This sub-literate "gonzo" column by SF Gate's Mark Morford is proof that the British dailies haven't yet cornered the market on idiocy. Say what you will about Jonathon Steele: at least he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 11:42 AM
They'll print anything And that's a good thing, on the whole. Welch and Sullivan both subject this piece of drivel (intended to discredit the eastern European democracies) to the appropriate scorn. "New thinking." Hah! The author, Jonathon Steele, can sometimes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 11:27 AM
A More Powerful Vocabulary Even if you, like Eric Alterman, can ignore the "Chomskyite rhetoric," there's still a great deal of silliness in this essay by Kane Pryor. The idea is that the diabolical geniuses behind the Bush "propaganda machine,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 07:57 AM
Goofyness, Strangeness and Charm I really enjoyed Matt Welch's pointed complaints about this essay on Orwell by Louis Menand, particularly this one: the point is not that he was always Right, but that he presented one of the most compelling...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 06:16 PM
And yet, strangely enough, we find ourselves utterly unmoved... TNR's Lawrence Kaplan weighs in on the cool reception to Powell's UN presentation: To any rational observer, the communications intercepts and satellite imagery Powell presented today should offer sufficient proof that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 04:03 PM
What? No Midgets? Delegates from 85 countries are in the process of voting for the judges who will preside over the International Criminal Court. It's looking a bit messy: Although delegates could support up to 18 of the 43 candidates,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 02:39 PM
The Singer not the Song I imagine there are quite a few people out there like Mary McGrory, who have opposed war in Iraq solely because George Bush proposed it, and now find that they support it solely because it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 10:10 AM
Lollygaggin' Here's Stephen H. Hayes's amusing take on the statement read by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in response to Colin Powell's UN presentation, including this sort of thing: Did he honestly recommend that Baghdad could demonstrate its intent...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 09:12 AM
Window Dressing My North Oakland neighborhood has no shortage of anti-war signs in the windows, on the cars, on the telephone poles, and spray-painted on the stop signs. This has pretty much been the case for as long as I've...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 07:28 AM
The Ultimate Penultimatum Mark Steyn, in a brief guest spot on NRO, sums up Powell's UN speech: It's perfectly obvious from Colin Powell's presentation what's going on. Ten minutes before the flatfoots show up, the bootleg liquor is whisked away,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2003 04:19 PM
David Aaronovitch has the REAL transcript of Tony Benn's interview with Saddam Hussein....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2003 11:23 PM
That's the enticing grabber for this "reality tour" of some of the less savory parts of Oakland (known to us locals as "hell") offered by Global Exchange. It does not appear to be a joke. The tour promises to "examine...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2003 06:35 PM
Michael Gove sees a connection between contemporary Germany's sorry state and the failings of the class of '68. That generation was in revolt at what it saw as the stuffy conformity of the bourgeois Germany which Adenauer created, and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2003 08:29 AM
I know it is old frog food, but then frog food can be pretty funny sometimes. These Engrish subtitles from the Japanese bootleg DVD of The Two Towers are every bit as charming as the last batch. (via Fark.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2003 04:27 PM
Babyish Straw Men and the Women who Devour Them You know the anti-war "movement" is in trouble when someone like Julie Burchill, socialist, Guardian columnist and proud anti-American (is there any other kind?) comes out against Saddam and effectively in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2003 01:06 PM
Find a parade and pretend to have been in it all along, even though you showed up a bit late... Down in L.A. for the weekend, reading the L.A. Times in actual dead tree form for the first time in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2003 08:50 AM
Look, Mom. I'm famous. In case anyone's interested, here's a little article-interview with yours truly in the SF Examiner....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2003 08:02 AM
Quaintness worth a second cup... Hey, there. I had to take a few days off. Holidays are a lot of work, aren't they? I hope everyone had a good Christmas, New Year's, etc. No, really. I admit it might not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2003 11:56 AM
We mean it, man... The Corner has, for some reason (probably having to do with Joe Strummer's recent death), deemed it necessary to coin a term for conservatives who like 70s-era punk rock: The Punky Cons! (Start here and search...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2002 09:57 AM
Commenting on this Maureen Dowd column, Glenn Reynolds adds this about "the folks at Old Media": presented with real "racial insensitivity" -- as in Trent Lott's case -- they don't even recognize it until someone else points it out. That's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2002 11:54 PM
Oh, Canada... They don't have Christmas trees in the 51st state. They have Holiday Trees. That might work in Canada, but this is a lost cause. England in December is like one giant Dickens-esque Christmas theme park. There is no...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2002 10:04 AM
Pusillanimity? Cockeyed optimist vs. Clear-eyed skeptic? No surprises here, I'm sure, but I think the skeptics have the stronger case. It's not a matter of whose predictions will end up coming to pass, or whose predictions will be closer to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2002 08:47 AM
"Declaration" Warning: this post makes what is arguably the most trivial observation possible about the Iraq WMD declaration. I've noticed something strange about the pronunciation of the word "declaration." When it refers to something ordinary or unremarkable, as in a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 05:40 PM
Now don't fall out of your chair in astonishment or anything, but the author of this piece in the Economist prefers Adam Smith to Karl Marx. Communism is all but dead as a system of government, but Marxism lives on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 02:25 PM
Lott Steps Down! Well, how about that. He did the right thing after all. And it looks like Bill Frist is in. These wise words from Peggy Noonan on Republicans and race are no less relevant and valuable: Maybe it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 09:43 AM
Despair A Corner correspondent, reflecting on Trent Lott, Cardinal Law, and the possibility that Lott may manage to get enough support from fellow Republican Senators to allow him to hang on, poses some pointed questions: If Trent remains, what does...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 01:00 PM
Lost in the Bermuda Diangle Jonah Goldberg complains: [Krauthammer] relies on the overused dichotomy between "neocons," "traditional cons," and "paleocons." That's some dichotomy!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 12:36 PM
The Incredible Mr. Limpet India launches the world's first organic Navy, planning to deploy dolphins to blow up enemy warships and submarines. Early trials have succeeded in training dolphins to plant the "Maindeka" limpet mine onto enemy ships. O.P. Yadav,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 11:45 AM
Steven Chapman gives Brendan O'Neill a good dressing down over this more or less risible foray into criticism of military tactics and strategy. Chapman is quite right. Eminent Journalist O'Neill doesn't seem to have much of a clue. Chapman does,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 09:20 AM
Krauthammer, once again, on Trent Lott: A man who has no use--let alone no feel--for colorblindness has no business being a leader of the conservative party. True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 11:23 PM
The great Angelo Codevilla has another terrific essay on our wayward foreign policy and incoherent "war" aims posted at the Claremont Institute website. As always, it is elegantly written and, by my lights, quite persuasive. Are you uneasy about the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 07:08 PM
Every so often I'll receive a petulant email demanding: "whose side are you on?" (Or more often, "who's side are you on?") The latest trend in this venerable tradition (if venerable is the word I want) is to include the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 03:06 PM
Tired of all the familiar positions from which to jump on Trent Lott? Here's a new one from Christopher Hitchens: Concerning Sen. Lott, I can't hope to improve on the admirable flurry of columns from hard-line conservatives calling for his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 12:02 PM
See you in the fourth dimension Josh Marshall noticed this on Hardball a couple of nights ago: Oh man! There's a quote from Frank Luntz tonight on Hardball that's so choice it's almost beyond belief. We're going to be waiting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 10:32 AM
So Mote it Be I've noticed what seems to be a new fashion trend for female TV news talking heads (Greta, Paula, Ann, Connie, Judy, et al.): black turtleneck with large silver chain and pendant. It makes them look like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 08:31 AM
H.S. A.R.T. A theatre producer is to face a retrial after a jury today failed to decide whether he had a "lawful excuse" for decapitating a 150,000 statue of Baroness Thatcher. The defense was based on the defendant's right to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 07:44 AM
Real Change Requires the Preservation of the Status Quo The attempt to redefine "regime change" as "lack of regime change" is perhaps the most irritating of all the phony spinning and blustering that has come from this administration on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2002 05:08 PM
Quote of the day: Because of the technology and the heightened desperation of the world today, I think it's very possible that we are facing the first century that will complete itself without mankind--and that's not the future that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2002 01:15 PM
Mona Baker, the British academic who couldn't tell the difference between "boycott" and "purge," has surfaced once again. Professor Baker, the Times reveals, is engaged in a lively email correspondence with celebrity holocaust denier David Irving. Very little of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2002 12:25 PM
I'm anti-something, I know that... If you've read much of his weblog, you're probably aware that Brendan O'Neill feels he's too good for the anti-war movement. He's written several versions of this column over the past year. Allow me to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2002 12:58 PM
Scene Report Here's the real original Blogs of War, coming to you pretty much live from a Carlsbad Motel 6. We've always been a Motel 6 band. There are Super 8 bands. There are Red Roof Inn bands. There are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2002 09:43 AM
I've got a couple of shows this weekend. I'll be in transit today, and, with luck, rockin' tonight. Tomorrow it will once again be: transit by day, rock by night, transit in the small hours. I may post something "from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2002 08:28 AM
Lott-eriorata Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute has this interesting perspective on the Trent Lott affair: The Founders' purpose in establishing the United States Senate was to elevate the characters of its members so that, following deliberation, it could act...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 12:56 PM
I can't remember what I was looking for, but shuffling through some of the myriad untidy stacks of papers that I have on every available surface that the wife hasn't complained about yet, I came across this letter. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 08:51 AM
The Telegraph has published a version of Harold Pinter's notorious honorary degree acceptance speech at the University of Turin in November. Steven Den Beste really goes to town on it here and here. He sees Pinter's "paranoid anti-American rant" (and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 07:46 AM
Where is Where is Raed? This is disturbing. And the image of the blanked out page, empty except for the word "sorry," is as poignant as poignant gets. Jim Henley says the brave Iraqi blogger got scared by the high...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 04:05 AM
Bill Quick asks his readers "how long are you willing to wait" for the administration to put its money where its mouth is on Iraq. Seven comments so far, no predictions yet....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 11:42 AM
Bush Speaks "Any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong," Bush said to loud and long applause in a speech about his faith-based agenda. "Recent comments by Sen. Lott do not reflect...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 11:37 AM
Desperately Seeking a Clue I was going to try to make this a Lott-free day, but Krauthammer's Lott Must Go column is too good to pass up: This is not just the kind of eruption of moronic bias or racial...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 10:17 AM
Letter from America This Timothy Garton Ash column appears in the New York Times, but its intended audience is Europe, particularly those who can't fathom the American enthusiasm for the idea of toppling Saddam: What strikes me most, however, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 08:31 AM
Ted Spotting I'm a bit late to Welcome Back party, but I just noticed that Ted Barlow is back. Right on!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 12:43 PM
Andrew Sullivan on Lott: It seems to me that president Bush now has his Sister Souljah opportunity. Just as Clinton secured centrist backing when he repudiated the anti-white racism of Sister Souljah, so Bush needs to repudiate the anti-black racism...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 10:41 AM
Link of the Day Obviously. Oliver Willis's brilliant mock-up of what a Lott-Bush attack ad might look like. As one of the commenters says, it's not even slightly unfair. A first. (via Instantman, so you've probably already been there. That's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 09:30 AM
Apology dos and don'ts Wise words about how not to apologize, with illustrations drawn from life and current events, by Fritz Schrank. Saddam, Trent, take note. You know, as I've said before, I have no idea whether Trent Lott is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 09:13 AM
What kind of insane country are we living in? 37 months in prison for saying the words "burning Bush?" I saw this item on the new Reason blog. (Which is great, by the way. Note to Tim Cavanaugh: gabba gabba,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 10:16 AM
More Rope-a-dope The war on terrorism may be many things (if not much of a war these days.) Perhaps it's merely a clever pretext for decreasing public arts funding. Diabolical. (via Tim Blair.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 08:18 AM
All carrot, no stick As U.S. experts began to copy and comb through Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons of mass destruction program, the Bush administration moved yesterday to assure skittish allies that it does not intend to use the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 07:49 AM
I hope they teach this guy some history at Oxford "We have a different name for the war we're fighting now now we call it the war on terrorism, then they called it the war on communism," Mr. Boudin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 07:17 AM
Bomb Iraq Tapped has posted these snarky, satirical anti-war lyrics, to be sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands." They say its original inspiration was this Tom Tomorrow cartoon, and it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2002 09:43 AM
Something to keep in mind the next time you autograph somebody From the letters page of Gene Simmons's blog: Three weeks ago i saw you in Melbourne talking on your tour, your talk inspired me and has realy changed my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2002 07:58 AM
Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war This New York Times magazine article about soul-searching among and inside American liberal hawks is worth a look. I guess I'd say I'm one, though I haven't felt at all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2002 07:31 AM
Invocations from the Monkey House The Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors for refusing to allow a Wiccan leader to give the invocation at the start of its meetings. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 04:57 PM
On this whole Trent Lotto-gate thing... If there's an American public figure I hold in lower esteem than Trent Lott, I can't think of who that might be. He is, as the saying goes, the worst his party has to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 01:52 PM
Yabba Dabba Doo I'm sure there are thousands of men walking around on this earth named George Jones. But there's only one real George Jones. That's why this headline and byline cracks me up: All Governments are Economical with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 08:49 AM
How 'bout that Neal Pollack? I've seen a few links to this floating around, but I never got around to reading it till now. When was the last time you read an attempt at political humor that was actually funny?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 07:31 AM
Now I'm really worried... Steven Den Beste has been the most articulate and persuasive champion of the view that the Bush administration's plans for mounting a challenge to Iraq would materialize before the end of the year. Nevertheless, in view...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2002 09:04 AM
A Year Closer to Death Lot's of folks from the second wave of warbloggers have been noting, even celebrating, their "blog birthdays" recently. I'm not sure if mine counts, since I took a couple of months off. But for what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2002 08:49 AM
Trying not to freak out, here... I had to opt out of the blogosphere yesterday-- it's amazing how much stuff you miss from just one day. Yesterday, Bill Quick (from whom I shamelessly snagged many of the references in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2002 09:17 AM
Let's Do More about Doing More to Do More Readers of this blog know that I've been pretty skeptical about the Bush administration's resolve when it comes to living up to its own tough rhetoric on Iraq. It's not so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2002 08:49 AM
Steal this book/no blood for oil Some poor soul just reached this site from a google search for chomsky+911+download+free+no cost With customers like these... Probably not the same guy who arrived here searching for "fatwa selling plasma."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2002 09:20 AM
Michiel Visser has been trying to gather the threads in the current Dutch terrorist threat situation, which encompasses a great deal more than the IKEA bombs. It certainly seems as though an Islamist campaign can't be ruled out. He cites...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2002 08:35 AM
Now the Swedes have a McDonalds of their own Bombs were found in three different Dutch IKEA outlets: Police in the Netherlands are searching all 10 outlets of the Ikea furniture chain in the country, after finding bombs in three...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2002 07:21 AM
Wrought in Hell There's this old songwriter's joke that goes something like this: Pat goes to see Mike at an open-mike night at some bar or other. Pat: Hey, Mike, whatcha been doing? Mike: Just writin' songs. Pat: Yeah, that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2002 07:12 PM
Behold-- the anti-war movement! The Flying Pickets stood in front of KSTP Channel 5 from 12 noon until around 12:45. Two men held signs for traffic passing by to see. One held a large "Say No War with Iraq" lawn...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2002 08:37 AM
Critical Are you worried about the "hegemonic position of the Shoah within American life?" Sick and tired of how the "'Holocaust Industry' influences national and international communities, discourses and debates?" Feel it's high time somebody displaced "the 'Holocaust Industry' from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 05:08 PM
Bootless but Unbowed Moira Breen, always a reliable guide when it comes to sorting through the apparently unsortable, has zeroed in on what separates the mockers of the "religion of peace" platitude from the mockers of the mockers of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 01:12 PM
The age of the professor-thug shall be upon us... Read this terrific article by a Yale student on authoritarian assaults on free speech by tenured professors and the administrations that enable them. (via Instantman.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 10:01 AM
Andrew Sullivan notes this item about Kola Boof, a Sudanese black feminist writer, now in hiding in California, who has been condemned to death by beheading by a Sharia court in London. (That's globalization for you.) The death sentence was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 09:09 AM
Oy Vey, part deux Caught this snippet on CNN yesterday, part of a why-do-they-hate-us in Mombasa segment presented by Ben Wedeman. ("They" meaning worshippers interviewed at a Mombasa mosque, not the folks shouting "We Love America" and "al Qaeda go...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 07:46 AM
Simplismathon Mark Steyn's latest Telegraph column begins as a review of the new Quiet American film, but it's really just an excuse for some clever riffing on the "Bush is a moron" topos. Favorite line: I happen to like moral...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2002 09:47 AM
Who will boycott the boycotters? Damian Penny found this adorable "quote of the day" via Shari Stein: "I boycott everything that involves corporations," said Jennifer Durocher, a first-year anthropology and history student. "I think everything in this world should be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 05:13 PM
The Compleat Shut Upmanship No one is more strongly in favor of free speech than I am. However... John Leo identifies this and other "current anti-speech ploys" on campus. (via Bill Quick.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 02:18 PM
The Mouse on the Mobius Strip Reihan Salam describes France's position on the UNSC: France is firmly opposed to any military action against Iraq that is not explicitly authorized by the Security Council. But France is on the Security Council,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 12:16 PM
Kinsley Report I don't care how many times Michael Kinsley writes this column-- it's funny every time....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 10:35 AM
I have no interest at all in the inter-blog controversy over that Rittenhouse guy's decision to black out his links to every site with a Little Green Footballs link. I don't happen to agree with his assessment of LGF (for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 09:41 AM
Oy Vey Stephen Pollard has this Sky News report report: Just heard the ludicrous Abdel Bari Atwan, who Sky News persist in using as their Middle East 'expert', say this about the Kenyan attacks: "Many people have criticised Osama bin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 04:35 PM
A Royal Mess The relationship between Prince Bandar, his wife, and the world of Saudi "charities," "relief workers," and "Islamic missionaries," in which diverse Saudi functionaries serve as donors, recruiters, protectors, and simple enthusiasts of terror, is elementary. Stephen Schwartz...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 04:21 PM
Zero Tolerance Watch, continued Saddam hides arsenal in people's homes, according to the Times of London: SADDAM HUSSEIN has ordered hundreds of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 12:13 PM
Mark Steyn on Bush and the Saudi Princess: The fawning legions of ex-ambassadors to Riyadh have been all over the TV assuring us that, oh, no, al-Qaeda hate the House of Saud and want to overthrow it. But, interestingly, though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 09:23 AM
If you hate America enough, you'll believe just about anything I was halfway up the track that leads to the salt-mine at Taloqan, described by Marco Polo as producing the finest salt in the world, when an old man driving...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 08:47 AM
Those Devils in Skirts I first learned the answer to this from this. (via On the 3rd Hand.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 08:40 AM
Maybe they won't have to kill him again after all... Swiss institute says bin Laden tape is not authentic The latest tape statement attributed to Osama bin Laden is not authentic, according to a report by a Swiss research institute....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 08:39 AM
Despite all of today's bad news, or perhaps rather particularly because of today's bad news, I would like to wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 10:26 AM
Mark Steyn online is finally up (thanks for the tip Andrea). And a good thing, too, since otherwise I would have missed this one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 10:16 AM
Christopher Hitchens on anti-Americanism: as with the simultaneously over-capacious and over-specific analogues ("terrorism," "anti-Semitism") we do seem to need a word for it. There are those in the Islamic world for whom the slogan "Death to America" is a real...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 09:20 AM
Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire Thursday on a Likud Party office crowded with voters casting ballots in a leadership race and also attacked passengers at a nearby bus terminal in northern Israel. Five Israelis were killed and dozens wounded....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 08:25 AM
The War Begins? al Qaeda attacks Israelis for the first (known) time. Three suicide bombers blew themselves up in an Israel-owned hotel in Kenya; a "light plane" simultaneously dropped three "bombs" on the site; and at the same time, two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 07:56 AM
The best de-linking post in the world, ever. Update: This one ain't too bad, either....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 07:23 AM
Another powerful editorial from Salman Rushdie, on the Miss World fatwa, "fanaticism as usual," and other recent milestones in "the wonderful world of Islam" (the quoted phrases are his, irony included): A couple of months ago I said that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 06:46 AM
Mama mia! The man who attempted to hijack that Italian plane turns out to have been a would-be serial hijacker: It later emerged the man had a history of hijackings, raising questions about how he had managed to secure a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2002 10:57 AM
Face transplants '18 months' away Peter Butler of the Royal Free Hospital in London said that new techniques and improved anti-rejection drugs have made it possible to graft a face on to another person. It is believed that a team...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2002 08:45 AM
This is a couple of weeks old, but still worth a look. sp!ked's Mick Hume laments the lack of persuasive arguments on both sides of the war/anti-war divide and in the process comes up with this fine withering passage: For...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 07:40 PM
It turns out that Bill Wyman, the music critic, received a cease and desist letter from attorneys representing Bill Wyman, former bassist for the Rolling Stones, demanding that he stop using the name Bill Wyman: Journalist Bill Wyman was asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 05:19 PM
MEMRI Motel For what it's worth, MEMRI has posted a summary of the contents of an interview with an "unidentified Iraqi official" from a London-based Arabic language daily newspaper. The u.I.o. boasts of previous occasions where Iraq "did not hesitate"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 03:21 PM
And another piece of red left my blogroll today... If I'm reading this article correctly, it appears that the Telegraph is the only major British newspaper that does not have definite plans to start charging for content in the near...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 11:57 AM
Malaysian police have arrested some "suicide bombers." It's in inverted commas because, though these guys claim to be part of a "suicide bombing squad," there is some doubt as to whether they're telling the truth. So the "question" "is": how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 08:30 AM
Never mind getting dandelions pulled, or the screen door patched or the beefsteak pounded A lack of seriousness in Congress? No way......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 08:27 AM
The man knows everything Noting my mention of a recent referral from a search for "famous quotes relating to goats," Dr. Weevil supplies one from Suetonius's Life of Caligula. As he says, it's not nearly as famous as it deserves...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 07:29 AM
Syd, Chuck, Kris, a dark globe, some drunk guy, and me, Elizabeth So I'm walking down the street in Berkeley, and there's this hippie-type guy walking just behind me playing a Spanish guitar (not singing, just playing.) To my amazement,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 06:25 PM
Let me join what I'm sure will be the blogospheric chorus: Swimwear dripping with blood?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 12:46 PM
TNR's Jason Zengerle on the long over-due "Saudi-gate" brouhaha initiated by that Newsweek article: As any connoisseur of the Sunday shows knows, guests and discussion topics are determined days in advance of the actual shows. Usually by Friday afternoon, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 11:54 AM
Could it be for real? Who knows? I'm sure there will be those who will make a great deal of hay over the rhetorical similarity of some of it to Chomskyite Indymedia-type "anti-Imperialist" claptrap. I'll leave it to someone else...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 07:44 AM
This post by Josh Marshall begins as a sort of comment on Krauthammer's recent by-the-numbers piece on the "left-wing idiocy" of Bill Moyers, Paul Krugman, et al. (Well, not entirely by the numbers: this one includes a prescription for Thorazine--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 02:45 PM
Cherry Bomb From Joan Jett's open letter to Rolling Stone: I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 09:19 AM
In case you missed it, here's a history lesson from Matt Welch on Eastern Europe, NATO expansion, and Vaclav Havel: The historic NATO summit in Prague was cast largely as another chapter in the geopolitical melodrama about Saddam Hussein. "Bush...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 09:10 AM
Defining Victory Down Way down. Mark Steyn's latest, much-linked column is entertaining as always, and as usual, there's some substance between the one-liners: For over a year now, nothing has been asked of Muslims, at home or abroad: you can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 07:51 AM
Copycats, or worse... Islamic Jihad has attempted its first known al Qaeda-style suicide boat attack on an Israeli naval vessel off the north Gaza coast. Rather small potatoes for al Qaeda, but you never know. It doesn't sound as though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 09:48 AM
Forward-thinking Atavism Here we go again: Miss World contestants are preparing to fly to London, amid criticism over the decision to host the beauty pageant in the UK... The UK's Islamic Liberation party has condemned the contest as offensive to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 08:39 AM
The Irony Olympics Eric Alterman faults Andrew Sullivan for failing to "engage with the work of liberal writers" like Paul Krugman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 08:21 AM
"Hate Speech" alert: Lock her up Why is two women being killed each week acceptable, whereas the murder of two blacks or gays would not be? --Julie Burchill, of the Guardian, taking a leaf from Robin Page's book....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 06:48 AM
Family Values Are you ready for... Anarchist Parenting? Up until now I have been unable to stay at home with my oldest son and un-school him. He is now 15 years old and doesn't want to be home schooled, so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 06:40 AM
No business like show business I'm not as up-to-date as I ought to be on the activities of aging British Socialists, so I wasn't even aware that Tony Benn has a "highly rated one man show" called Free at Last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 04:46 PM
A good material breach is hard to find, as TNR's Ryan Lizza explains: This week's international debate over the definition of material breach is a harbinger of things to come. In fact, the debate over paragraph eight will be nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 01:42 PM
I have a nightmare along these lines every three weeks or so. *shudder*...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 01:20 PM
This Victor Davis Hanson column, like every other VDH column, will be linked to by everyone hither and yon. He makes a convincing case that the US-Iraq war, should anyone ever manage to start it, will probably wind up as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 11:01 AM
Topple Saddam at any cost, say Iraqi Kurds As well they might. John Weidner has posted this article from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (not available on-line.) Here's an excerpt: "I want him dead, even if I or my family lose all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 10:14 AM
Here's the WaPo account of the latest suicide busbomb, horrific details included. Savages....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 09:51 AM
Cops Take a look at Bill Quick's close-reading and commentary on this Reuters report about Colin Powell's latest televised statements on Iraq. I think he's right. It certainly looks as though the administration is laying the groundwork for a retreat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 08:50 AM
Down with beauty! The Islamic anti-Miss World rioting in Nigeria has now killed fifty people and injured another two hundred. In Thursday's rioting, more than 50 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death and 200 were seriously injured, Ijewere...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 03:25 PM
Well done, boys. Al-Qaida leader Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the network's chief of operations in the Persian Gulf, has been captured, senior U.S. government officials said Thursday. Al-Nashiri, a suspected mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in October 2000, was taken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 03:11 PM
So why isn't Prince Charles in jail? That's the obvious facetious question, sure to be asked over and over in connection with the case of Robin Page, the Telegraph writer who was arrested and jailed for saying that "the rural...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 02:21 PM
"It's time to save journalism from its saviors," is the sub-head of this inspiring polemic cum book review from Matt Welch. Monopoly newspapering in the U.S. is an idiosyncratic -- and extremely lucrative -- business, conducted largely by a small...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 10:43 AM
The low-down on Wahhabism, Again Here's an interesting interview with Stephen Schwartz, authority on Wahhabism. Check out his response to Kathryn Jean Lopez's question "how widespread is it?" The anwer is a concise, perspective-restoring run-down of the degree of Wahhabist...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 08:58 AM
Zero Tolerance Watch The Iraqi government has accepted without protest the right of UN weapons inspectors to make unannounced checks on "special" sites belong to President Saddam Hussein, an issue that helped derail the inspections in the 1990s, UN officials...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2002 12:21 PM
Steven Chapman has posted an inventory of the thirty minutes of new material in the Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD. I'm going to have to buy one now, though I will always harbor a deep, bitter, murderous resentment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 07:00 PM
The Quotable Mr. Murray To my astonishment, Iain Murray has brought "the Emperor's New Clothes" back to life as a meaningful (read "not boring") political allegory. The immediate subject is the folly of the social engineering schemes fashionable in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 06:38 PM
This article in the Daily Californian (on Berkeley's civil defense preparedness) contains this nugget of brilliant analysis: at least one expert said terrorists probably won't bother targeting Berkeley. "Berkeley is very anti-war, so it would seem a very unlikely target,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 04:03 PM
Grab hold of my talons, Gandalf... Awhile back Andrew Sullivan identified what he described as a relatively new American political category: There's a new group of people out there who are socially liberal but also foreign policy realists, especially among...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 10:58 AM
Tim Blair, Oppressor vs. Susan Sarandon, Society's Outcast. Tim wins, again. Here's my favorite bit of the original piece in the Sydney Morning Herald: "I've maintained a fairly low standard of living in terms of cars, houses and planes and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 09:17 AM
So it goes... Kofi Annan says the recent attacks on US and British planes do not violate the UNSC resolution; the administration disagrees but declines to press the point. (There's that "zero tolerance" again...) Charles at Little Green Footballs says:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 08:48 AM
All Talk? Well said, Bill. The Bush administration has been quite successful at leaving the impression, despite little evidence, that decisive action is always just around the corner. Running around saying "this time we mean business" is all very well,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2002 09:18 AM
"People were caught up in the times, and we all did things then that we wouldn't dream of doing today..." When all else fails, former 60s radicals and their would-be apologists always resort to a variation upon this dubious theme....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 04:27 PM
The Worst of the Worst A couple of readers have emailed to ask for more info on Ulrike Meinhof and the Baader-Meinhof gang/Red Army Faction. This site should tell you all you need to know about the German counter-culture's w....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 11:27 AM
The Case of the Missing Baader-Meinhof Brains Here's more on the story of Ulrike Meinhof's brain that I noted a few days ago. One of Meinhof's twin daughters then traced her mother's brain to a formaldehyde jar held at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 09:24 AM
Ain't Life Grand? I've just been informed by Germaine Greer that I am malignant tissue, more trouble than I'm worth, probably best exterminated. Hmm. She may have a point. On the other hand, Michelle Malkin has helpfully identified radical feminism's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 08:06 AM
Mind the Gap Three men have been charged over a alleged plot to release cyanide gas in the London Underground, say police. They are believed to be from either Tunisia or Morocco. Reports say the suspects are part of a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2002 01:12 PM
Quote of the Day Yeah, I know Moira Breen already has it covered, but I find I am unable to resist reproducing this awesome quotation from an academic email list contributor: Half the population of [the people in our society]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2002 08:14 AM
Danny and Brandi This set of "found letters" made the needles of my internal pathos-o-meter jump a bit more than usual-- I think it's because of the palindromes and the McDonald's application. (via Bitter Girl, by way of her link...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2002 07:54 AM
My Inner Monster The current system of British education emphasizes the inculcation of prepackaged attitudes and opinion over the Platonic goal of cultivating the ability to think for oneself, according to this interesting spiked column, which is also the springboard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2002 11:39 AM
More on the INS Check out the comment section on this post from Matt Welch for some horror stories that are far, far worse than mine-- so far, anyway. (I've really gotta get me one of those comment-routine doohickies like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2002 09:25 AM
Not that there's anything wrong with that... You're reaching, Josh. I think they're going overboard with the anti-Nancy rhetoric, too. But she is a San Francisco liberal....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 05:34 PM
"They come in here, these mods, asking for animal paws to hang on their scooters, and then while your back's turned a nice bit of skunk vanishes up their knickers..." As you can see, last night we rented Smashing Time....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 01:57 PM
They Saved Ulrike's Brain It's creepy yet/hence fascinating: The brain of Red Army Faction leader Ulrike Meinhof, preserved for 26 years since her suicide and used for research, will be returned to her family for burial at her twin daughters'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 09:06 AM
I know it's meant as an "acceptance" of the UN resolution, but to me the letter itself sounds like a casus belli. At least, it doesn't sound like full cooperation. On the TV last night, Kofi Annan said he would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 08:48 AM
So that's why they let him in... Apparently, the Immigration and Naturalization Act contains a "Gerry Adams loophole," devised by Ted Kennedy specifically for Adams and, according to Joel Mowbray, put into dangerous general practice by the State Department. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2002 01:54 PM
An idea whose time has come. (via EminentBrain)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 11:35 PM
The Robot Legislature Speaks Many have noted the amusing tendency for the news media to refer, without apparent irony or qualification, to members of Iraq's fake parliament as "law-makers" or "legislators." I wasn't going to say anything, but I do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 06:35 PM
"I am now responding with comeback of utmost snappiness...": Putin became agitated Monday after a reporter from the French newspaper Le Monde questioned his troops' use of heavy weapons against civilians in the war in Chechnya... "If you want to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 03:01 PM
George W. Bush, the pharaoh of the age....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 02:41 PM
Twisted David Blunkett attempts to explain why the British government would like to abolish key elements of English common law. He begins: Sometimes one small word can tell us more than a lengthy speech. Among the many thousands of words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 02:07 PM
Joshua Micah Marshall joins the chorus of commentators who see the Democrats' lack of credibility on Iraq and national defense as key to the thoroughness of their recent defeat. (It's Salon "premium," which means that those who are too cheap/sensible...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 01:30 PM
Daniel Pipes calls for "adult supervision" of American university faculty and administrators....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 12:19 PM
Of Hawks and Hippies Dennis Ross, in today's Washington Post, spells out exactly how Saddam might be allowed to slip out of the trap, avoid a full-scale attack, and continue his surreptitious WMD programs: Many have said that Hussein is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 10:22 AM
Another shining moment in EU diplomacy: EU officials have held a series of meetings with Hamas leaders in Syria and Lebanon in an attempt to persuade them to confine their attacks to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (via Meryl...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 06:24 PM
Moira Breen asks the key questions with regard to the recently-Instapundited editorial about the $500-a-plate fund-raising dinner for Gerry Adams in New York: "Who are these cretins? And, fools though they may have been, shouldn't they bloody know better by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 01:47 PM
Duck, Duck, Mongoose Here's a good mid-term election post-mortem from Barbara Amiel, including some nice metaphors from the animal kingdom. Bush is Konrad Lorenz and the American electorate is a row of ducks following him around, quacking "Daddy." (She means...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 08:51 AM
The tragedy of the inconvenient husband. (Nice desktop, Dusty.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 07:18 AM
These Days are Ours There's this episode of Happy Days where Richie is being harrassed by some biker hooligans. One of them wants to "rumble" at Arnold's, and Richie is terrified. Fonzie gives him some sound advice on deterrence, based...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 07:16 AM
Mmmm... Dark Globules I missed out on a lot in my days of self-imposed, lethargy-soaked exile, including this swell blog from Angie Schultz. Check out her response to the Will Hutton "dark week for democracy" column tersely mentioned below....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 07:13 AM
Interestingly, this desultory kiss-off to Christopher Hitchens is probably the most coherent thing Katha Pollitt has ever written. Sadly, coherence is the last thing I look for in a good "left-on-left polemic" (Matt Welch's apt phrase.) I much prefer good,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 07:13 AM
Dissolve the people and elect a new one What an idiot. UPDATE: Tim Blair, eminent Straussian, takes Mr. Hutton apart piece by piece, in his inimitable fashion. His Straussian readers chime in as well. Nice....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 04:40 PM
"Any child can see through that, but many adults can't..." I haven't read Christopher Hitchens's book on Orwell, but this interview about it is quite interesting. Favorite quote: I think Hannah Arendt said that one of the great achievements of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 01:04 PM
First Amendment Fetishists According to this report, pointed out by Bill Quick, the Council of Europe has finally adopted the long-discussed measure to criminalize internet "hate speech," including "hyperlinks to pages that contain offensive content." There's an interesting exchange about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 10:09 AM
If you ignore him, he'll go away... ...but where's the fun in that? I'd say Ron Rosenbaum grants far too much importance to Gore Vidal's latest round of nut-job conspiracy theorizing, but there's a lot of amusing and satisfying rhetoric...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 08:03 AM
Gray is the New Nixon Gray Davis as Democratic presidential front-runner in 2004? That's the provocative (and thoroughly disturbing) contention of Matt Welch's latest National Post column. Matt, you're scaring me......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2002 03:32 PM
So, there's this nice essay from Roger Kimball on the "root causes" of anti-Americanism... Yeah, I know, I disappeared for awhile. After nearly ten months of posting practically every day, I just ran out of steam. And as that Spoons...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 9, 2002 12:24 PM
A good sub-plot for the next Toy Story? I'm still not convinced it isn't a hoax, but according to this story, security screeners at LAX found a GI Joe in a British grandmother's luggage, searched the toy soldier, and confiscated...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2002 10:09 AM
Stability, Schmability Once again, Mark Steyn has the right idea on Middle Eastern "stability": Sadly, a U.S. invasion of Iraq "would threaten the whole stability of the Middle East" -- or so Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, told...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2002 12:39 PM
The den Beste Doctrine Here's Steven den Beste at his, erm, best, with a couple of fine essays on the appropriate aims and conduct of military action and the "Bush doctrine." Doctrine is one thing, though; policy is another. Whether...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2002 12:38 PM
Newsnight Nostalgia? Steven Pollard reports on a recent BBC Newsnight on the subject of Israel: Tonight's Newsnight was the archetypal BBC discussion on Israel. Presenter Kirsty Wark was admirable, tough questioning for all the interviewees (including Edward Mortimer from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2002 12:29 PM
Sickos The mind-numbing parade of depravity of the Palestinian terrorist organizers and their willing executioners continues apace. I usually find that, try as I might, I have no comment on this or that latest outrageous photo, interview, sermon or mission,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2002 09:23 AM
If you dare, read this chilling tale from Natalie Solent....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2002 09:21 PM
Amusing google searches that recently brought people to this site: Selfridge's London hours richard nixon jew belly gram how to discourage pigeons from coming back porn term for vomiting osama bin laden is blue jan brady hair why write about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2002 04:47 PM
USA Travel Tips Tip #1: If you're a foreign national in the country illegally on a visa that expired eleven years ago, and you feel like looking at some "bomb-making websites" to while away the time, don't do it at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2002 10:36 AM
The Matt Report Okay, now it really does look like Matt Welch is "back." Hell of back, as the East Bay kids used to say-- lots of great posts on Steve Earle, Monrovia, the filthy streets of San Francisco, Iraq...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2002 12:26 PM
Howard Owens takes a good long look at the "American police state" nightmare scenarios beloved by conspiracy theorists on the Left and on the Right. Regardless of which party is in control, and no matter who the president happens to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2002 12:44 PM
The item that refuses to die Steve Earle and his accursed John Walker song, I mean. Eric Olsen recently noted that both the slanted New York Post story on the John Walker song and the more balanced and informative Reuters...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2002 10:43 AM
This is a couple of days old now, but worth a look anyway: Ian Buruma tackles the claim (raised by Steven and Hilary Rose in their recent attempt to defend the anti-Israel academic boycott brought to the fore by Mona...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2002 08:51 AM
Can't wait to see the Crossfire on this one Glenn Reynolds and Stefen Sharkansky both reproduce this letter to the SF Chronicle (scroll down to "don't count on FBI") from a language expert who was rejected by the FBI counter-terrorism...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2002 12:46 PM
Ben Sheriff says these paragraphs (from the Times-- link requires coughing up sixty bucks!) are the funniest he's seen all year: "It is always wonderful to watch a person raise himself beyond the level of others all around him with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2002 11:21 AM
Unintentionally amusing quote of the day: Paul Weyrich, quoted in this NYT article on why some conservatives are uncomfortable with Ashcroft's anti-terrorism policies: "A lot of the social conservatives appreciate the stands he's taken on child pornography and the Second...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2002 10:16 AM
The whole Steve Earle pseudo-controversy is pretty trivial in and of itself, but it has spurred some interesting blogospheric commentary on songwriting, art, politics and what have you. Eric Olsen has a pretty comprehensive survey of the spontaneous Earle-related blog-burst,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2002 02:12 PM
Just a bit more on Steve Earle-gate Matt Welch has broken his vow of silence to deliver this persuasive defense of the "fat socialist hillbilly". (He also has this great post about Ari Fleischer and TV graphics reform--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 07:01 PM
Speaking of country music singer-songwriter lefties, Steve Earle has apparently found, within his addled soul, yet another deep end into which to slip (via Instantman): American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh is glorified and called Jesus-like in a country-rock song...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 11:07 AM
Oh, Kris We went to see Kris Kristofferson this weekend at the Presentation Theatre at USF. People tend to forget just how great a songwriter he is. My wife hadn't even been aware that he was a songwriter. "He's a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 09:49 AM
As nasty as he wants to be... At this point, I'm officially bored by Brendan O'Neill's periodic anti-blogosphere temper tantrums, as well as by the predictable responses to them. (Warning: this one will be pretty boring, too.) He only does...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 12:06 AM
What Spain could teach us about island grabbing is the headline of this interesting item about Parsley Island, Gibraltar and the venerable and continuing tradition of gunboat diplomacy. "Us" means, of course, Great Britain, but there may be other worthy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2002 11:05 AM
Something to fill in the enormous blank space at the top this blog This blog's first serious case of "light posting" (a vaguely rock and roll-induced condition) and a relatively long links list are the joint cause of the sudden...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2002 11:01 AM
Yep. We're all nuts: The two appeals court judges behind the ruling declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional have been targeted by demonstrators surrounding the courthouse and a plane trailing a banner that read: "One Nation Under God." "It's the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2002 10:31 AM
Entropy Ken Layne says yesterday was dull, and has the links to back it up. Meanwhile, in this little corner of dullsville, a letter came pouring in, demanding to know why I didn't post anything yesterday. Question: am I OK?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2002 10:01 AM
I can't afford to read the Sunday Times on-line anymore, so I missed this article except for the excerpt that appeared on Stephen Pollard's blog. But the excerpt is good enough: According to the Sunday Times, "ministers and civil servants...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2002 12:42 PM
Here's an article based on an interview with Mona Baker's husband, Ken, in which he says: "we are just ordinary people. Neither of us has any real political allegiances, we have no religion, no creed, nothing at all... We didn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2002 11:51 AM
*snicker* Moira vs. Miss Crabapple. UPDATE: Still making friends, I see......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2002 09:19 AM
Howard Jacobson of the Independent lets Mona Baker have it with both barrels, pronouncing her "guilty of carrying out atrocities against language." The step-off point is her notorious employment of the phrase "some kind of Holocaust," but Jacobson combs through...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2002 09:55 AM
Oh come on, Eric: on the topic of Ms. Coulter, I do not think it impossible or necessarily unlikely that were she a leftist, Mr. Ashcroft would seek to imprison her for regular endorsements of mass violence and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2002 11:32 AM
Astounding idiocy... ...from Patrick Bateson, the provost of King's College, Cambridge (via Instantman.) And I'm not easily astounded. Here's how Professor Bateson defends Mona Baker's purge of Israeli scholars: "Always," he said, "science is set in social contexts." As an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2002 10:31 AM
In case you missed it yesterday, here's Victor Davis Hanson's latest excellent essay on "our friends the Saudis" and the questionable advisability of attempting to preserve the status quo in the Middle East for the sake of oil. Stability schmability,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 01:34 PM
Say what you mean... It has come to Tapped's attention that Ted Williams was an atheist: Whew. We didn't know that, but we can't say we're surprised. Indeed, we think it says a lot about what it means -- and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 01:10 PM
Mark Steyn engagingly covers all the bases in this column on the seeming inability of authorities to draw the obvious conclusions about the LAX terrorism. He also makes this point: let's take the Feds at their word when they insist...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 10:39 AM
One of Charles Austin's readers has written an eloquent response to the most recent Matthew Parris column on the unfortunate reality of American power: The tenor of his complaint lays bare the fundamental philosophical divide between his beliefs about the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 09:20 AM
Saudi diplomacy Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi ambassador to Britain who published that poem gloryifying suicide bombers awhile back, is at it again, reaffirming his praise of suicide "martyrs" and claiming "this is a war of occupation, far more severe than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 09:12 AM
"Criticism of Israel isn't necessarily anti-Semitism," the British left-liberal commentariat never tire of pointing out. But what about when it is? Donald Macintyre, commenting in the Independent on the case of the British academic (Mona Baker) who fired two Israelis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2002 03:08 PM
Another good catch... ...by Moira Breen. Moira says everything that needs to be said about this remarkable set of consecutive paragraphs from a Reuters article on the recent study that found that "globalization has helped the poor." But here they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2002 09:45 AM
Daniel Pipes provides a list of other incidents (besides the LAX shooting) that authorities have been reluctant to identify as terrorism. He concludes: Work dispute, hate crime, road rage, derangement, post-traumatic stress, industrial accident . . . these expressions...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2002 08:27 AM
Stephen Schwartz provides this interesting essay on the parallels between mid-century Stalinist apologists and Communist front groups and our contemporary Wahhabist ones. I'm not sure I believe that groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), American Muslim Council...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2002 11:39 PM
Atheism Update A few days back I quoted the entry on "atheism" from the 18th-century Encyclopedia Britannica, saying that I had nothing to add to it. Well, Steven den Beste has a great deal to add, and it's wide-ranging and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2002 10:18 AM
Mark Steyn on the Establishment clause: The founders were men of God: they just didn't think the government should be in the business of approving and licensing one particular denomination over all others. Their view prevailed so successfully that two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2002 11:50 AM
Columnist fails to bring down global superpower... Matthew Parris reluctantly concedes that he was right all along. This time, though, I think he may really mean it. UPDATE: Charles Austin comments....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2002 10:03 AM
Well, ya got your freaks and you got your genius-level freaks: Gore Vidal, in other words. Reader Matt Welch (heh!) sends along this classic "out there" interview with our favorite wacko. Favorite bits: We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2002 09:33 PM
Daniel Pipes revisits the "simulation of Islamic culture" public school curriculum that was such a hot topic on talk radio a few months back. (It's news again because a public school in California is now being sued by parents over...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2002 01:41 PM
The what the hell is the matter with these people? file is getting pretty thick: A Pakistani tribal council ordered an 18-year-old girl to be gang-raped in order to punish her family after her brother was seen walking with a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2002 11:37 AM
Wow, they really are suicidal... Fatah calls for attacks on US targets: Groups affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement yesterday called upon all Palestinian organizations, including the Islamic movements, to attack Zionist and American targets everywhere in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 05:01 PM
First this. Then this. Now this. What could they be up to? UPDATE: Laurence Simon emails the answer: "threesome."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 12:25 PM
Yet another reason the Saudis should be nervous... AL-UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AP) - If President Bush ordered airstrikes on Iraq, this vast, remote and little-publicized base in the central Persian Gulf would be a critical hub for U.S. warplanes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 11:33 AM
The Natives Voters are Restless Palestinian Jobless Storm Arafat's Gaza Headquarters: Thousands of banner-waving Palestinians marched on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Gaza offices Monday, protesting the lack of jobs or financial support for the unemployed. About 4,000 demonstrators, many accompanied...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 11:25 AM
Joe Katzman has a great column on "4th Generation Warfare" up on TCS. This is nicely put: As we've seen recently, big-ticket military items aren't always the ones that matter, which puts the U.S. military procurement culture at a big...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 11:07 AM
30 Days to a Mushier Vocabulary The word "Oriental" has been banned in the state of Washington. The state senator who sponsored the bill, one Paul Shin, provides a useful bit of semantic history: the word "Oriental" was first used...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 10:57 AM
Would you like "a fascinating insight into the mind of our most gifted contemporary songwriter"? Ahem. (Directly inspired by the Mirror's coverage of the War on Terror. "That's why I'm always getting stoned, yeah...")...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2002 07:17 PM
Who is Steven Hatfill? This American Prospect article about the shadowy bio-weapons scientist whose apartment was recently searched in the anthrax investigation raises as many questions as it answers. Many of these details are intriguing, particularly the Rhodesian paramilitary connection--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2002 11:34 AM
The Quick and the Dead How dead is Osama? Quite dead, says Mark Steyn. But what's the read-out on Washington's perennial coddling of the House of Saud? : But the real story here is not 11 September, or the attack...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2002 10:46 AM
The Smoking Gun has posted parts of the transcript of Zacarias Moussaoui's courtroom rant (the one where he prayed for the "destruction of the Jewish people and the United States of America.") This line was new to me: "so, America,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2002 12:08 AM
"You Americans really love a lawsuit, don't you?" said my young British wife, as we watched the feeble-minded fellow who brought the pledge of allegiance case making the rounds on TV last night. "What a waste of time." Especially since,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2002 11:41 AM
Fudge Jeff Jacoby has the right idea on Israel-Palestine: peace requires a drastic reform of Palestinian culture which, unfortunately, cannot begin without a crushing military defeat. He seems to think that this is Bush's idea as well, which is strange...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2002 09:52 AM
We've still got an appeasement problem... Iain Murray points out this wonderfully clarifying column by Michael Gove, on Palestinian "desperation," the suicide-bombing ethos, and the "folly of the West": This ideology of death is not then the product of hope...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2002 08:50 AM
Poetry Corner Will Warren provides the best comment so far on that "not in our name" letter recently sent to the Guardian: How piercingly you parse the claims of those Who craft the shallow, sentimental prose Proclaiming cause with claim...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 03:26 PM
"A student movement is not just a student movement," writes Todd Gitlin in Mother Jones. "It's a student movement." Glad you cleared that up, Todd. Seriously, though, this is yet another good treatment of the campus anti-Semitism phenomenon by a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 01:13 PM
It's tough being a Marxist The always-provocative Brendan O'Neill explains why he is against just about everything. Down with human rights!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 12:41 PM
You can do anything, but lay off of my pork chop shoes......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 10:33 AM
Stephen Pollard makes an excellent comment on "Cherie-gate": The real point about Cherie Booth is what her comment reveals about the left-liberal, chattering class mindset. They have opinions which are, to them, so deep-seated that they don't even think they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2002 02:16 PM
Scotland's Highlander's Regiment vs. Oasis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2002 12:21 PM
Matt Welch provides the link for the Observer version of the BBC Iraqi tortured children/mass baby funeral story mentioned below. More horrific detail....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2002 09:50 AM
Report: Anthrax In Mail Was Fresh Scientists have concluded that anthrax sent through the mail last year was less than two years old, leading investigators to believe that whoever sent the germs could make more, according to a published report....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2002 09:48 AM
But did they use a mail truck? Have you heard about Mohamed Hammoud and his brother Chawki? (Yeah, that's right: Chawki.) These guys established permanent resident status through sham marriages, and set up a "scheme" which involved buying cigarettes in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 07:11 PM
Desperation is the mother of... Saddam may hand power to his son to avoid attack, according to the Times: SADDAM HUSSEIN is considering stepping down as the Iraqi head of state in favour of his younger son in an attempt...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 06:31 PM
More Padilla weirdness According to this Times of London report, some FBI officials believe Jose Padilla was aware that he was going to be apprehended when he landed in Chicago and may even have deliberately contrived his own arrest: Padilla,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 03:10 PM
punkrockbaby.com "Dont leave your your child's musical taste to chance - indoctrinate now" is the motto of this compilation of punk rock for babies, billed as "a collection of punk classics in a lullaby style." I don't know about the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 11:42 AM
"When I hear the word Iraq, I hear a tortured child screaming..." That's the final line of this gut-wrenching BBC story on Iraq's Tortured Children (via LGF.) It's based on an interview with Ali, an exiled former "employee" of Saddam's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 10:18 AM
Root Causes Does poverty and poor education cause terrorism? Of course not. But here's an interesting exploration of the "economics and education of suicide bombers" and of various ways that survey research and other statistical data can be used to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 09:30 AM
Cal Thomas makes a case for banning Saudi-funded and -trained Wahabbist imams from US prisons: Inmates of whatever faith, or of no faith, are entitled to visits by lay or professional ministers. But Supreme Court rulings grant the prison system...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2002 11:34 AM
Having it Both Ways Matt Welch comments on this piece by Nat Hentoff on the putative return of the bad old days of COINTELPRO: There were many good reasons for the reforms introduced back then on intelligence & law enforcement...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2002 02:52 PM
Ask and Receive Yesterday I asked which Middle Eastern country, and which shadowy "targeted organization," were being referred to in this report on the allegations of espionage by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. HD "Travelling Shoes" Miller responds: Regarding Sibel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2002 10:46 AM
Zacarias Moussaoui admits that he is "indeed a Muslim fundamentalist openly hostile to the Jews and the United States of America". You don't say. Moussaoui's defense strategy appears to aspire to maximum loopiness: In court papers filled with passages from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 07:12 PM
How'd they miss Tim? The Sydney Morning Herald discovers warblogs. Well, four of them, anyway....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 05:47 PM
Moles in the FBI? It certainly seems that way. Wow. According to the Washington Post, a former FBI wire-tap translator named Sibel Edmonds "raised suspicions about a co-worker's connections to a group under surveillance." At the time, these suspicions appear...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 11:58 AM
One of the two Americans who were being held by Pakistani security authorities has now been deported to the US....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 08:40 AM
Mohammad al-Ghoul, the aptly-named maniac responsible for the latest Jerusalem bus bombing, was a two-time self-detonation failure before he finally managed to get his act together as a mass murderer. We know this because he said so in a suicide...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 08:21 AM
Ken Adelman says that Bush has indeed "gone wobbly": Around all the Washington harrumphing, I detect no serious actions to liberate Iraq and rid us of thenumber onethreat poised against the American people. Why not? I cant imagine. Every day...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 07:52 AM
Mick Hume of spiked has an excellent essay (in the New Statesman, of all places) on how yesterday's "socialism of fools" (anti-Semitism) has given way to today's "anti-Imperialism of fools" (anti-Israel-ism.) I don't agree with his peremptory dismissal of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 04:05 PM
Briffa's Deb-Watch Peter Briffa spots this classic chunk of Deborah Orr (on the subject of educational standards and the need to abolish them): New Labour wants to promote equality, but at the same time cannot see that equality is not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 02:05 PM
Stop coddling Pakistan, says Lawrence Kaplan of The New Republic: The Bush team needs a new road map for South Asia. U.S. officials readily concede that if war breaks out on the subcontinent it will be because India invades to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 10:53 AM
Scary stuff, kids Federal authorities have been searching for a merchant ship carrying a group of al Qaeda terrorists and a large cache of weapons that is believed to be headed for Los Angeles, The Washington Times has learned. Top...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 10:36 AM
Hamas strikes again. Another high-intensity bus bombing. This time the bus was full of school children and office workers. 19 of them are dead, and over 50 injured. The bomber, the rather appropriately-named Mohmmad al Ghoul, boarded the bus with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 08:30 AM
Here's a report (via Rantburg) claiming that Egyptian authorities "foiled an attempt by Al Qaida to forge cooperation between Islamic insurgents in Egypt and the United States." The al Qaeda agent? Jose Padilla. Arab diplomatic sources said the attempt was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 07:44 AM
Dueling Headlines Castro Acts to Crush Reform Move, according to the Telegraph: Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader, marshalled the island's communist machine at the weekend to crush an unprecedented pro-democracy petition campaign, which called for a national referendum on political and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2002 06:10 PM
It's a Carry On Explosion!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2002 11:09 AM
Fascinating details here and here on the background of the recent al Qaeda arrests in Morocco and the current state of the terror network....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2002 09:26 AM
Fred "Rantburg" Pruitt and I are still working on the psychic network project-- details to follow. Meanwhile, he has assembled a convenient set of hotlinks to fill in the background of this report on the arrest of Adham A. Hassoun...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2002 08:55 AM
Speaking of Gary Farber, he's "back," with a vengeance. Lots of great posts over the last few days. He has some excellent comments on "one way the "hard left" has a large thread of evil running through it." (This is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2002 11:59 AM
Soft Tacos Jose Padilla may not have been a major player in al Qaeda's war on America, but one thing seems certain: the south Florida environment that "produced" him is a hotbed of Islamist extremism, as this Washington Post piece...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2002 08:21 AM
More detail on American attendance at extremist-generating madrassas in Pakistan-- it looks like this story is based in part on the same material as the UPI story I linked to yesterday: Since 1995, at least 27 Americans have attended four...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2002 12:31 PM
I think it's safe to say that Midwest Express Airlines has managed to avoid even the appearance of profiling in its security screening procedures. Feel safer? (via DailyPundit-- welcome back, Bill!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2002 12:11 PM
US checking nationality of Western Taliban Here's more on the "some half a dozen" captured Taliban who are claiming US citizenship; apparently there are also an unknown number of British and French jihadis as well, according to "Pakistani security officials."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 11:58 PM
Mark Steyn comments on cultural sensitivity and Johnelle Bryant's encounter with Mohamed Atta: Ms. Bryant has come forward now because she thinks "it's very vital that the Americans realize that when these people come to the United States, they don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 07:41 PM
"Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed..." It's tough being a Prominent American. UPDATE: Ken Layne comments, and so does Brian O'Connell. Layne says it's a clever piece of Bush administration propaganda. Careful with that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 07:26 PM
Progress in the Richard Reid investigation: French police detained five people for questioning in the Paris area Wednesday as part of the investigation into suspected shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid. Two of those being held are Pakistani and the other three...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 01:49 PM
The Washington Post's second editorial on the civil liberties implications of indefinite detention of American citizens like Padilla is right on the money: International law permits the detention of captured enemy soldiers, even those who have committed no crimes, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 12:52 PM
More on Padilla. Al Muhajir's journey to the Middle East may have begun at two mosques in Florida's Broward County. Darul Uloom Institute was one of the places where he attended Saturday morning courses in 1995. "He used to dress...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 10:17 AM
Dirty Bomb Backlash! There has been some backtracking by administration honchos about the seriousness of the Jose Padilla's "dirty bomb" threat. Ashcroft "overstated" the dirty bomb danger, as this USA Today report puts it, quoting Paul Wolfowitz: "I don't think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2002 07:21 PM
Answers are trickling in to some of the questions I was wondering about yesterday concerning Jose "Abdullah" Padilla. There's still some confusion about the timeline of his association with radical Islamism and al Qaeda. According to this article, he converted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2002 06:23 PM
Ken Layne explains how to spot a terrorist in the making....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2002 01:36 PM
Muhajir Implications... Joe Katzman has put together a thorough run-down of the implications of the Padilla-Muhajir dirty bomb plot with regard to the al Qaeda situation. As for the civil liberties situation, I agree with this Washington Post editorial that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2002 10:56 AM
Steven "Daddy Warblogs" Chapman vs. Robert Fisk, again. The Daddy wins, again....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 04:55 PM
This Fox News report on the dirty bomb plot has more details, plus a photo of Jose "Abdullah al Muhajir" Padilla, a 31-year old New York native raised in Chicago. Two other conspirators are in custody in Pakistan in connection...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 04:12 PM
There's very little detail available on Abdullah al Mujahir (a.k.a. Jose Padilla), the American citizen who is accused of being the operative behind a foiled al Qaeda dirty-bomb plot. Like the British "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, he apparently converted to Islam...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 11:02 AM
From Pravda On-line's "Russia Makes it Funny" feature comes this insight into sexual attitudes and practices in China: For the time being, Maos punitive law is still in effect for those families that decide to have more than one child....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2002 05:33 PM
Here's Matt Welch's great essay on Chomsky and company, in The National Post of all places....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2002 12:58 PM
We hates Imperialism! We hates it! Brendan O'Neill has made it quite clear that he would like to see an end to "Imperialism," by which he means all "Western interference in other states' affairs." Bit of a lost cause, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2002 10:14 AM
The corrosive sub-culture within New Labour is probably not all that different from that of any political party in power (though I'm sure they have their own distinct style.) This op-ed in the Scotsman runs down the British government's latest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2002 09:05 AM
Here's an update on the Bethlehem exiles; and here's what's up with the Green Line fence situation: construction is to begin "within days" (via Tal G.) Meanwhile, Steven den Beste proposes a dual-fence mine-field arrangement....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2002 11:57 AM
Dangerous Maniac Alert Have you seen the piece about how Mohamed Atta and three of the other jihadi-jackers applied for a government loan to finance a "crop dusting business?" It's unbelievable. "He wanted to finance a twin-engine six-passenger aircraft ...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2002 10:11 AM
Joshua Micah Marshall, "though not a great supporter of the President," says that Bush's proposed security and intelligence reforms sound like a step in the right direction. He really has a point here: Would this be happening without the political...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 07:48 PM
I Remember You, Oo Oo Oo Oo Dee Dee Ramone is finally all the way dead. And so is a little bit of every one of us....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 03:34 PM
Trolls and juvenilia in a barrel Megan McArdle takes the Warbloggerwatch kids' troll bait, with predictably devastating results: she can write circles around practically anybody, of course, and these guys don't stand a chance. The reason that we're worried about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 12:28 PM
As Richard Tofel points out, there's a lot in the idea that the most effective way for the Democrats to challenge GWB would be to "become the true War Party, the clear-eyed hawks--in essence, to outflank Mr. Bush on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 11:30 AM
Matt Welch delivers a spirited defense of the International Herald Tribune, which was recently trashed in Slate by James Ledbetter. I agree with Matt: the IHT is a great paper, and a godsend for an American travelling through Europe. Outside...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 09:19 AM
This Wobbly Stuff Pejman Yousefzahda runs through all the reasons why taking on Saddam is a "no brainer." It's a good summary. Some have hailed the column as a response to those who worry that a "wobbly" Bush administration won't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 12:30 AM
What part of "tomorrow" don't you understand? U.S. intelligence overheard al-Qaeda operatives discussing a major pending terrorist attack in the weeks prior to Sept. 11 and had agents inside the terror group, but the intercepts and field reports didn't specify...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2002 12:18 AM
Another great Guardian moment (via Peter Briffa): The US constitution is a uniquely powerful document, but whether it has really done anything for the cause of freedom is open to debate. It accommodated slavery for longer than European states, turned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2002 08:09 PM
Brendan O'Neill has a point that quibbling over the precise number of Afghan civilian casualties has little to do with "principled, political argument." Whether or not the US campaign in Afghanistan was justified does not turn on whether Marc Herold's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2002 09:28 AM
The Smoking Spam Of course Slobodan Milosevic knew about Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. But wouldn't you think that they'd be able to come up with more solid evidence than the fact that Human Rights Watch sent spam to his email...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2002 11:14 AM
President Bush is still capable of talking a good game on the need for aggressive pre-emptive action against Iraq, but I have to say that at this point I'll believe it when I see it and not before. Wars are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2002 09:26 AM
Plans for massive airlift of British citizens out of Pakistan and India... 'Jack Straw's remarks completely freaked me out,' Barbara McKinlay, who was leaving behind a home in Delhi, said before boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight back to Britain yesterday,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 07:56 PM
Ours are looking more and more like theirs....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 06:05 PM
Ken Layne delivers a "come on you knuckleheads" message to the leaders of India and Pakistan in yesterday's FoxNews column. As always, you'll enjoy it more if you follow the links (and not just the hot bikini models one.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 05:28 PM
Get Out of Delhi, Baby, Go "Diplomatic sources" say that the looming India-PAK conflict could very well lead to a nuclear exchange. Well, duh. Diplomatic sources insisted that such a doomsday scenario was "very real". Neither the Indian nor Pakistani...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 12:21 PM
Out of the Mouths of Belgians Not All Euro-crats are anti-Israel. Tal G links to this interesting article from the Jerusalem Post about small group of members of the European Parliament (50 out of 626) who support Israel: "For us,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 11:07 AM
There's not all that much to Humanities professor Paul Gottfried's much-blogged Spectator article on American anti-European sentiment. Loads of rhetoric, snide asides, very little substance, no discernable argument-- in other words, extremely difficult to comment on. (Though I daresay the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2002 12:52 PM
"World Class Television" Thanks to Nick Denton for pointing out this summary of what has to have been the best "Have I Got News for You" ever. I'm really sorry I missed it, but all the jokes are included on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2002 09:04 AM
What about that flight simulator? FBI officials said a ''restricted'' Middle Eastern country attempted to buy a flight simulator before the attacks. That attempt failed, said the officials, who would not identify the country or say when the attempt was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 11:14 PM
Mark Steyn asks "does political correctness kill?" He answers the question by posing another question: why didn't the FBI follow up on the famous "Phoenix memo" about radical Islamists attending flight schools? Three weeks ago, FBI director Mueller was asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 11:42 AM
Lileks presents the antiwarbloggers' creed: sticks and stones may break my bones, so we need to enter into international treaties with nations whose main industrial product is sticks-and-stones delivery systems. We need to find a common ground with countries that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 10:42 AM
Nothing in Michael Barone's latest column on "Our Enemies the Saudis" will be news to anybody who has been reading news blogs, but he ties it together and presents a good case for the desirability of a "regime change" in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 10:30 AM
Joe Katzman's Blog Burst experiment has succeeded in generating massive bloggage on the San Francisco State anti-Semitic riot situation. Overwhelming....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 12:14 AM
Off the front burner... Michael Kelly takes the occasion of Memorial Day to deliver another "time to get serious" message and to reflect on the Sontag-istas once again, and on the futility of trying to respond to today's situations with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 11:14 AM
Right you are, Moira. "Doctor" is my first name, not my title. But Mr. Doctor Frank is how "the kids" address me in Japan, as a matter of fact....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 08:01 AM
Here's a very fine essay (via 64.247.33.250) by the redoubtable Paul Berman, on the strange "new wind" of anti-Jewish sentiment. As Berman demonstrates (by parsing out four examples of contemporary discourse) the most disturbing thing about the "new mood" is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 07:54 AM
Tick, tick, tick... Even as international pressure mounted on Islamabad to stop cross-border terrorism, a senior Pakistani official has said infiltration into India is conditional to New Delhi taking steps to resolve the Kashmir issue and ending the status quo....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 06:49 AM
Oh, dear God... Cheese-flavored Yasser Arafat potato chips five cents a bag. Vendors report brisk sales of the new product. The maker of the chips says it donates five cents 25 pisaters to the "Palestinian cause" for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2002 07:32 PM
Thanks to Iain Murray and the other kind folks who expressed sympathy and encouragement regarding the INS experience. There's always one more river to cross, but it appears that we made it over this one at least. I'm sure whatever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2002 04:02 PM
Byers quits to "avoid damaging the government." Far too late for that, sir. Now what was the real reason?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2002 03:32 PM
More on Glorious Irrelevance Here's a long and detailed essay (via Moira Breen) from the always provocative Robert Kagan, on the reasons for the differences between European and American "strategic culture." It's the least anti-European argument in favor of American...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2002 08:03 PM
Don't Mention the War More idiocy from Robert Fisk, of the usual variety. ("More and more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Osama bin Laden..." Whatever, Bob. Tell it to the Arab News.) Noting the frequent allusions...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2002 12:10 PM
I don't agree with everything Roger Scruton says in this piece on the "tyranny of the majority." (Democracy doesn't seem to be doing so well in Europe these days, but I'm pretty sure the problem isn't that it is insufficiently...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2002 11:50 AM
Diane "Letter from Gotham" E. once speculated that Andrew Sullivan might have some kind of "B-chip" in his head which prevented him from uttering anything less than favorable about GWB. If so, the administration's backpedaling on Iraq appears to have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2002 10:44 AM
"We had said war clouds were hovering, but sometimes lightning strikes even if the weather is clear. We hope that the lightning will not strike." Whatever that may mean, I hope so too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2002 11:26 PM
I spent today at the Immigration and Naturalization Service district office in San Francisco. *Shudder* Normal posting to follow when and if I recover......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2002 11:05 PM
Even among the many recent contenders in the Catholic Church's bulging file of disastrous press-clippings, this headline has to win some kind of prize: Priest Pleads Guilty to Making Date-Rape Drug...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 11:00 PM
More on the ever more disturbing India-PAK situation. Steven den Beste has come up with an (unfortunately) perfectly plausible nightmare scenario for how the conflict might go from conventional to nuclear. And Suman Palit continues to frighten the dickens out...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 10:51 PM
Israeli Embassy in Paris Destroyed by Fire: "officials said it was too early to determine the cause..." But not too difficult to make an educated guess... (UPDATE: The word is, it was an electrical fire. And no, that wasn't my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 10:48 PM
Gate-keeper vs. Gate-crasher? Temper, temper. "Pesky individualist" Andrew Sullivan administers a link-less thrashing to the meddlesome Eric Olsen: Warning: Failed opening 'archives/2002_05_19_dish_archive.html' for inclusion (include_path='') in /Library/WebServer/WebSites/dev.andrewsullivan.com/index.php on line 99 Sad....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 01:15 PM
That's our Tom: The ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos, has asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to conduct a formal probe into the operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency in the territories prior...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:26 PM
The India-PAK situation, still hotting up: Pakistani troops attack Indian Kashmir village, Britain withdraws 150 diplomatic staff because of terrorist threats. And here's a report on Musharraf's "jehadi plan" from the Hindustan Times (via Rantburg): A new Pakistani jehadi group,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:17 PM
TAPped gives Alterman the thumbs-up. "Here's to a new wave of liberal, edited blogging." Be still my heart....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:59 AM
India and Pakistan move one step further toward the unthinkable... I hate to say it, but I think Josh Trevino is probably right about the impending India-PAK war (this is from post #1 on May 20-- scroll down to "holy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 07:02 PM
Steven den Beste has some trenchant comments on that David Clark column I was complaining about last week: Europeans have always tried to concentrate power. Everyone important in Europe has always agreed about this. The only argument has been who,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 05:38 PM
Meet the anti-Andrew I expect every last blogger to note the irony that infamous anti-blog attack dog Eric Alterman now has a blog, on the MSNBC website. (I found out about it through Instantman, for the record.) Alterman continues the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 12:31 PM
Michael Gove has another superb column, likening the EU-niks of today to the Manchu-niks of old. They really are Mandarins! The current trajectory of European political development is driven by elites who, unlike Americas political leadership, find the moral burden...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 10:53 AM
The latest news from Roman Britain......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 09:54 AM
Wow, InstaPundit's new, stylish look is great. But it's freaking me out. Change hurts. (Glad to have the search function though.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 12:07 AM
A Guardianian Awakens... Decidedly un-Guardian-like words from Guardianian Peter Preston: Can Spain and Britain, best of friends, settle a tiny trauma over Gibraltar? Probably not, on present form. Can the ticking clock of EU enlargement bring a little peace to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 11:26 AM
Once again, ladies and gentlemen: the quotable Mr. Warren: The issue, of course, is would anyone have been able to guess what was planned for Sept. 11, and thus prevent the strikes, if all the little bits had been presented...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 11:02 AM
"Imagine how awful it would be if there were a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. It'd be just like the last 2,000 years all over again." (via Ben Sheriff.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 10:56 AM
Don't miss Matt Welch's brilliant post on the Beach Boys and the California dream. (As so often in the blogosphere, the comments are far more interesting and well-written than the flimsy matter being commented upon-- in this case this book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 10:18 AM
David Warren is in fine form once again, poking holes in the "demography is destiny" argument: My Palestinian correspondents -- I actually have a few -- make two points repeatedly. The first is to blame all their economic failures on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 09:55 AM
Guardian to The Western World: Give Up Madeleine Bunting manages to turn the lynching of Daniel Pearl, the bombing of the French technicians in Karachi, and the threat of a July 4th attack on a US nuclear facility into an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 09:34 AM
Thanks to the kind souls who responded to my little beg-a-thon last week. A couple of readers wrote to say they prefer PayPal to "ScAmazon.con" (why the anti-Amazon sentiment,anyway?) so I finally put up a PayPal button above the Amazon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 08:56 AM
"Hitler is dead," says TNR's Leon Wieseltier, in an interesting essay cautioning American Jews against hysteria and the tendency to see echoes of the '30s and '40s in the anti-Semitic portents of today. "Is the peril 'as great, if not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2002 11:51 PM
Quote of the day... ...from Bill Quick: EU Strikes Deal on Palestinian Militants Spain and Italy will each take three of the militants, Greece and Ireland will take two each, Portugal and Finland will take one each, and one will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2002 10:46 PM
The Singer and the Song Hey, remember that much-blogged David Duke article in the Arab News? They took it down pretty quickly (clicking on that link now leads you to a chatty article about the New Arab Male.) But you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2002 11:31 AM
Moira Breen has a good post on the subject of euthanasia. "There are, " she writes, "adherents on both sides of the issue that make my skin crawl." Mine, too, and for the same reasons. (Thanks to Peter Briffa for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2002 10:05 AM
If you haven't seen it yet, here's Will Warren's latest, on the subject of this animal-loving assassin: Through gently rolling countryside I often take my strolls; I love to watch the tender mares Attending to their foals, I love the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2002 08:39 AM
That quasi-pogrom-esque SF State "demonstration" (that anti-Semitism is alive and well and living at our major universities) has been extremely well-covered by Meryl Yourish and Joe Katzman. Glenn Reynolds's new FoxNews column ties it all together: If it is not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 11:35 AM
Steven "Daddy Warblogs" Chapman has responded courteously to a few of my questions about his explanation of European anti-Israel sentiment in terms of collective psychology. He may be right about the "transference." Admiration of history's losers and solidarity with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 09:05 AM
You can learn a lot from a government form... There's a $255 charge (plus a fingerprinting fee) for filing form I-485, which you need to file to register your alien spouse once the marriage has taken place. I'm not sure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 12:10 AM
Ted Barlow has been poking around in the PETA website. "Whatever else you have to say about the kooky guys 'n' gals of PETA," writes Ted, "they've raised the publicity stunt to an art form. Just from their press releases,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2002 01:00 PM
Ted Rall, David Duke, Robert Fisk, Lyndon LaRouche, al-Ahram, Hitler, Noam Chomsky, Blair's Law, the Arab News, and Me Tim Blair, in reference to this Lyndon LaRouche interview in Al-Ahram, recently noted "the ongoing process by which the world's multiple...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2002 07:49 AM
Postmodernism shall save ye... Britain's bridge across the Atlantic is fated to collapse, writes "former Foreign Office special adviser" David Clark in the Guardian. I had intended to comment on this ridiculous article by David Clark (to which I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2002 07:05 PM
Pickers? An animal rights organization wants Austin High School to stop using the nickname ``Packers.'' The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals contends the southern Minnesota school's nickname is offensive and should be replaced. Austin is the home of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2002 08:06 AM
Holy Smokes! Matt Welch's latest venture into tip-jar rattling yielded 61 donations. I think I recall him saying he averaged around 12,000 hits per day. Theoretically, then, at that rate, if I do this right, I should be able to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 04:57 PM
I haven't read the newly-published Congo diaries of Che Guevara (and, frankly, it's pretty unlikely that I ever will-- you know how it is): so I can't comment on whether Cynthia Grenier's characterization of it as a picture of "the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 01:33 PM
I missed this great Norah Vincent column on Friday, but fortunately Eric Olsen didn't: Because we support Israel, Americans increasingly are seen as surrogate Jews. We should accept our new moniker with pride, partly because being a Jew is nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 01:33 PM
That's so crazy it just might work... Jeff Jarvis has thrown a monkey wrench into the venerable tradition of idle speculation about the financial prospects of weblogging by actually coming up with a proposal. A Weblog Foundation with honorariums along...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 11:37 AM
Cognitive Dissonance? Daddy Warblogs expertly dissects three editorials from the Independent's Argument section. No surprises: it's pretty messy in there. If you're a fan of the Brit-lefty-barrelling genre (and who isn't?) it doesn't get much better than this. At the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 12:42 AM
Even if you guys eliminate the need for it, can we still have our swell regulatory agency? According to the BBC, the UN has taken great care to make its new weapons inspection team (the "UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 01:11 PM
The Telegraph's leader on the end of the Bethlehem siege has it right: This episode has been emblematic of the strengths and shortcomings of both sides in this asymmetric struggle. The Palestinians, with a sharp eye for the role of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 10:58 AM
Daddy Warblogs has dug up this article from September, 2001: International Terrorist Support Groups Thrive in Belgium and Netherlands. DW asks "perhaps this is what Pim Fortuyn was talking about?" Here are a couple of excerpts: Top international anti-terrorism experts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 09:13 AM
Funniness I'm pretty sure this odious piece in yesterday's Independent was intended as a bit of light-hearted humor-- it's often hard to tell with the English, but their unintentional humor is usually much funnier than this. What is clear is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 08:51 AM
Penetrated by Zionists... Bahrain has banned al Jazeera TV, accusing the station of being biased towards Israel. Information Minister Nabil al-Hamr explains: "We believe (Al Jazeera) is suspect and represents the Zionist side in the region. We will not deal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 05:46 PM
The Pim Fortuyn case gets curiouser and curiouser: Three election candidates from the party of murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn have been moved to a safe house. Police say they moved the LPF candidates after finding plans of their and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 03:52 PM
Somehow, I missed Ken Layne's latest FOXNews.com column on the lighter side of animal rights wackos. Follow the links-- most amusing. (The darker side, of course, would be him or him. Or him...)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 03:44 PM
"Call it Sham-nesty International, an apologist for terror," writes Margaret Wente of Canada's Globe and Mail. In its report, Amnesty International criticizes Canada for sometimes being on the wrong side. One example it gives is that we voted against a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 12:43 PM
Reason #1,386 why we will win the WOT: Our side has all the cool robots. If you haven't yet seen the photos of that British-made bomb-disposal robot recently used by the Israelis to check a partially-exploded suicide bomber for any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 12:05 PM
Well, as long as he had a good reason... The 21-year-old college student accused in a string of pipe bombings wanted to make a "smiley face" pattern with his targets, authorities said Thursday....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 10:07 PM
Dan Quayle was right about Murphy Brown, though that didn't make ridiculing him any less fun. But I'm not sure he's right about the effectiveness of the Ozzy Osbourne show as an anti-drug program: ``In a weird way, Ozzy is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 06:08 PM
Zeroing in on the source of the anthrax-letter spores: A cow that died in Texas in 1981 has been positively identified as the original source of the anthrax spores used in the terrorist attacks in America last year which killed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 05:51 PM
Ha ha ha ha ha... Some movie fans are blasting the next Lord of the Rings flick, charging that it exploits the World Trade Center tragedy. The next installment in the sequel is called The Two Towers, and a group...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 11:51 AM
Cruel and unusual punishment....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 10:52 AM
Reuters and "terrorism," again: A blast tore through a Victory Day parade in southern Russia on Thursday, killing at least 29 people, including seven children. Police said a remote-controlled mine hidden in bushes exploded as a military band surrounded by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 10:51 AM
There has already been a great deal withering commentary on Chris Patten's feeble whinging in response to George Will's column on European anti-Semitism, but, when it comes to commenting witheringly, nobody does it better than Moira Breen: "he must indeed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 12:37 AM
Ben Sheriff notes that the "dossier" on Arafat's direct involvement in terrorism is up on the IDF site: here's the index and here's the stuff about the Arafat/PA financing of terrorist activity. Also on Ben's site is a sensible response...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2002 11:17 AM
Here's a nice essay on "the big lie" about Pim Fortuyn by Adam Curry (yeah, the MTV guy-- he lives in Holland, and has been chronicling the story on his blog.) via Instantman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2002 09:20 AM
Today is an INS day (which could well mean that tonight will be a drinking night) so there probably won't be much space for blogging. I assure you, no irony is intended here: if you haven't yet seen Michael Gove's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2002 01:41 PM
If You Can't Beat 'em, Kill 'em Pim Fortuyn has been assassinated....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2002 12:36 PM
The Documents in the Case, the Weapons in the Compound, and the Bats in the Belfry Andrew Sullivan, on the latest round of evidence on the Arafat/PA terror connection: We're supposed to be shocked that Israel is now producing documentary...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2002 10:05 AM
New Terror Alert issued in Europe: Le Journal du Dimanche reports Sunday that Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network is preparing to kidnap hundreds of people throughout Europe over the next few days. The aim of the operation would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2002 08:34 AM
Love, Repression, and Drama Interesting psychological profile of Saddam Hussein in Time, though it's no great to surprise to learn that his quest for nuclear weapons is bound up with with his grandiosity and desire to emulate Stalin. The incidental...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2002 01:25 PM
The Ladies' Knitting and Crochet Guild vs. Slipknot. I'm betting on the ladies: the one British sewing enthusiast I know is a real tough cookie, and she'd wipe the floor with those guys......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2002 01:03 PM
Two of those people... Nick Denton writes of a familiar experience, the sort of conversation you have all the time when you live in a place like Berkeley: A friend was in town from the UK this weekend, and rehearsed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2002 12:50 PM
From the world of make-believe... Sorry for the lack of posts today. I had to take a break from being a pretend pundit so I could devote some time to being a pretend rock star. Now I've screamed myself hoarse...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2002 12:04 AM
You can't be too careful... ...but go easy on the caution: Scrutiny can be good for coverage, according to Steven Brill, a Newsweek columnist who founded Brill's Content, a now defunct magazine that monitored the media. If it makes editors...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 06:26 PM
The sub-title of David Tell's piece on the Jenin investigation says it all: The United Nations, unhappy about the prospect of seeing Israel exonerated, decides not to investigate Jenin....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 11:56 AM
Marriage/Mullholland Drive Update A few days ago, I mentioned that, for me and my new bride, sitting through Mullholland Drive had been, up to that point, the most difficult part of our three-day-old marriage. Now, six days into the experience,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 10:42 AM
Moira Breen returns!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 09:40 AM
Mark Steyn, once again, rules OK: For Goran Persson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, the point of the EU is that it can be a counterbalance, a moderating influence on those wacky Americans. But, for a moderating influence, its remarkably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 09:39 AM
Hamas accepts the Friedman/Saudi plan I'm not sure what to make of this article from Sunday's SF Chronicle, which is based on an interview with Ismail Abu Shanab, a member of Hamas's "executive committee." I haven't seen it reported anywhere...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2002 09:04 AM
Norwegian Blogger has spent quite a bit of his valuable time on this MST3K parody. It's a novel way of commenting on the much-blogged remarks of Arab Psychiatric Association chairman Adel "Bush is Retarded" Sadeq, and it's funny. Check it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 05:58 PM
Help Keep Cambodia Glitter-free....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 12:19 PM
Christopher Caldwell of the Weekly Standard makes a valuable contribution to the discussion on the current wave of European "Judeophobia." If you're interesed in "the real reason the French don't think they have a problem with anti-Semitism, and the reason...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 11:34 AM
Cockburn Update Somehow I missed it when it first went up, but here's Franklin Foer's piece on Alexander Cockburn and his recent round of cagey anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorizing (discussed here and here.) Foer gets to the heart of the matter here:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 09:08 AM
Marriage is hard. That's what married people always say whenever they find out you're joining their ranks. I'm sure they know what they're talking about, but it really doesn't seem all that difficult. All you need is a girl, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2002 10:26 AM
Bloggus Interruptus I'm going to have to lay off the posting for a bit here, as I have to attend a wedding-- my own, as a matter of fact. "Normal" blogging should resume presently. Uh, wish me luck......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2002 09:35 AM
Were war crimes committed at Jenin? Robert N. Hochman of the New Republic says "yes," and he's got a point: All civilized people agree on the premise of the Palestinian leadership's argument about Jenin. There is a vast moral difference...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 05:11 PM
Gary Farber has posted some very kind words about the Blogs of War on his great Amygdala blog. By way of returning the favor, I'll say that Amygdala is definitely on my "A" list of commentators. Here's an example of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 12:19 PM
Quote of the Day From Tim Blair: AL-AHRAM'S Mohamed Hakki interviews Lyndon LaRouche, as part of the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 11:22 AM
The Case for Alarmism Ron Rosenbaum's follow-up to his previous article on Euro-anti-Semitism (mentioned below) is an excellent summary of the alarming signs coming from Europe these days. I'm still not sure that Le Pen's electoral "success" is all that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 11:01 AM
Abu Zubayda has indicated that an al Qaeda attack on an American shopping center is imminent. According to this "This is London" report, "there is a strong desire on the part of American investigators to believe what Zubaydah is telling...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2002 11:15 AM
Eric Olsen has a series of excellent posts on NPR's anti-Israel bias. Go to the main page and search for NPR....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2002 10:05 AM
Nick Denton makes a good case for the "build a fence" solution to the Israel/Palestine dispute. Summary: withdraw from most of the occupied territories annex land around Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem abandon settlements beyond the boundary forget...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2002 08:54 AM
Ken Layne has some fun riffing on the protest puppet phenomenon: What do they mean? Why are they so poorly constructed? Is a large round face a symbol of the universal oppression of democracy and hamburgers, or is it simply...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2002 08:30 AM
All the Way We watched a bit of the anti-Israel protest on C-SPAN over the weekend. It's difficult to believe anyone could ever be persuaded by a chant like "we don't care what you say, Intifada all the way." The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2002 05:57 PM
This just in: Palestinian Vows End to Cooperation-- Israelis Won't Be Secure In Territories, Official Says Meanwhile, there was yet another lynching of "collaborators": With a three-week curfew lifted in Ramallah and no Palestinian police on the streets, three Palestinians...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2002 05:26 PM
Just in case you haven't clicked in yet, Matt Welch's review of Ralph Nader's campaign memoir is up. Terrific stuff....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2002 09:21 AM
"Criticism of Israel isn't Necessarily Anti-Semitism" I suppose the British Left and the American mainstream will never understand each other when it comes to anti-Semitism. What it boils down to is this: we think their rhetoric sounds anti-Semitic; they think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2002 10:34 AM
Sternly-worded Concessions United States Assures the Arab World That It Will Keep Working With Yasser Arafat. I wonder how the rope-a-dopers will spin this. All part of the master plan? I'm still reserving judgment, but it sure sounds like they're...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2002 11:07 AM
Sergeant Stryker comments on the Doc Searls post I mentioned below with a powerful essay on the phrase "killing does not justify more killing."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2002 10:57 PM
Fair and Balanced... ...and a bit of an idiot. In other words: Geraldo Rivera, "Palestinian-ist": I have been a Zionist my entire life. I would die for Israel. But watching the suffering of the Palestinian people, I'm also becoming a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2002 10:36 PM
Plan 9 Once again, Steyn "gets it" (as Sullivan would say): I'm sure the Middle East can always use another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2002 11:21 AM
If you haven't already seen this at Little Green Footballs, Charles has turned up this behind-the-scenes look at Jenin, from the Egyptian publication al-Ahram. In the words of Omar, an Islamic Jihad explosives "engineer": "Of all the fighters in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2002 11:12 AM
What really happened at Jenin? This article (via Bill Quick via Max Power) is an attempt at a balanced consideration of the question. The New York Times and the Washington Post reports are full of gutwrenching horrors, but no evidence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2002 06:38 PM
MuslimPundit is back, with another thoughtful, wide-ranging essay on Arab anti-Semitism: Islam has indeed provided a basis for the virulent anti-Semitism that, unfortunately, is now one of the main motivating forces trying to shape the Middle East. Although the roots...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2002 09:23 AM
Pacifist Speech The great Doc Searls says that "some of the best blogs (most well-reasoned, funny, wise, artfully written) are what we call warblogs." He hotlinks to this particular warblog as an example. Unless there's some mistake, I'd say that's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2002 08:47 AM
I'm sure Michael Kelly is right about "what Bush expects" in the Middle East. Bush wants to state for the record, in a once-and-for-all fashion, exactly how the United States sees the situation, in terms discrete and general. The Palestinians...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2002 11:02 AM
Ken Layne's FoxNews column is about the brand new NY Sun and the boundless possibilities for creating other new, non-boring newspapers out of ordinary household materials. The enthusiasm is contagious-- I'm starting to get all over-heated here... gonna have to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2002 05:51 PM
Tension-Abuse-Calm When you apply for a marriage license in the state of California, they give you a booklet called "If There are Children in Your Future." It's not just about having children, but rather, it's a collection of general information...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2002 11:41 AM
Wow: the story of Dutch involvement in the Srebenica massacre brings down the Dutch government. (via Glenn Reynolds.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2002 08:14 AM
As I've said many times before, Ken Layne understands the situation in the Middle East better than anyone....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2002 11:07 AM
All We are Saying Is: Give Appeasement a Chance Is the apparent incoherence of Bush's Middle East policy simply a clever contrivance, intended to disguise and deflect attention from the real underlying coherent strategy? Are the admonitions to Israel to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2002 10:48 AM
Hail, Spode H. D. Miller, in his great new blog Travelling Shoes, has turned up this love letter to Noam Chomsky ("honoured patron of the revisionist movement") posted on a website dedicated to celebrating the life and work of British...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2002 10:35 AM
Here's another fascinating look into suicide bomber pedagogy and procedure from Paul McGeough, writing in Australia's The Age (via Tim Blair.) The whole system is extraordinarily well-organized, both pre- and post-explosion. Pre-explosion training begins with the Al Aqsa Brigade's "martyrdom...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2002 11:06 AM
OK, I'm warning you: when I said the last time was your last last chance I must have been wrong because this is your last last chance. I mean it, this is absolutely and positively the final last chance you're...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2002 11:00 AM
Every time I think Alexander Cockburn has finally completed his long descent into madness, he somehow manages to find room to descend just a little more. Awhile back, Gary Farber, Matt Welch, and I commented on this peculiar article, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2002 08:57 AM
Hmm, I don't know. Every English person I know would rather have a live rat sewn into his or her belly than do this....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 06:42 PM
"The Purblind Peevishness of Polyphemus..." ...isn't a phrase you come across very often, but that's what happens when you give writers like Wole Soyinka a few free drinks. (By Polyphemus, he means Israel, by the way.) Now, see if you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 06:26 PM
Wobblin' or Winkin'? "George is going wobbly, say the editors of the New Republic, "and so is his administration..." the hour is late for debater's points. Too many innocent Israelis and Palestinians have died. About this no decent person can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 04:42 PM
Accidentally on purpose... A truck filled with natural gas crashed into a wall surrounding a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba earlier this afternoon, killing at least five people and injuring about 20, the official news agency reported......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 10:35 AM
You don't need me to tell you this, but... Lileks rules: If al-Qaeda had attacked European capitals, and the EU had marshaled its military forces to respond most of the critics would be far more supportive, because it was Europe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 08:33 AM
Who's right? Safire or Blankley? I give up....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 11:50 PM
Tony Blankley makes a pretty strong case that "Mr. Bush has been winking to us as much as he can" when it comes to Israel's campaign. And according to this article, Arab leaders are noticing all the winking, even if...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 06:08 PM
Look mom! I'm famous! I don't know how I managed to miss it till now, but I just realized that Glenn Reynolds has put up a Dr. Frank permalink on InstaPundit. I'm not worthy... but thanks, Professor!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 02:02 PM
You can expect to hear a lot more of this argument over the next few days: Palestinian officials said the blast on a bus from the northern city of Haifa to Jerusalem shattered Israel's argument that the 12-day-old sweep for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 01:11 PM
Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? A Matt Welch reader turned up the link to this open letter to "friends of President Bush" by diehard Saddam apologist Jude Wanniski. Welch's extensive commentary on it is well worth...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 10:34 AM
TNR's Lawrence Kaplan has a typically sharp analysis of the Bush administration's multiple personality disorder on Israel/Palestine. "The principal reason the Bush administration can't intervene effectively in the crisis is that it can't make up its mind," writes Kaplan. "Actually,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 09:56 AM
Quote of the Day Michael Gove on the IRA and the Riverdance of Death: The choreography is superb, the discipline impressive, the applause thunderous. These two Irish spectacles, having won over London and wowed the States, have made their directors...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 05:33 PM
Rio de Janeiro's tourist board is threatening legal action against The Simpsons, claiming that the episode "Blame it on Lisa" has hurt the tourist industry with its unfavorable portrayal of Rio's rat- and monkey-infested streets. "What really hurt was the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 05:20 PM
Grosso, indeed... Tim Blair has discovered a possible OBL "Boys From Brazil" plot: The world's first cloned human embryo is the son of a rich Arab, according to claims made by Severino Antinori, the Italian fertility specialist. Dr Antinori said...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 02:48 PM
Fred Pruitt, who knows far more about the matter than me or Andrew Sullivan, has some interesting additional speculation about the anthrax mailings. I think we're all agreed that it's not domestic. The question is, is it over?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 02:23 PM
Bill Quick has posted four well-written and well-thought out "reasons for killing Yasser Arafat now." "Were Israel to kill Arafat," he writes, "the puffed-up bubble of Palestinian triumphalism that prevents Palestine from negotiating from a position grounded in reality would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 11:52 AM
I heard Daniel Pipes expound the "two speeches in one" analysis of Bush's remarks on the O'Reilly Factor last week. A reader forwarded me the link to this LA Times article where he makes the point more systematically. Whence comes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 10:47 AM
Reuel Marc Gerecht makes yet another strong case against appeasement of suicide bombers, their supporters, and their figurehead. Noting Arafat's assertion (all too true, no doubt) that accepting the Camp David proposals would have amounted to a death sentence at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2002 11:07 PM
Wake up and smell the anthrax Unfortunately, I think Sullivan is probably right about the latest info on the Leahy anthrax, which, according to this report, is indeed 'a weaponized form of the bacterium more sophisticated than any previously known.'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2002 12:49 PM
Colin Powell explains what GWB means by "pull back without delay." Powell said Bush "does expect something to happen soon with respect to bringing this operation to some culminating point where you can start to see a movement in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2002 12:52 PM
Sir, I admit your general rule that every poet is a fool but as you yourself should serve to show it every fool is not a poet. Gary Farber emailed me this link: bin Laden's poetry, found in an al...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2002 12:29 PM
Choice... Two Deaf Lesbians is not a rock band, but rather a couple of, um, deaf lesbians, Sharon and Candy, one of whom impregnated herself with sperm from a deaf man in hopes of fulfilling their cherished dream of passing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2002 11:50 AM
Dr. Frank, Superstar Well, not really. But I do feel like a big shot now that favorite warblogger Matt Welch put a Dr. Frank link on his revamped front page. Not just me: he's got a pretty comprehensive list of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2002 11:48 AM
That Speech Again Is the sky falling? Stephen Green says it isn't. Robert Fisk says it is, but he's got a different set of criteria, I suspect. As Fisk spins it, Bush's remarks were decidedly unwobbly. Here's how he boils...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2002 06:17 PM
The Wall Street Journal's editors find a "silver lining" in Bush's cave-in on the Israeli offensive, and say that it will be worth it if it allows him to "re-focus the war on terror back on Iraq." Peggy Noonan thinks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2002 11:11 AM
Coddle, Denounce, Coddle, Denounce den Beste has posted the photographs of the weaponry captured at Arafat's headquarters, which include many materials banned by the Oslo accords. As he says, it's damning. Should this make a difference? You bet. It proves...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 11:17 AM
'I never thought they would fire live rounds.' Speaking of Europe's dumbest peace activists, they were surprised to learn that it can be quite dangerous in the middle of a combat zone. Here's the full quote from Kate Edwards, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 12:52 AM
This is a couple of days old now, but David Warren's latest take on Arafat and Israel is well worth reading: European "peace activists" were used as a front by the Palestinians in a clever operation to smuggle several of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 12:51 AM
Still skeptical about the Axis of Evil? More on Saddam's anti-US terrorist program. Iraq planned clandestine attacks against American warships in the Persian Gulf in early 2001, according to an operative of Iranian nationality who says he was given the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2002 11:18 AM
Spare us from any more Middle East peace plans, writes Michael Gove in today's Times. And bring on Netanyahu: Terrorists care only about winning. To defeat terror one must prove that it will not secure political gains. Israel needs a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 12:52 PM
Gatekeepers! Once again I'm going to risk redundancy by mentioning that Lileks has another great Bleat on the blogging, old media/new media topic. His ideal paper would be mine as well: If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 10:40 AM
And the Winner is... After months of nominees for the "Begala Award," Andrew Sulllivan has finally turned up a true champion. It is difficult to imagine that this quote from the Guardian's Julie Burchill will ever be surpassed: I'd venture,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 10:38 AM
Layne answers his mail, too. Damn-- I've got to get on the ball, here. Somebody, anybody: send me some hysterical hate mail, relatively easy to pick apart and ridicule, and preferably with at least one reference to something that is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 12:53 AM
In case you haven't yet read Matt Welch's reflections on Opening Days past and present, you really should. And here it is. Baseball, the Gulf War, 9/11, the ex-pat experience-- it's all in there, and it's really quite something....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 12:38 AM
Dr. Weevil answers his mail (unlike some doctors I know.) Result: considerable amusement. Lesson: think twice about sending hate mail to a man who writes this well and knows the word "litotes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2002 11:27 AM
Sadly, I think Perry de Havilland is probably right about The Palestinian Gtterdmmerung and the irrelevance of Arafat. Killing Arafat won't make much difference; neither will allowing him to survive. The killings will go on, the bombings will go on,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2002 11:26 AM
Blogging interrupted... ...due to impending Easter festivities. Fiancee to meet weird extended family for the first time. I'm cold and frightened... but not too impolite to wish everyone in the blogosphere a Happy Easter. So, Happy Easter all....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2002 10:17 AM
The Alterman Universe This article on Yasser Arafat ("the world's most exalted political prisoner") is, I suppose, the sort of op-ed Eric Alterman would like to see more of in the US media. (It's from the Guardian, naturally.) Like many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2002 09:08 AM
Thanks to Ted Barlow for the kind words in his fine, fine blog. And congratulations on breaking the 10,000 hit barrier....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2002 09:44 AM
Layne returns... ...bless him. He forgot to pay his VeriSign bill. But he knows how to handle a gun. He also understands the situation in the Middle East: Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia's direct role in the terrorism against Israel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2002 09:43 AM
No Fair! The Other Side has all the Good Pundits! Eric Alterman's article on the "competing narratives" of the Israel/Palestinian conflict has generated a fair amount of comment in the blogosphere. Alterman believes that the American "punditocracy" is overwhelmingly dominated...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2002 12:12 PM
Israel's once and future Prime Minister on the "end game."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2002 12:12 PM
"Have you ever noticed," my girlfriend asked as we were strolling through the streets of downtown San Francisco yesterday, "that an extraordinary number of people in this city seem to have a great deal of trouble walking?" Well, I hadn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 07:08 PM
Nuts When it comes to left-wing conspiracy theorist nut cases (agents provocateurs?) I've always found Alexander Cockburn to be a bit more palatable than, say, Oliver Stone. I suppose that's partly because the English get automatic easy extra credit points...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 12:38 PM
What, no video? Email from the grave attacks Friedman plan. Arabic language newspaper said today that it had received an email claiming to be from Osama bin Laden that attacked a Saudi peace for the Middle East and urged the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 11:36 AM
In case anybody's interested, there's a piece in the music section of this week's East Bay Express about me 'n' my blog. (For reasons I can't quite fathom, I get letters from readers fairly regularly asking me to post a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 10:43 AM
This piece, a silly defense of Saddam Hussein and "Ba'athist governments," is the "stupidest article" Iain Murray has read in a long time. Me, too. The author, Neil Clark, laments that Iraq "struggles to get a fair hearing." He proposes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 10:33 AM
Andrew Sullivan has a strident "reality check" on Israel/Palestine and the Passover bombing: Can we please take a little break from the "pursuit of peace" in order to acknowledge what we have just learned about the Middle East? We have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 12:09 AM
A connection failure has occurred Believe me, I would love to check out Peter Pribik's brand new blog. He's a swell guy and a terrific host. People I trust tell me it's great. But I've never been able to load...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 11:59 PM
Lots of folks have been posting links to this disturbing New Yorker article about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds, his nuclear bio-weapons programs, and his possible ties to al Qaeda. There is some debate among arms-control experts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 11:57 PM
Mark Steyn's latest column on "the Gallic Shrug" has some great lines, including this: "Bush is crippled," said someone else, "by his Rambo view of the world." "I very much doubt Bush reads Rimbaud," I said. Joking aside, he makes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 12:43 PM
Once again, Lileks's latest Screed (a skewering of Nick Kristoff's silly "Sue Saddam" column) has so many good lines that it's impossible decide which to quote. Here's the conclusion: noting the well-known barbarism of Saddam's regime, which includes torturing and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 12:24 PM
Tim Blair is all over John Pilger's latest, pointing out yet another case of gratuitous inflation of Marc Herold's widely-debunked study of Afghan civilian deaths. He points out another instance of Pilger's imaginative use of statistics, and writes: Weirdly, Pilger's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 10:16 AM
Wow. I know I'm a bit late on this (band practice interfered with blog-exploration tonight): but just in case anyone reading this hasn't clicked in yet, Ken Layne's latest FoxNews.com column on Saddam Hussein's $500,000 payments in Palestinian suicide bomber...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 12:05 AM
Belligerati Salman Rushdie had a good piece in Saturday's Guardian: As John Lloyd wrote in the New Statesman recently, "Much of the intellectual left in Europe cleaves to a view of America as the largest danger in the modern world."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2002 11:49 AM
"FBI raids pro-Republicans" is, as Charles Austin points out, the amusingly off-kilter Guardian headline, but the raid on the Islamic Institute, which shares an office with Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, is pretty big news. Awhile back, Franklin Foer...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2002 04:39 PM
Michael Leeden on Iran: The mullahs want to turn Afghanistan into a second Lebanon, for they believe that if they can drive America out of Afghanistan, the Iranian people will lose hope for a democratic change within Iran. In their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2002 03:54 PM
thumbs are the new fingers...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2002 10:11 AM
MuslimPundit has yet another thoughtful, detailed essay on British Islamist extremism. This one is about the controversy surrounding the recent Channel Four documentary Who Speaks for the Muslims....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2002 09:10 AM
According to this report, US troops found an al Qaeda bio-weapons lab during Operation Anaconda....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2002 09:09 AM
Saddam appears to be worried about the exiled Iraqi opposition: Saddam Hussein has started a campaign to silence members of the Iraqi opposition in exile by forcing their families to denounce them on satellite television. The families, who appear terrified,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2002 09:09 AM
Just when you thought Will Warren couldn't get any cleverer, he goes ahead gets a little cleverer. Check out his Gray Davis villanelle....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 11:27 PM
We are Normal, and We want our Freedom My girlfriend has been here for a week now, and things are just starting to get "settled," by which I mean I can envision, with a bit of squinting and liberal use...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 11:13 PM
Quote of the day Krauthammer on "exit strategies:" "Exit strategy" applies only to wars of choice. You can choose to quit Vietnam or Somalia or Kosovo. The war on radical Islam is a war of necessity. Wars of necessity have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 12:51 PM
Eric Alterman attacks! In this article, the Nation writer attempts to "take down" Andrew Sullivan and blogging in general. Alterman has a point that Sullivan's repeated attempts to brand mainstream Democrats as "anti-war" tend to ring hollow. But to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 11:02 AM
WSJ's TUNKU VARADARAJAN asks the question: why are American newspapers so boring? His answer is a complex of interesting observations about solipsism, fear of causing offense, and provincialism, the pretense of objectivity, among other things. I think he's on to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 08:44 AM
I'm sure everybody has already linked to Lileks's brilliant new Screed on Michael Moore, but why should that stop me? You'll be tempted to read it with a fork, but use a spoon to get every drop: Absolute ego corrupts,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 11:53 PM
SLA Murder Trial Nostalgic Trip Back To More Innocent Time INDEPENDENCE, MO The murder trial of three Symbionese Liberation Army members is providing Americans with a nostalgic escape to a carefree, more innocent time. "Oh, man, Patty Hearst and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 10:21 AM
Perry de Havilland of Libertarian Samizdata responds to this piece with a nice essay on racism and anti-Semitism and the difference between Britishness and European-ness. ...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 10:21 AM
The Red Brigades (Italy's more effectively murderous version of our own SLA) have sprung into action once again, with one of their trademark assassinations of a public official. In a 26-page internet message, a "splinter group" claimed responsibility for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 10:20 AM
By the way, thanks to Matt Welch for sending so many compliments my way recently. In one recent post, he even says I'm "unnaturally youthful looking." I can't take credit for that. While the ring was in my possession, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2002 08:17 AM
A couple of great bleats from Lileks over the last couple of days. Yesterday's was on Geraldo and the Arab media. Before it gets serious near the end, it has this perfect parody of Geraldo rhetoric: It was here, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2002 08:09 AM
SF Gate Is the San Francisco Chronicle the worst newspaper in the world? Everyone who lives in the Bay Area assumes so. There are lots of papers I haven't read, and I suppose I'd have to do some research to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2002 11:15 PM
Well, you know it was a good party when you miss the whole next day. I admit, I drank too much wine at Peter Pribik's blogger party the other night. I spent yesterday in a fairly delicate state. It was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2002 08:10 AM
Whoah, blogfest berkeley! Very cool. Too much wine for much comment. More later maybe. I think I'd better lie down......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2002 02:35 AM
Make 'em Switch Blogs Andrew Sullivan, pointing out that William Shatner now has a blog, asks "should the rest of us retire immediately?" I'm not sure. Here's Bill: I also had a funny moment with Eddie Murphy, when we were...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2002 08:10 PM
The Challenging and Unfamiliar Vortex of Domestic Hygiene... ...would be a kind of cool name for an album. Hmm, maybe not. Anyway, that particular vortex is where I've been for the last few days. Since I've had to focus on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2002 12:01 PM
Ken Layne's got some great commentary on this Observer article about the al Qaeda training camps: This article is proof that much more is happening in Europe than politicians and pundits complaining about the U.S.-led war. The police and intelligence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2002 11:59 AM
Life is the only thing worth living for There's no way to check, but I think I have been advised to "get a life" more frequently than anyone else on earth. My good friends say it at the beginning of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2002 01:22 AM
Tiptoe through the Guardian I believe this rumination on the inevitable outcome of displaying the Ten Commandments in public wins the prize for the most fully-realized example of Guardian rhetoric and sophisticated analysis: The logical limit of the Supreme Court's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2002 11:34 AM
Diane E. vs. Sulli... ...on Sullivan's comments about Tom Daschle's "anti-war" statements. Diane wins this one (though I'd stop short of calling Daschle "prescient.")...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2002 11:28 PM
Foxblogger vs. Foxblogger! Ken Layne writes FoxNews.com column about the California gubernatorial primary and the Republican Party's quest to maintain their unchallenged irrelevance in the state; Rand Simberg disagrees with Layne; hijinks ensue.. There's a debate on Simberg's comment section,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2002 09:54 PM
The Decency Deficit What a sick freak. Mr. Rall had better pray he never meets any of these women-- not a jury in the world would convict any one of them for beating him into a jelly. And honestly, what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2002 12:18 AM
Marketing the Left "Left-Wingers Fall out over Claims of Censorship." The New Statesman and the London Review of Books have been refusing to publish anything other than anti-American content, according to this article in the Telegraph. Well, we knew that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2002 11:25 PM
"Activists"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2002 10:49 AM
More from Amiel on British anti-Semitism Barbara Amiel, in a post script to her column on the Muslim Gallup poll, writes succinctly on the question of anti-Zionism vs. anti-Semitism in Britain that I was wrestling with much more longwindedly below:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2002 10:48 AM
The mother of all Guardian Posts Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2002 11:30 AM
Monica: I had really gone to Washington as a short pit stop on my way to graduate school. Larry: And you wanted to be a what? Monica: Forensic psychologist. Larry: Really? Monica: Yes. Larry: Really? So that means examining, uh,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2002 01:00 AM
Jews Andrew Sullivan is on to something when he says that Mark Steyn is onto something in his latest column. (How's that for blog-parody fodder?) I'm sure that there is not one blog-reading soul who has not read Steyn's latest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2002 05:42 PM
Why do we hate us? Yep, we've got our own wackos. The non-Islamic kind. Like these ones in Kallispell, Montana. All I can say is, I'm glad this situation is in the capable hands of Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2002 05:11 PM
Word on the Street is, the man is coming down on the people Ken Layne watched the Grammys last night so we wouldn't have to. His play-by-play is by turns funny, sad, thoughtful, silly, and insightful-- and honest: even he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2002 10:54 AM
Everyone has been taking the "ethical philosophy selector" test and posting the results, so I thought I might as well join in. My results are about what I expected: 1. Kant (0%) 2. Aquinas (0%) 3. Rand (0%) 4. Augustine...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 10:48 PM
Quote of the day... ...from the VodkaPundit, on the subject of Patrick Ruffini's Condoleezza Rice for President campaign: Finally, a President I can hit on....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 10:29 PM
Ken Layne's Foxblog column yesterday was a great piece about the out-of-touch music biz-- it's densely packed with terrific links, and I urge everyone who hasn't already done so to read it and follow all the links as you go....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 05:54 PM
Lileks Time James Lileks really goes to town on that "Guardian undercover at the Olive Garden" article by Matthew Engels that I blogged yesterday. I'm not going to pull out any quotes, because I can't choose. Oh, yes I am....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 11:52 AM
Sad news via Iain Murray: the great Spike Milligan has died. Rest in peace....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 11:51 AM
While it comes as a great relief that Natalie Solent is finally back from her "hols" and up and at 'em once again, I'm truly sorry to hear of her recent family loss: sincere condolences and sympathy go out Natalie...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 11:50 AM
Andrew Sullivan says: Be a part of blogging revolution - for as little as a few bucks! I think when Andrew says "blogging revolution" he's referring to himself, which is is fair enough. But I'm going to go ahead and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 09:40 AM
Instantman strikes! Wow, Instapundit-ed overnight! To all the thousands (yes, thousands) of folks who are stopping by to read Tristin's beautiful essay, it's here. Welcome, new readers. If you do stick around to read some of this other stuff, thanks....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 09:37 AM
Here's another pointed review of Empire, the dreadful best-seller by Michael Hardt and convicted Red Brigade terrorist Antonio Negri, which celebrates the irrepressible lightness and joy of being Communist." Hardt and Negri seek to update Marxs Capital for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 09:24 PM
Our Canadian Friends, eh? A dimwitted "humorist" in the Canadian hipster music publication Trucker Magazine has managed to come up with what is arguably the most offensive 9/11-related document since Elizabeth Wurtzel's notorious turtleneck interview. The "gag" is a faux-advice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 06:38 PM
Noam Chomsky has a speaking engagement in Berkeley coming up. Today at a Berkeley bookstore, the guy just ahead of me in line was buying three copies of Chomsky's opportunistically-titled volume of re-packaged anti-American essays (9/11.) He also bought two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 06:33 PM
Ordinarily, I don't find Tom Tomorrow comics very funny-- I probably just don't "get" them. They're sarcastic parodies of hyperbolic right-wing rhetoric that doesn't actually exist, I believe. I think parodies are funnier when they refer to actual things, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 01:08 PM
The American Soul wot I found in the Olive Garden The Guardian's Matthew Engel had dinner at an Olive Garden in Birmingham, Alabama and believes he has discovered the key to understanding the current state of Euro-American relations: outside the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 10:16 AM
Jonah Goldberg vs. Pat Buchannan Jonah wins. I haven't read Buchannan's book, and I'll admit there was never much chance that I ever would. (Goldberg has read it, bless him, saving the rest of us some trouble and aggravation.) When...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 10:08 AM
I promise. Todd Gitlin has weighed in on the meaning of the new SLA trials in the LA Times. He makes a good case (not difficult) that the SLA "soldiers" were the very worst of the worst, "gangsters pretending to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2002 12:26 PM
I've been wondering when it would finally happen: Andrew Sullivan's Sunday Times column today is about blogging. It's a good article, though there's nothing very surprising in it. The account of the evolution of andrewsullivan.com from vanity site to warblog,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2002 12:16 PM
I've received a great deal of feedback on my post in response to the SF Bay Guardian article on the SLA and 60s radicalism. Thanks for all the email: I'm still working through it, but it may be awhile before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2002 06:09 PM
Frottage! Bloggers bumping up against the mainstream... Joanne Jacobs on FoxNews.com! I know the Foxblog feature is well-known by now and hardly needs to be mentioned, but I just can't help myself. It's just too cool. Damian Penny has spotted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2002 11:20 AM
Banality is Irritating... ...according to Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, at a panel discussion on colonialism in India yesterday: My life is short. I cant listen to banalities. He continued: And this thing about colonialism, this thing about gender oppression, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 04:29 PM
Slobo-google-athon! Matt Welch's suggestion that blogosphere denizens google the hell out of the list of signatories to one or two of the web's Free Slobodon Now! petitions has begun to gather steam. So far, they've turned up some La Rouchies...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 03:50 PM
Comments on Daniel Pearl The best: this moving piece by Pearl's widow, Mariane, and this WSJ editorial. The worst: this tepid, yet inflammatory message to "the Muslim World" from Louis Farrakhan, urging, in effect, that future victims be chosen more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 02:21 PM
The inimitable oppressor Tim Blair is the FoxBlogger of the day. (Just because he's inimitable doesn't mean we all don't try.) The column is more sharp, jagged brilliance focusing on the appalling Elizabeth Wurtzel and her much-blogged interview of shame,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 02:20 PM
Robot Mountain Ken Layne has been channelling my thoughts. Either that or the elegantly under-employed, on the wings of desperation, tend to alight on the same weird psychic mountain from time to time. (It tends to be toward the end...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 02:16 AM
My friend Tristin is the publicist at Lookout Records and the smartest person I know. One of her dearest and oldest friends was on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 01:00 AM
In a major policy reversal on international hostage-taking, Bush administration officials said Wednesday that the United States might sometimes pay ransom to kidnappers. This, as Bill Quick says, is a lousy idea. The next sentence: however, the officials also stressed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 12:50 AM
Middle-Eastern Terrorists and the People who Impersonate them on Message Boards Best of the Web conceded yesterday that the message-board post by "Edward Said," (mentioned below) in which he issued the Altman-esque warning that he could not bear to live...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 10:31 AM
Mark Steyn's great new column on America and the Rest of the West will be linked to by all and sundry before the day's out. It's difficult to choose a best excerpt, but here is perhaps my favorite: Under Nato,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 09:43 AM
It's not easy being a hippie... "Some passive, protesting Indiana University students are learning that it's hard to give peace a chance when someone is setting your peace sign on fire". On Feb. 8, vandals raided a memorial set up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 01:04 AM
Sensible leader in today's Telegraph, in response to the attempted poisoning of the wells in Rome: The arrest in Rome of four Moroccans, suspected of planning to poison the water supply of the area around the American embassy, was an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 12:54 AM
More backpedaling from EU honchos on their "get tough with Uncle Sam" routine. Or maybe they're just puncturing their own trial balloon. My favorite quote is from Chris Patten (who admitted he "lost his cool" in his recent Guardian interview):...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 12:05 AM
That's no femme, that's my wife! Matt Welch had an "enough already with the French-bashing" post last week, concluding with "...if you want to keep condemning all the French, realize that you are, in fact, condemning my wife." *Blush* For...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2002 05:03 PM
FoxNews.com publishes Moira! Cool! Today's FoxNews.com blogger is the great Moira Breen. Her blog has a spate of unusually succinct (but characteristically sharp) posts today. My favorite is this one, about EU "protocols." By the way Matt Welch says the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2002 10:19 AM
Interesting story in the Jerusalem Post. Ever wonder who wrote Arafat's letter to Colin Powell, in which he "accepted responsibility, but not personal responsibility" for the Karin-A shipment? Answer: European Union special Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos and US...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 10:03 PM
Steven den Beste, once again, minces no words in his reply to Euro-carping about the US: Being told "You're making a mistake" is one thing, especially if the mistake is explained in a convincing fashion. Being told "You are stupid,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 08:45 PM
Promises, Promises... Today's Best of the Web points to this message posted on the Columbia Daily Spectator message board by academic intifada-ist Edward Said: the moment we start kicking terrorists out of New York City--I leave also. A terror-free city...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 06:14 PM
Yet another great column by Barbara Amiel in the Telegraph, which includes yet another hypothesis to explain Euro-lefty "resistance" to the word "evil": Some of those members of the social democratic international (including critics at the Guardian and the Independent)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 11:16 AM
Tim Blair makes a good point about Chris Patten's characteristic Euro-rhetoric about terrorism, "root causes," and "symptoms." European states have often been sensibly unsentimental and pragmatic about cracking down on their own domestic terrorists, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 08:45 PM
Moira Breen has the best comment so far on the modern-"Moors"-demand-apology story: Reading of the "Moors" demand that Isabel and Ferdinand be dug up and repudiated, I pondered that I have no idea who my ancestors were or what they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 07:14 PM
Things sure have changed since we got kicked out of school......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 07:07 PM
See me after class... Andrew Sullivan gives Will Hutton a C grade for his "near-unhinged account of [Leo Strauss's] alleged politics" in the piece ridiculed below. The Vast Straussian Conspiracy continues......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 07:07 PM
Highlights from the Guardian 1.) Scenes from a religion of peace in gun-free Britain. 2.) You know what your problem is? You're all a bunch of Straussians! 3.) Take a pill, Terry. 4.) There's a fine line between anti-Semitism and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2002 01:07 AM
Edward Luttwak breaks down the Bush administration's tri-partite "axis of evil" strategy in today's Sunday Times: Of course in each case the American aim is different: to induce Irans turn away from extremism to the moderation so evidently favoured by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2002 08:04 PM
Mmmm.... Rubber Chicken 'n' Strawberries Matt Welch has been reading Ralph Nader's campaign memoir, and is apparently in the process of writing an essay about it. Along the way, he's throwing a few amusing scraps (teasers?) into the blogosphere: this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2002 06:46 PM
Credits Hey, thanks to Iain Murray for awarding me one of his coveted "highly recommended" stars on the links panel of his indispensable swift Sword. And to Richard Bennett for putting up a Blogs of War link in the "promising...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2002 06:45 PM
Ken Layne has a hilarious post on this article on how Noam Chomsky can't get arrested, even in Turkey. By the way, Layne has really been on a roll lately. On the outside chance that there's anyone who reads this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 08:42 PM
A Wisconson undertaker and apprentice found shot dead in funeral home. Investigation focuses on local anti-embalming group....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 07:26 PM
Andrew Sullivan had this to say about Colin Powell's appearance on MTV: Contrast Bill Clinton's excruciating dialogue with MTV viewers not so long ago with Colin Powell's masterful, engaged colloquy. No boxers or briefs questions. No attempt to pander shamelessly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 06:15 PM
Jaw-jaw Binks The folks at Libertarian Samizdata have relentlessly dissected this sophisticated article by Chris Patten in the Financial Times. I've just pulled out a couple of notable quotations, but it's definitely worth reading the whole thing. Tom Burroughes: The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 04:36 PM
Ia! David vs. Goliath. Or should that be the Fungi from Yuggoth vs. Shub-Niggaruth, the Goat with a Thousand Young? Warning, Glenn: cross a Cthulhuologist at your peril... Give 'em hell, Andy!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 03:30 PM
One of my favorite new warbloggers, Emily Jones (otherwise charmingly known as "Hawk Girl") has a useful set of criteria for how to tell the good lefties from the bad. Plus, she concludes with a Spinal Tap quote. She's got...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 03:07 PM
I've complained before that it's often hard to tell whether British irony is intentional or not; it is my firm belief that they aren't always sure themselves. (The brilliant yet subtle Ben Sheriff once quoted Evelyn Waugh to me in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 12:51 PM
Esposinage This is why they shoot traitors. Prosecutors say [accused spy] Brian Regan said in a letter to the Iraqi leader: "I am willing to commit esposinage [sic] against the United States by providing your country with highly classified information."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 10:54 AM
The Actor Factor Actor James Woods, who witnessed a "dress rehearsal" for the WTC hijackings in a flight on August 1, was on the O'Reilly Factor last night, telling the story in vivid detail. Here's the transcript. The whole thing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 10:52 AM
The Valentine Detector Van? The Loony Detector Van, You Mean... Happy Valentine's Day. Unless you live in Saudi Arabia. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Evil has banned Valentine's Day in the Saudi Kingdom. (NB:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2002 04:17 PM
"The 60s were full of challenge," writes J.H. Tompkins in the SF Bay Guardian, "and although I'm not a revolutionary now, in my heart, I'm still a revolutionary then." Huh? Anyone who retains romantic notions about 60s radicalism can instantly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2002 12:39 AM
Ben Sheriff has an extensive and thoughtful post on the "simplism" accusation and the education of British elites. Well worth reading....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 05:38 PM
Here's Michael Gove's superb opinion piece in the Times on European Commissioner Chris Patten, and European "sophistication" to our crude vulgarity. Favorite amusing line: noting that Patten questions whether Iraq, Iran and North Korea are in fact "evil," he asks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 02:28 PM
Sophisticated I've been thinking some more about Michael Kelly's memorable slogan, "simplisme works," mentioned below. Of course, as amusing as the notion may be, "simplisme" alone won't meet the case here. We face a complex strategic situation, and we need...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 01:06 PM
As Good as Hyperbole Gets I admit, I have a soft spot for hyperbolic comparisons of the posturing of current French politicians with some of their more ignominious forebears during World War II. It's not really fair, but I find...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 12:11 AM
"It is a time when bad people have strong urges to let their ends justify their means." Best of the Web has a link today to a "memorandum of law" filed in Ramsey Clark's lawsuit on behalf of the Camp...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2002 11:16 PM
MuslimPundit is back, with an extensive and eye-opening essay on Islamic extremism in Britain....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2002 10:06 AM
Real Power always Finds a Way Andrew Sullivan had a terrific column on Euro-resentment of American power in yesterday's Sunday Times: If Europeans resent America's power, they need to ask themselves: would they like to confront global terrorism without it?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2002 10:01 AM
The Blog Maestro Strikes Again Nothing gets by Tim Blair. Check out his comparison of the press obituaries of "heavy smoker and drinker" Princess Margaret, who died at 71, with those of vegetarian marijuana enthusiast Linda McCartney, who died at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2002 10:53 AM
Let's be perfectly blunt Thomas Friedman provides a "blunt answer" to the common Arab question about the alleged Jewish media conspiracy to smear the Saudis and Islam: Maybe, just maybe, many Americans are upset because 15 Saudis took part in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2002 10:13 AM
In the Blogs of War's eternal struggle between blogging and rock and roll, rock and roll has been temporarily in the ascendant. I wish that I, like Glenn Reynolds, could type with one hand and simultaneously record a keyboard track...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2002 09:26 AM
Orwell Again and Again Orwell's famous essay on Politics and the English Language has been the springboard for countless opinion columns ever since it was written (how many, I wonder?) Here's the latest one, by Jonah Goldberg, and it's a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2002 11:48 AM
I'm trying to record some demos today, so unless something horrible happens, posting will probably be a bit light for awhile. While I'm away, you might want to read Lawrence Kaplan's latest New Republic article, about the Axis of Evil...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2002 11:43 AM
The Freedom of Irrelevance Iain Murray once again provides some useful perspective on the British press and the reaction to the Camp X-Ray situation. As he points out, editorials in the Telegraph and the Times have "calmly and capably refuted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2002 11:27 AM
It may be a Dog's Life, but Gregory Hlataky is being too hard on himself when he says he's not witty. Here's the proof....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2002 09:34 PM
Down at the cafe CIA director George Tenet warned Congress today that even though there are 1,000 al-Qaeda operatives in custody, they are still a major threat who may be planning more strikes at high-profile targets. Grim tidings (though in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2002 02:09 PM
What a week I'm having First Moira Inappropriate Breen put the Blogs of War on her "blogs of the week" list; now Little Green Footballs have identified yours truly as their first blogga of the week. Owing to that and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2002 12:55 PM
Matt Welch on the "Axis of Evil": Without commenting on the propriety of Bushs usage of axis, I find it interesting how many on the Left have a knee-jerk hostility to the word evil, and are still hung up about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2002 04:53 PM
Define Terrible... Edward Said, writing in the Egyptian publication Al-Ahram online, says that "living in the United States at this moment is a terrible experience." Personally, I can think of worse places to be living, like Ramallah, or Cairo, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2002 12:49 PM
LibSam's David Carr, reporting on the "38th Annual Munich Conference on Security Policy," provides a helpful translation of Euro-speak: "The Americans call on the Europeans to spend more money on defence, while the Europeans accuse the Americans of being too...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2002 02:31 PM
Dear Osama, I am writing this because my brother Bobby is very, very, sick... I hardly thought it possible, but Robert Fisk has reached a hitherto uncharted level of self-parody, calling on his most famous loyal reader to intercede on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2002 11:38 AM
Tipton Like Theodore Dalrymple, I disapprove of the contempt for the West that is all-too-common among our intellectuals and cultural elite. I agree that it can do real damage, and can lead impressionable people astray. It is dishonorable and, almost...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2002 09:42 AM
The Game of Kings The supposed internet match between British grandmaster Nigel Short and all-around freak Bobby Fischer turns out to have been a hoax, perpetrated by an individual or group posing as the crazy chessmeister: Short who at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2002 08:14 PM
Poverty, Despair, and Hopelessness Susan George, World Economic Forum protest guru, writing in the Nation: our leadership refuses to admit that terrorist nihilism is one response to poverty, despair and hopelessness. Colin Powell, speaking at the World Economic Forum: terrorism...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2002 11:19 AM
England Swings... Ben Sheriff has managed, with a single link, to shatter my tenuous peace of mind. Man has sex with goat in front of packed commuter train: Steven Hall, a 23-year-old unemployed (a mercy, that) chef "lassoed the animal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2002 11:47 AM
At least they're keeping us guessing.... ...as to where the next operation will be, which is as it should be. Is al-Qaeda moving its headquarters to Lebanon and teaming up with Hezbollah?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2002 09:23 AM
Prof. Reynolds makes a great point about "the failure of the antiwar movement:" I'm confident of the outcome -- when people are trying to kill you, and hate you and everything you stand for, there's nothing to do but to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2002 09:22 AM
Molly, Moira, and the San Francisco Discussion Where I come from (the San Francisco Bay Area-- one of "the enclaves") you often find yourself in the midst of what people like to call "political discussions." These "discussions" are not conversations....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2002 03:47 PM
Liberally Illiberal Andrew Sullivan, commenting on "the spin" on the American Freshman Survey of college students, says, correctly, that it shows "how useless many contemporary political labels are." The headline in many stories including this one was College Freshmen More...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2002 01:49 PM
Now it Can be Told... Pilger reveals the shocking truth about who the real terrorists are. Maybe you'd better sit down. Prepare yourself for a shock. It turns out, it's the Americans. All the conventional bases are covered with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2002 09:04 PM
Posting may be a bit light today because I'm doing some recording, and I haven't figured out a way to do that and blog at the same time. (This is not one of those familiar "I have to lay off...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2002 04:28 PM
Inappropriate and Stupid They were neutral in World War II, weren't they? The U.S. administration's hardening position towards Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is very dangerous, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said on Monday. "I am very worried about this American...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2002 07:44 AM
As the Europeans continue to denounce US policy toward terrorists as a draconian abuse of human rights, their governments are quietly and efficiently rounding up and expelling the terrorists within their own borders, sending them to face human rights-laden justice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2002 07:23 AM
Now let me see if I've got this straight: the British media, contrary to what appear to be the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of ordinary people in Britain, have been pushing the view that the treatment of the terrorists...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2002 03:35 PM
Jeez, it's hard catching up, when you've missed a whole day... It appears that Daniel Pearl, the missing American journalist, was indeed kidnapped by a Pakistani Islamist group. They call themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2002 12:35 PM
Uh, what time is it? What day is it? Where am I? I seem to have lost track of time, maybe space as well. Looks like I kind of missed Sunday. In other words, it was a hell of a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2002 10:12 AM
I'm going to have to lay off the posting now, as I've got a gig tonight. It's amazing how the preliminaries for 45 minutes of rock and roll stage time can take up your whole day. (And, more often than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 12:55 PM
The king of the Powell Guys, Colin Powell himself, has adopted the Guardipendent line and has formally "urged" that the Camp X-Ray prisoners be granted POW status. (Link via Drudge.) What is he, running for EU president? The memo was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 12:44 PM
More details on John Walker Lindh's personal journey of self-discovery. According to people who knew him during a six month stint at an Islamic school in Pakistan, he was keenly interested in militant Islam, particularly the part where you get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 01:09 AM
That Damian Penny-- he really finds the links no one else can reach (or is it the other way round?) A case in point is this article about some controversial remarks on terrorism by actor James Woods. The transcript is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 12:09 AM
Matt Welch also points out Howard Zinn's latest column, which cites the extremely questionable Mark Herold study of Afghan civilian casualties. The Herold study has been as roundly debunked as anything in the blogosphere, including by me. His number of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 06:49 PM
The Narcissistic Thrill of Imagined Persecution That's my favorite line from Matt Welch's great new column on "the censorship gravy train" for Reason on-line. Bestselling author and long-toiling intellectual Susan Sontag also made the conceptually daring connection between criticism of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 06:48 PM
Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California: my home sweet home Since I returned from my recent sojourn in the Shire among its dear little hobbits (i.e., in Merrie Olde Englande) I've noticed that the City of Berkeley has added a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 03:19 PM
Desperate 20-something Terrorists bin Laden's elite troops are finding themselves in more and more desperate straits, trying to evade the US dragnet. This article quotes a "20-something" al-Qaeda fighter: "the enemies of Islam have broken our backbone; our people are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 12:37 PM
Will Warren, unremitting verse-blogger, has posted a kind of epic on Cavanaugh and the Blogosphere called "Hiawatha vs. the Bloggers."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 11:22 AM
U.S. Considers Cutting Ties With Arafat, according to the Washington Post. Well, one would imagine so. I think almost everyone knows his days are numbered. Arafat himself appears to know it. Now, even the State Department seems to have figured...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 10:11 AM
Krauthammer weighs in on the Europeans and the status of the Guantanamo prisoners. Right now, what is of supreme importance to Americans is not the moral high ground of salon opinion but the strategic high ground of military intelligence --...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 09:53 AM
Curse Him and His Delayed Adolescence! I've been meaning to comment on Richard Jenkyns's article on The Lord of the Rings in the New Republic (it's a review of a book on Tolkien by Tom Shippey.) But Megan McArdle has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2002 10:25 PM
The Free Marketplace of Ideas More on British anti-Semitism. This Forward article (via InstaPundit) is a report on a recent New Statesman cover story called "A Kosher Conspiracy" about the influence of The Jew on the British media and government....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2002 07:02 PM
Well, at least you don't have Winter Vomiting Disease....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 09:30 PM
My last post on Camp X-ray I have made a promise to myself and God to lay off the Camp X-ray thing for awhile. Here's the short version: Euro-press hysteria has no perceptible effect on US policy or public opinion....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 09:29 PM
Ideas for future Mirror editorials We must be sweet, and tactful and discreet And when they've suffered defeat We mustn't let them feel upset or ever get The feeling that we're cross with them or hate them, Our future policy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 08:35 PM
Butterfly Love Rob Morse has some sharp commentary on Sara Jane Olson and the SLA in today's column, "Dipping into modern history for bourgeois pigs." He refers several times to Olson's website, so of course I checked it out, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 06:21 PM
Felled once again by the relentless Aussie satire machine Tim Blair takes a look into Robert Altman's future. Once again, unable to comment due to uncontrollable fit of choking and snorting. Tears, too. It's like being maced.......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 10:09 AM
Here's George "anti-everything" Monbiot lecturing Richard Perle on the folly of Camp X-ray and American military strategy during an appearance on the BBC's NewsNight yesterday: Richard, the really daft thing about this-- and we've had Donald Rumsfeld boasting about how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2002 12:25 AM
I Wanna Be Sedated, Part II Moira Breen provides a link to this Times article: a Florida company called International Protective Services Inc. is offering a course to ordinary citizens on how to defend oneself from airborne terrorists: Once on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 08:37 PM
The English are Wig-Happy I got a surprising amount of pro-wig feedback in response to the link about English judicial wigs below. Natalie Solent, in that regard, makes the following point: I like the wigs. As I-forget-who said, "are our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 06:30 PM
Our man in Australia, Tim Blair, has tracked down the emails between Richard Reid and Mullah Omar....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:53 PM
Megan McArdle has a great post today about European posturing about international standards of behavior. She has this exactly right: if it were 4,000 British or French civilians dead, their response wouldn't be a detached "well there are rules that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:32 PM
If We Put Hoods on the Terrorists, the Terrorists Will Have Won Robert Fisk's latest piece of disingenuous casuistry is almost identical to all his previous p.s of d.c.: by placing hoods on al-Qaeda prisoners, we are playing into bin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:26 PM
Cruel and Unusual Photography According to the Red Cross, the US has indeed violated the Geneva Convention in its treatment of the al Qaeda prisoners at Camp X-ray. Was it the hoods? The mittens? The sedation? The cages? The chains?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 03:52 PM
Britain and US in rift over terrorist prisoners... ...says the headline of this article in the Daily Telegraph. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 12:45 AM
The British Government has decided not to dispense with the right to trial by jury after all. Now if they could just do something about those wigs......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 12:45 AM
Biff Bang POW For some time now, Damian Penny and his readers have been engaged in a lively debate about Camp X-ray and whether the prisoners there are POWs as defined by the Geneva Convention. I've been following it, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 10:10 PM
Once again, I have to ask: doesn't the EU have a regulation standards subgroup for the control of this?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 12:06 PM
"It's America's World Now," says John Humphrys in the Sunday Times, "but not necessarily forever." Actually, that's what the headline says. In the course of the meandering article, however, Humphrys, with seeming reluctance, reaches something like the opposite conclusion. (Yet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 11:59 AM
Fantasy Land That Goldhagen New Republic article on the Holocaust and the Catholic Church is still unavailable on-line, as I've mentioned; but, in the venerable tradition of academics and chatterati, it's still possible to comment on others' comments on Goldhagen's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2002 10:53 AM
A Flock o' Blog People... Perry de Havilland of Libertarian Samizdata continues the ornithological theme with this interesting simile: We blogs are not trying to replace the established media, but rather we have popped up to fill an empty but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2002 01:02 AM
Saudis tell US forces to get out That headline ought to be "Saudis may soon tell US forces to get out," according to the article which accompanies it. I have no doubt that it may well occur, but as of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2002 12:56 AM
Let's Roll Redux This item is primarily about the Israeli retaliatory strike, but it includes a dramatic account of the resistance to the bat mitzvah attack: about 100 people were inside a banquet hall celebrating a bat mitzvah, or Jewish...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2002 11:14 AM
Reid pleads innocent to all counts. This is gonna be one hell of a trial......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2002 10:50 AM
It has the head of a spider, and the body of a spider, but it's a baby... Okay, it's not a baby. It's a goat. According to this article, a bio-tech company and the US Army have figured out a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2002 08:23 AM
Use a #2 Pencil Saddam Hussein suggests a new euphemism for being bombed into submission: "sitting an examination." Apparently, he's been studying for his midterms and he feels pretty well-prepared. "Will the performance of one who has sat an examination...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2002 11:38 AM
Frustration: Daniel Goldhagen's article on the Catholic Church and Nazism isn't available at the New Republic on-line, so you have to make do with Andrew Sullivan's response to it. Does Goldhagen really say that there was "no relevant moral difference...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2002 08:20 AM
More info on John Reid and al Qaeda has been retrieved from a computer in Kabul. There appears to be pretty good evidence that Reid is the "brother Abdul Ra'uff," who went on a series of target-scouting missions that match...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2002 10:22 AM
Bees, landmines, pizzas, guitars According to the Financial Times, the US army is using bees equipped with data-sending microchips ("smart tags") to detect landmines: Bees have a liking for the explosive TNT. When tagged bees are released close to areas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2002 12:09 AM
Deteriorata Apparently John Walker was too extreme for the extremists in Yemen. The details of this case of multi-culturalism gone mad are comical in a way. Walker pretended to speak broken English with an Arab accent when he arrived in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2002 12:02 AM
The anti-warblog manifesto has arrived. UPDATE: Most everyone has commented on this, as you might expect-- just click as many of the "good ones" to the left as you have time for. (It's hard to keep up with all the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 10:45 PM
...if you want to feel ill. I mean Charles Johnson's eviscerating commentary on James Bennet's disgraceful apologia (masquerading as a straight news item) on behalf of terrorist Raed al-Karmi in today's New York Times. Un-bloody-believable. Says Johnson: I don�t know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 03:29 PM
The Nader Factor I caught Ralph Nader on the O'Reilly Factor last night, and so did Andrew Sullivan: his quotations and commentary are spot-on and worth reading. Favorite Nader quote: See, what we weren't smart enough in doing is pitting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 02:24 PM
More detail on Arafat's Death Ship. US intelligence played an integral role in the Israeli commando raid. Colin Powell, commenting on the $10 million illegal weapons cargo, sees things clearly: "this kind of action is condemnable."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 10:06 AM
Any Answers? It's good know that Iain Murray is back in the saddle again (and feeling heroic, apparently.) Read his great piece on Eurocrats and the unpopularity of the death penalty ban: The values of democracy and inalienable rights supposedly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 10:03 AM
"Hoping that the Russian image of a bear, constantly drinking vodka, will dissipate..." The weirdest part of Pravda Online is the "Russia Makes it Funny" section. It's intended as a digest of light-hearted, amusing, or bizarre stories. "On this site,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 09:54 PM
Sauce me, baby Leave it to Natalie Solent to come up with something of substance to say about the Euro-sauce situation....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 05:38 PM
Matt Welch has some hilarious commentary on the transcript of CNN's Reliable Sources over this last weekend. The highlights include Chicago Tribune Deputy M.E. Jim Warren's statement that "most of our people [Chicago Tribune reporters] don't even have a clue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 04:15 PM
...vs. the complacency of the Media People? Virginia Postrel tries to deflate the t. of the B. P., as Jonah Goldberg did last week. (On Goldberg's attempt, see my comments below, from Saturday's blog barrage.) She obviously knows what she's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 09:46 AM
The New Statesman has some good news and some bad news about the war. First, the good news: The war has been "a resounding success." True, Osama Bin Laden himself has not been found (though the only reason may be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 09:31 PM
Barbara Amiel has an interesting opinion piece in Monday's Telegraph. It begins as a sort of post-mortem on her now-famous Dec. column about anti-Semitism in polite society, but she goes on to make some more general observations about the war,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 08:51 PM
Hogan's Heroes? The German forces bound for Kabul are having a bit of trouble getting their act together. According to Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Anybody looking for reasons why the United States prefers to rely on its...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 07:29 PM
Doesn't the EU have some kind of "regulation committee sub-group" to deal with this sort of problem?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 06:38 PM
Political Magic Redux Natalie Solent (libertarian, science fiction fan, sewing enthusiast and blogger extraordinaire) stumbled across my half-baked little disquisition on "the politics of magic," and had this comment: I found this particularly interesting because I could criticize it quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 03:23 PM
Behold, the Awesome Power of Professor Reynolds A single mention in InstaPundit yesterday managed to sextuple the normal Blogs of War traffic. And the hits just keep on comin'. New readers: thanks for checking me out. Professor Reynolds: thanks, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 10:58 AM
Where's Iain? I'm starting to get a little worried about Iain Murray. He hasn't posted a thing on The Edge of England's Sword since this ominous message on Thursday. Come back, Iain!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 10:22 AM
Hold it! This doesn't make any sense! I believe Ben Sheriff is the first warblogger to note this amusing quotation from the Nation: [Ted] Rall has filed some of the best war reporting from Afghanistan by an American journalist. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 10:15 AM
Attending Services at McDonald's Not to get all "inside and egocentric" again, but I could really relate to Matt Welch's Tim Blair-spurred comments on going to McDonald's in Europe. I spend a fair amount of time in England, and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 01:49 AM
Oh, dear God... Who's next? An Instapundit reader reports on how Denver puts Tommy through the PC ringer: The Boulder Daily Camera, on Friday, couldn't bring itself to say "deaf, dumb and blind." Instead, Tommy was described as a the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 11:34 AM
...so far, anyway, from Natalie Solent on this "excellent person:" After being charged 20 pounds for a 10 pounds overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to 'Yorkshire Bank Plc are Fascist Bastards.'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 10:31 AM
Post-PC Posts More great comments on "post-political correctness" from Jeff Jarvis: I welcome the Post PC era with with trumpets. Political Correctness is essentially undemocratic; it assumes that we are all too fragile to endure the open and frank debate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 09:15 AM
Inside and Egocentric Jonah Goldberg has written another column about blogging ("whoring for hits again," as Bill Quick puts it.) As usual, he's got some great lines, including his parody of a self-regarding blog entry: "this morning Robert Wright responds...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 12:15 AM
The Bad Ship Arafat This Washington Post editorial on the subject of Arafat's ship full of Iranian weapons appears to have been written in Cloudcuckoo Land (or at least in the European Union): Like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, [Hamas]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 12:13 AM
While I believe this writer's vaguely conspiracy-theory- and anti-corporate-driven unease is misplaced, this is nonetheless an interesting account of the story behind the "EU struggles to define sauce as a vegetable" story. The verdict: "such stories confirm all our worst...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 06:05 PM
Strange things afoot... Colin Powell defends Israel. And the BBC reports it. We're through the looking glass people......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 05:13 PM
Identity Crisis I changed the color of the Blogs of War from blue to green, because I kept getting myself mixed up with Tim Blair, QuasiPundit, and Ye Olde Blogge. (I had found myself wondering "when the hell did I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 10:38 AM
They can lie, but they won't be able to lie forever... ">Here's the first installment of a two part article in the Boston Globe about the audacity of Saudi anti-American lies. It's all familiar turf for those of us who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 10:29 AM
Box o' bin Laden William Quick (not sure if he's still the Blogical Suspect-- he appears to have transmogrified into the Daily Pundit while my attention was elsewhere) has uncovered this item from Islamicnews.org: Saudi Arabia has remitted a sum...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 07:31 AM
Kill Osama, says Reuel Marc Gerecht in the New York Times: If we hunt for him and bomb his sanctuaries but don't find and kill him, we will only add to his appeal and set him up for the next...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:18 AM
"Proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:14 AM
100 more US soldiers are being sent to the southern Phillipines, on a "training mission." I believe we've had some troops there for some time; at least since October, anyway. Islamist rebels are still holding Martin and Gracia Burnham, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:13 AM
Mark Steyn in the Spectator concedes that GWB "lacks the intelligence to hold down a really demanding job like columnist at the New York Times or Slate." Yet, he writes, "in the weeks before 11 September, having already spotted his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:13 AM
Catching up on the magazines that got crammed into the mailbox while I was away... There's an interesting article in a (relatively recent) New Republic by Martin Peretz on Islamo-fascist rhetoric and parallels from the Spanish Civil War, particularly the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:12 AM
Here's some canny and apt commentary from William Quick on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne's "What Has 'Victory' Achieved?" circular. Quick sums up: If those of us who excoriate the imbecility of the Sontags and Salters of the world...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 11:42 AM
Tim Blair, Aussie oppressor, funniest man in the blogosphere-- I can't even comment on this post because I'm laughing too hard....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 11:09 AM
Yet another terrific piece by Franklin Foer in the New Republic on Reza Pahlavi vs. Khatami as our best hope in Iran. From America's point of view, Pahlavi should be a deeply attractive figure. He's a liberal who, with our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 10:48 AM
Here's a great piece by Ron Rosenbaum on Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, "the Men who Would be Orwell." He rightly gives Sullivan's blog a great deal of credit as a powerful force for influencing public opinion and changing the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 09:59 AM
I Wanna Be Sedated In anticipation of what I assume will be the subject of Terry Jones's next Observer op-ed, let me comment in advance on this report about the security measures being taken for the transport of Taliban and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 09:28 AM
Still Harping on Herold Yeah, I know the case on Mark Herold's ideologically driven report on Afghan civilian casualties is pretty much closed (verdict: guilty of willful distortion, using questionable sources, ideologically "shaping" his data, faulty reasoning...) Still, this comment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 09:16 AM
Who's Next? Iran or Iraq? Safire on Arafat and Iran in todays New York Times: Two terrorist-sponsoring nations are racing to acquire nuclear weapons. One is Iraq, whose scientists already have the know-how. The other is Iran, whose nuclear development...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 08:31 AM
The Kamikaze Kid I don't think there's all that much in the Arab father angle on the Charles Bishop story, other than the obvious psychological one. There are some odd points in this Guardian article, however: Some East Lake students...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2002 10:56 PM
Plug-a-thon (1) Better late than never, the Blogs of War is now jumping on the Claire Berlinski bandwagon. You can check out the first chapter of her new novel "Loose Lips" here; you can purchase the book here; and here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2002 10:27 PM
Geraldine Brooks has the right idea: We Must Attack Iraq and Free its People....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2002 10:14 PM
Back in the USA Much as I hated to leave the Shire and its dear little Hobbits, early this morning I headed for the Grey Havens (which were very, very gray at the time) and embarked for home. Pure Middle...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2002 08:04 PM
Leaving London tomorrow a.m., so this will likely be the last post till I return and recover. Don't miss me too much. A few quick links before I go: James Lilek's merciless take-down of Stephanie Salter. (I wonder who takes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2002 01:19 PM
Even without C-4, a shoe can be a weapon: here's another shoe-wielding passenger....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2002 04:52 AM
John Walker got his start in the Islamo-fascist game at the Mill Valley Islamic Center; Richard Reid learned the ropes through people he met at the Brixton Mosque and Islamic Community Center in South London; James McLintock, the young Scotsman...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2002 04:15 AM
Frodo W. Bush? I think I understand why Andrew Sullivan feels he needs to do his part to burnish GWB's image here and there whenever the opportunity presents itself. I tend to agree with him that Bush is often misunderestimated,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2002 01:48 PM
Gone Native? Faithful friend, correspondent and Blogs of War critic Tristin writes: "I like your blog but it has gotten way British... you sound like you could use a mass dose of Temptation Island or something. You are about 26...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2002 03:15 AM
Knackered and Shattered Back in London, after a fairly strenuous trip from Hobbiton. I suppose London is still the Shire, but just a bit less so. The world of the Big Folk is both strange and familiar. More later....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 01:19 PM
Mullah Omar's Great Escape The Blogs of War reported yesterday that Mullah Omar had been captured (based on a Guardian article about the galvanizing power of US bombs.) As it happens rumors of his collaring were greatly exaggerated: the wascally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 01:19 PM
The Taliban's Chamber of Horrors Even in view of the well-known shameless barbarism of the Taliban, this account of the punishment meted out to Red Cross worker Saed Abdullah for the crime of possessing a couple of Bibles still managed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 01:14 PM
More idiocy from Terry Jones. (Warning: it's not even remotely funny...)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 09:41 AM
Rambunctious Irrelevance... ...or, Left-wing Columnists Say the Darnedest Things Andrew Sullivan (whose new website design looks great, by the way) makes an excellent point, in the course of commenting on the much-commented-upon Michael Kinsley "inner Ashcroft" column. Kinsley then makes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:38 AM
Clash of the Titans Our man in Australia Tim Blair, fresh from his recent bout with John Pilger, takes on Barry Crimmins and mops the floor with him. A dirty job, but somebody had to do it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:37 AM
A couple of great posts recently on Iain Murray's Edge of England's Sword blog. This one is a spot-on critique of Walter Williams's weird "Who May Harm Whom" column. This one is as clear and reasonable an expression of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:36 AM
Lord of the Rings Warning Just a reminder to any UK readers who may be out there: Radio 4 is re-broadcasting the BBC's great 1981 Lord of the Rings radio dramatization. First episode begins tomorrow (Saturday) 2:30 pm. Tape it!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:25 PM
Mullah Omar Arrested! Details are sketchy-- I hope it's true, though we have heard this one before. "Talks with those believed to be harbouring the cleric were galvanised by threats of US bombing," says the Guardian. That's the way boys:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:28 AM
I've been meaning to mention Moira Breen's excellent little essay on the American "vice of niceness," which she casts as "the loss of the gift of contempt." We operate not by more formal codes of manners but by a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:17 AM
Heads I win, tails you lose Here's some useful knowledge for those in the Euro-zone....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:15 AM
My dear friend (and trusted Blogs of War correspondent) Tristin, driving yesterday from DC to North Carolina, listened to talk radio and NPR on the way and heard all about the Moussaoui hearing. She wrote in with the following amusing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:10 AM
QuasiPundit is right. I need to be a little more skeptical about the Washington Times. (It's cold and dark here in Hobbiton-- and we gets our news where we may, don't we Precious? Our internet connections is so... slow and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2002 03:58 AM
VIII is Enough I'm still having trouble believing that anyone bothered to read the lengthy account of my rustic Norfolk New Years Eve carefully enough to notice, but several readers wrote in to call attention to a glaring typo. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2002 03:56 AM
Glenn Reynolds's latest Foxnew.com article, about how activist press releases tend get recycled and regurgitated in huge unseemly chunks by the mainstream media, is a corker. Lots of amusing anecdotal examples, including this one: an apparent plagiarism scandal at two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2002 03:56 AM
God Rules OK Obviously, I'm glad he turned out to be something other than an Arab terrorist, but the Boca Raton guy who chose to spend his New Year's Day flying around in a little plane sky-writing "God is Great"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 04:55 AM
Democratic Party Plans to Commit Suicide At least, that's how I read this report on Democratic plans to base their future electoral strategy around the claim that the Republicans are just as bad as the Taleban. According to Newsweek's Howard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 04:55 AM
">Afghanistan: a Land of Many Contrasts. Discount rates available....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:12 AM
You think you have a thesis, but you don't know what it is... ...do you, Mr. Jones? I mentioned Terry Jones's silly anti-war Observer piece in passing as an example of British "isolationist" tendencies, intending to come back to it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:09 AM
There was an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post on the World War II V-2 terror bombings, Churchill, and us, and it's worth reading. Faced with the demoralizing power of the silent rockets, Churchill considered using poison gas against the Germans,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:07 AM
Cheers to Tony Adragna, who included a warm holiday greeting to everyone in the New Year's Eve edition of the Quasipundit blog watch. What a class act. Mine said "don't go away, Frank." Well, I've been trying; I have to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 1, 2002 10:51 AM
As you may have noticed, I am now attempting to let slip the Blogs of War from the new HQ at Cley-next-the-Sea, on the north Norfolk coast. It won't be easy. As anyone who has done much travelling through Europe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 12:18 PM
"Teenager Forced Bystanders to Kiss Severed Human Head," is probably the weirdest headline of a weird week. But there must be something in the air. Have you seen al Qaeda's latest hit video? THE video begins innocently enough: a wildlife...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 12:09 PM
Another British John Walker: this one's name is James Alexander McLintock, he's a white kid and he comes from Dundee. He is described as a "suspected" al-Qaeda member, which actually takes him a step further than Walker, by some accounts....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 04:12 AM
Andrew Sullivan may think the introduction of the euro is no big deal and nothing to worry about (in his Sunday Times column-- no link because my on-line time is limited and the Times on-line is bloody impossible to navigate*)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 03:57 AM
A while back I mentioned that they had burned a giant Osama bin Laden effigy in Suffolk for this past Guy Fawkes Day. Ben Sheriff provides a time-line of other popular villains burned in effigy in place of "the Guy."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 03:54 AM
Just in case there's anyone out there who has yet to read Mark Steyn's Spectator piece on European anti-Semitism and the on-going US-Israel vs. Europe-Arab alignment, here it is. He manages to pack a great deal of trenchant observation and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2001 03:39 PM
...for putting up a Dr. Frank link on his excellent blog, The Edge of England's Sword. Regarding my description of the English Christmas, he observes that he "never really felt that Christmas in the US was a holiday at all."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2001 03:35 PM
One Ring to Rule them All And, speaking of hobbits ("real" hobbits, not just the good people of rural England) I finally saw the Lord of the Rings. This is a movie I have been waiting for for practically my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2001 12:17 AM
Family responsibilities, Blogger and other technical difficulties, and a bit of holiday laziness have all contributed to a slower pace in re: unleashing the blogs of war. Apologies for that. I suspect the pace may slow a bit more when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2001 06:49 AM
NEWS FROM THE FRONT in the Geraldo Wars continue continues to trickle in. Fox News has issued its official statement on the well-respected journalist: "based on Geraldo Rivera's 30-year track record, Fox News has full confidence in his... journalistic integrity."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 03:33 PM
THE NEW BIN LADEN VIDEO isn't even all that "new." It was recorded in early December, apparently. He seems a bit more wild-eyed, a bit more scattered, solitary rather than flanked by lieutenants, but there's really nothing new in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 01:00 AM
MORE ON REID According to this MSNBC report, an Afghan prisoner has identified Richard Reid, as someone who went through an Al Qaeda terrorism training camp, just like John Walker....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 01:00 AM
THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN Here's an interesting look into French law enforcement techniques. Inspector Clouseau, you are eh, how you say, vanted at ze flont desk......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 12:21 AM
RICHARD REID VS. JOHN WALKER As more information comes in about the Man with the Exploding Shoes, he is starting to seem a bit like our own John Walker. According to this report in the Times, Richard Reid (apparently his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 12:20 AM
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. I sure did. England seems to have invented much of what we think of as Christmas tradition (apart from all the religious stuff-- the year one and all that) and they tend to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 12:19 AM
No posting tomorrow (or today if you live on this side of the world,) in honor of the nativity of the Lord, our Savior. Merry Christmas, all....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 04:09 PM
A CURE FOR THE NEW STATESMAN BLUES A good piece by Henry Porter in Sunday's Observer on Doves and Hawks and who owes what sort of apology to whom. But it was not just the hawks who made a choice....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 03:52 PM
THE GERALDO WARS CONTINUE "The time has come to stop Geraldo-bashing," says Geraldo Rivera, chief proponent of the pro-Geraldo point of view. Rivera also accuses CNN of "malignant hypocrisy" for covering the dispute, saying that anchor Aaron Brown's report "made...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 03:49 PM
THOSE FUN-LOVIN' BRITISH LEFTIES: From the New Statesman: Last week we asked the question on-line: Should Israel topple Yasser Arafat? 7% said yes 89% said no 4% were not sure This week, we ask: Should Christmas be abolished?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:27 AM
Though Jews comprise no more than 2 per cent of the US population... Hanukkah is now seen as an event that the US president must officially recognize and celebrate. His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, is Jewish and a couple of weeks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:26 AM
Just getting around to reading the Ken Layne stuff I've missed over the last couple of days-- lots of good stuff as always, including this gem about the Sacramento Bee publisher whose commencement speech got booed by the graduating class....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:25 AM
Still in a weird state of psychological transition from shiny metropolis (London) to rustic hamlet (Colney, near Norwich.) While I was standing in line at Liverpool Street station, my "chosen" (as she was described later by one of the Norfolk...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:24 AM
Today is a travel day, so there probably won't be a whole lotta bloggin' goin' on. We're going from London to Norwich, to be with the family for Christmas. Everybody in England snickers when you say the word "Norwich"-- try...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:12 AM
DUMB AS A ROCK Owing to the time difference, I didn't hear about the man with the exploding shoes till this morning. I was, however, able to experience some of the excitement of the breaking news by reading Ken Layne's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:11 AM
Andrew Sullivan has a terrific op-ed in the Sunday Times on anti-Semitism, Arab, French, and ours. It's not the main point of his argument, but I was struck by this passage: Many western liberals chided America for withdrawing from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:10 AM
STROLLING DOWN MEMRI LANE Little Green Footballs points out the latest report from the Middle East Media Research Institute. This transcript of an Al-Jazeera TV talk show on bin Laden from 10 July reads like an Arab extremist McLaughlin Group:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:10 AM
WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? Apparently some kind soul has taken the professor's advice and paid the $12 "make the banner ad go away" fee for this blog. Many thanks, whoever you may be....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:09 AM
The Taleban: Safe Roads and Everything Else Robert Fisk continues his perverse drive to propound his deeply "alternative" point of view in this Independent article, evincing nostalgia for the Taleban's comforting law and order policy: If nothing else, the Taliban...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:08 AM
PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE CHOCOLATE HAND GRENADE! IT IS VERY DELICATE So reads a hand-printed sign on a display of Christmas gift ideas at Selfridge's department store in London. This "department" specializes in the ironic, the absurd, the whimsical:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 04:45 AM
I like Andrew Hofer's cocky letter of humorless odiousness to the Evening Standard. You will, too, unless your humorless odiousness exceeds mine......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 04:44 AM
Deborah Orr of the Independent defends (sort of) the French Ambassador, who is in big trouble for his foul-mouthed dinner-party comments about Israel. Israel and its defenders, she opines, are so annoying that even good and decent people find it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 02:52 AM
MICHAEL KELLY, MOTIVATIONAL COUNSELOR The first moral judgement is always the hardest, says Kelly, but it only gets easier; and Alison Hornstein of Yale University has made real progress during this session....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 02:51 AM
It might not be the funniest joke in the world, but it's not bad. Citing that Robert Kagan "Postcard from Belgium" column (about which I'm still too thick to decide: satire or real?) Iain Murray's wide- and long-ranging memory comes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 02:50 AM
THE LABOUR PM IS A LEFTY-BAITER Tony Blair doing a Matt Welch. Check it out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 08:53 AM
UNLEASHING THE BLOGS OF WAR has been hampered a bit by massive hard drive problems. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before something explodes. Apologies in advance if I disappear....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 08:52 AM
NOAM CHOMSKY DECAPITATED... ...by an enraged David Horowitz. Well, not literally... Here's the latest in the now venerable genre of Chomsky-debunking, a joint effort by the genre's co-founders David Horowitz and Ron Radosh. This mother of all bashings is richly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 06:28 AM
30 SECONDS TO A MORE POWERFUL VOCABULARY Reader and fellow blogger Lawrence Garvin, in reference to the anti-Monbiot screed below, writes in to provide his latest neologism: "Talibashing" - the all too common tendency to banish all norms of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 06:24 AM
LOW-FAT SPREAD: THE ENGLISHWOMAN'S VIEW OF AMERICAN PORN AND THE BEAUTY MYTH I've been meaning to mention Victoria Coren's column in Wednesday's Evening Standard, "Everything's Bigger in America." Noting that Nigella Lawson's cooking show has been described in the New...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 05:00 AM
Damian Penny and Charles "Little Green Footballs" Johnson and have already gone to the trouble of dissecting the study behind the latest Guardian editorial on Afghan casualties. (See also Bruce Rolston's more detailed examination of the data.) Here's my reaction....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 04:01 AM
THE WILDERNESS FAMILY Here's a bizarre little story about dates imported illegally to Britain from Iraq. The importers are Voices in the Wilderness, a "non-violence group" opposed to the sanctions against Iraq. VitW activists spent yesterday distributing the dates, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 01:41 PM
ANGLO-AMERICAN: TWO POWERS SEPARATED BY A COMMON HYPHEN We had a great time at the Skinner's Arms last night. My lovely little sister Christine is visiting London on Christmas break from Japan, where she is teaching English. Among other things,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 01:39 PM
Great stuff on Tim Blair's blog today, as usual. First, there's a letter from Glenn Sacks (who wrote one of those moronic SF Chronicle columns defending John Walker as a courageous free-thinker,) to his "critics," which I imagine would probably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 11:41 AM
Here's the Jerusalem Post's surprisingly temperate report on that French ambassador story below. (via InstaPundit.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 11:40 AM
FRENCH IN ACTION: LESSON 1-- DIPLOMACY A diplomatic tempest has been brewing ever since the French ambassador to Great Britain was over-heard at a dinner party saying that all the problems in the world were caused by "that shitty little...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 04:50 AM
THE MORAL EQUIVALENCE GAME, PART II The odious George Monbiot was at it again yesterday, with a Guardian "comment and analysis" piece called "The Taliban of the West." (This link is to Monbiot's own site's posting of the article under...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 03:17 AM
THE GERALDO WARS CONTINUE Hey, if I were in Tora Bora, I'd be carrying a gun......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 02:56 AM
Got some Christmas duties to attend to today, which will curtail excessive newshogging and blogging. Plus, I don't want to provoke the "you love the computer more than me" conversation that I suspect might be in the offing. (It's similar...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2001 03:59 AM
I found Richard Cohen's article on anger very apt and powerful. It points to an important truth about our contemporary culture. We are not very comfortable with anger, and we often try to reason our way around it; anger embarrasses...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2001 03:55 AM
I'M NOT LET THING GO, I BELIEVE My girlfriend just received a greeting card from a friend who is travelling in Korea. It reads: Now and Forever I realize the best part of love is the thinnest slice and it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2001 03:38 AM
SHAW'S STALIN, OUR BIN LADEN This editorial by the Telegraph's Robert Harris is one of the best so far on the Left's crisis of content when it comes to Afghanistan and bin Laden. On George Bernard Shaw's willful credulity about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 10:21 AM
ALL THE RAGE IN EGYPT Here's a fascinating run-down of Egyptian pop culture's love-hate relationship with America, Western values, and good old fashioned common decency. It seems like it's mostly "hate" in all three categories: the mini-series based on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 08:18 AM
THE HARRUMPHING CURMUDGEON Am I at war with the Guardian? That's what a reader charges. My indulgent, long-suffering girlfriend, who has had to learn to live with the fact that the sound of my rustling Guardian usually heralds a string...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 07:12 AM
SPREADING CULTURE TO THE MASSES "I'm down with Biggie, but Mozart is my dog." --Alica Keys on Top of the Pops....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 07:11 AM
THE GAME Anthony Lewis, in his farewell column, seals his legacy as a master of moral equivalence, managing to get in one last re-iteration of his trademark "Christian Fundamentalists are as bad as Islamists" theme: Islamic fundamentalism, rejecting the rational...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 07:03 AM
A SPOONFUL OF GUARDIAN The war will be over by Christmas. (Winner: us.) It didn't go as badly as expected and "hasn't caused the kind of havoc feared (such as a protracted guerilla war.)" And this is bad because... ...the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2001 04:26 PM
HOW IT LOOKS FROM THE LONDON EYE: Matt Welch withdrawal, Fox News withdrawal, mixed drink withdrawal, Taco Bell withdrawal, Seinfeld re-run withdrawal. Otherwise, swell. There is at least one McDonald's on every block, sometimes two or even three. There is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2001 10:15 AM
The Reynolds Ted Rall Theory: Rall is a CIA mole designed to bring out the best in the anti-anti-war movement and produce a new renaissance of American letters that will crush our enemies in a blinding wave of cultural imperialism....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2001 10:11 AM
BAD NEWS: I just learned (from Eric Alterman's article in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine) that America has been taken over by a tiny cabal of right wing fanatics who control the government and through it the entire populace. Even though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2001 10:08 AM
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH OSAMA Not really. That is, I don't think the actual Loony bin Laden was in Hyde Park today, though there were several guys with similar sartorial ideas. But after the news agent's hint about a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2001 04:41 PM
SATURDAY NIGHT PARTING COMMENTS Bin Laden's "distinctive voice" heard on walkie-talkie. OBL's getting more and more "ghetto" all the time. Come on guys, just get him, OK? AND THE WORD OF THE DAY is "massacre," at the Guardian and Independent....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 04:07 PM
THE RELENTLESS AUSSIE SATIRE MACHINE Also from Tim Blair, a conversation between Osama bin Laden and "an unidentified, pony-tailed American," which opens with this line from OBL: So that's my take after percentages, or before? I don't want to get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 09:06 AM
Trust me, Winona, the "research" excuse never, ever works. (This link via Tim Blair.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 09:03 AM
THE BRITISH GIFT FOR UNDERSTATEMENT From yesterday's Times: The simple hand gesture Osama bin Laden used to illustrate how he had envisaged his diabolical assault on the World Trade Center was chilling in its utter inappropriateness. I say. Rather....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 08:34 AM
THE IDEAL BLOG RATIO... ...I believe, is 2 funny posts to one tedious one. So, to balance things out, here's an addendum to my earlier thing about "Taleban-ification" and "cultural liberalism." The more I think about it, the more I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 08:22 AM
THE TURNER PRIZE, OSAMA, THE USUAL SUSPECTS Mark Steyn brings it all together. Simon Wilson, communications director, the Tate Gallery, live from London: Well, it was a late entry, but the Turner judges were particularly taken by Osama's almost playful...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 02:54 AM
KNIGHTS IN SERVICE OF THE STATE DEPT You wanted the best, you got the best! I keep forgetting to mention that just before I left I caught KISS bassist Gene Simmons on Fox News. (Link-retard alert: I can't find a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 02:24 AM
DECULTURATION II My beautiful, very significant, other and I were discussing the Tate Modern and the new Turner Prize winner (The Room with the Flickering Light, as seen on TV, brought to you by Madonna.) The naive query of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 10:18 AM
The Tate Modern, London, SE1 Approach from Blackfriars; observe the single, ugly tower, a Dachau on the Thames. Enter; savor the eastern bloc charm of the Central Hall, an oppressive Cathedral of Darkness and Steel. Proceed to the Art: View:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 09:12 AM
THE TALEBAN-IFICATION OF JOHN WALKER: I notice that Andrew Sullivan has now conceded a defeat of a sort, issuing a gracious (really!) partial retraction of his version of the "cultural liberalism created John Walker" theory. The letters he received on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 08:32 AM
Note to Moira Breen: I absolutely forbid you to refrain from Guardipendent hatchet-jobs, as you threaten. Said hatchet-jobs make the world a better place. As I think I read somewhere, it is important for artists to blog the truth to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 03:46 AM
LONDON CALLING... I answering. No matter how late I manage to stay up on the first night after the SFO-LHR flight, I always jolt into irrevocable consciousness at around 5 am. Three hours later, I can't handle any more pretending...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 02:42 AM
SLEEPY LONDON TOWN: oh wait, it's me. I'm the sleepy one. Long journeys wear me out but there ain't nothing I can do about it. Jet lag + nightfall at 3pm = weirdness. God bless America....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2001 09:09 AM
I just have one thing more to say. Tim Blair is a bleeding genius. Laughing... choking.. wheezing... gurgle......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2001 12:11 PM
MERRIE OLDE ENGLAND, the quaintest country in the world. That's where I'm headed today. I'm hoping to be able to unleash the blogs of war from the UK HQ, though I'm not certain how much blogging-space there will be in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2001 09:50 AM
You've probably seen the report that John Walker Lindh has revealed that the next Al Qaeda strike will come on Sunday and will involve a biological attack on the US. (Followed by "phase III," which will "result in the destruction...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2001 06:41 AM
RACIAL PROFILING NOT WIRED INTO BRAIN! That's the headline of this piece on a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I don't pretend to know everything about this study from the summary of it in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2001 05:42 PM
DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF is always good advice, and if the Berkeley Daily Planet ("covering the world of Berkeley") isn't "small stuff" I don't know what is. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if their readership for today will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2001 02:57 PM
I REALLY ADMIRE Natalie Solent for her magnanimous gesture of goodwill and indulgence toward Edward Said. And I also admire, even more, her inability to sustain it for more than a couple of tentative sentences, since "the guy is just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2001 11:28 AM
Matt Welch and Ken Layne have both posted gripping and at times hilarious accounts of their own experiences being beaten up by mobs in foreign lands, and they're decidedly un-Fisk-like about the whole thing. I don't see how anyone will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2001 01:40 AM
That's in one of the letters in response to that Salon McGruder interview. It continues: "McGruder's statements may make you feel bad, but where are they inaccurate? Truth seekers can be so pesky." Yes, curse those truth seekers! If only...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 11:28 PM
I just read Tim Blair's skewering of Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder's Salon interview and I still can't stop laughing. No link to the interview because it's "premium" content-- cue laugh-track, maestro. But that's not the funny part: it's a classic...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 06:52 PM
Hey, I just got some email from Moira Breen, whose Inappropriate blog is one of the best ones out there. It's weird to admit, and maybe a little silly, but it was a surreal experience, kind of like bumping into...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 06:07 PM
This WSJ op-ed on Geraldo Rivera on Fox hits the heads of many nails. I watch Fox all the time, like, I guess, the majority of American cable news junkies, and I love it. One of the things I like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 10:55 AM
John Walker appears to have done quite a fair amount of posting on usenet groups under the name "doodoo." The posts can still accessed by means of a google search. It's pretty interesting to scan through them and observe the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 01:44 AM
BEATLES FANS are sensitive! I didn't even write the blessed thing, yet my admiration for Matt Welch's column on George Harrison has earned me the enmity of at least one zealous guardian of the sanctity of the Quiet Beatle's memory....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 11:24 PM
According to the Mirror one of bin Laden's estranged wives has revealed bin Laden's elaborate plan for a televised suicide that will then trigger attacks on the Capitol, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 10:35 PM
check out this unbelievably stupid article from Friday's SF Chronicle on his "journey of self-discovery." And what a long, strange trip it has been. From the warm, nurturing, tolerant bosom of an open-minded hippie family; to the vibrant, rough-and-tumble of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 10:11 PM
in Viennese dialect, apparently means "I'm loaded," according to Petronella Wyatt of the Spectator. (This via Tim Blair, who adds: "if only the Walker kid had followed this translation instead of following bin Laden himself.")...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 09:33 PM
not surprisingly, most everyone has had their whack at the Robert Fisk Story (sub-heading: "left-wing journalist suffers for the sins of his Imperialist fathers-- and is glad to do it.") Ken Layne is the funniest so far. There's a serious...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 09:14 PM
I'm not asking you, I'm telling you... Just before I left last night I noticed, but did not click on, a Drudge link called something like "journalist beaten by crazed Pakistani mob." Who was this mystery journalist? To my surprise,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 08:20 PM
in San Jose last night, so I'm a little slow today-- I'm really just emerging into consciousness now. I was away from the "data center" (i.e., laptop plus tv) for only around 24 hours, but I missed out on way...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 06:58 PM
IN CELEBRATION OF cultural imperialism and Walt Disney: "Only Canadians and Frenchmen hate cultural imperialism"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 02:47 PM
to the Attorney General, he is functioning as the fall guy on the tribunals. (Don't feel sorry for him though-- it is his job.) The Bush administration has tried to keep GWB above the fray as much as possible, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 02:27 PM
OK, I'm really about to let go of this Ashcroft-Senate-News Hour thing, except to add one last comment. On the PBS News Hour's "Political Wrap" discussion of the controversy about whether Ashcroft's denunciations of his critics went too far, Mark...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 10:53 AM
Here's that statement by Ashcroft spokesperson Mindy Tucker (as quoted by Jim Lehrer) referred to below: "anyone who reported this morning that he [Ashcroft] criticized anyone who opposed him was absolutely wrong, and in doing so became a part of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 03:39 AM
One particular sentence caught my eye: "Mullah Omar's apparent captivity will boost Western morale at a time when many thought that the goals of the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan were not being met." What is this guy talking about?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 01:52 AM
according to this story from the Times of London. I've been scanning the web for other mentions of it, but I haven't seen anything. I've also been switching between the cable news stations to see something about this since I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 11:21 PM
I can't find a link for it, but on tonight's "News Hour" Jim Lehrer quoted an Ashcroft spokesperson's official statement to the effect that: "those who criticize Mr. Ashcroft's statement as an attempt to silence discussion are precisely the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 04:24 PM
(i.e., "situation normal, all talebaned-up") Here's another 911 song. This one's by the Gorillaz, but I can't comment because I can't get the taleban thing to play on my taleban equipment. It's not an mp3, but rather a "wma," which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 04:04 PM
Scary SEA-TAC story: a plane from Taipei is being detained at the Seattle International Airport because of an anonymous tip about a smallpox threat on board. It's not clear whether it was supposed to be a person infected with smallpox...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 04:03 PM
Check out Matt Welch's latest column, ostensibly on George Harrison. He uses reflections about the tenor of the media coverage of Harrison's death (which he finds hypocritical and cloying, despite being a fan himself) as a springboard to an insightful...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 02:57 PM
so why are the Taleban trying to negotiate an order of protection for Mullah Omar? Wasn't the Taleban's overwhelming "secret weapon" supposed to be that they are "as eager for death as we are for life?" Apparently, the People's Front...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 10:59 AM
Today's Wall Street Journal is giving its characteristic pro-government spin to the Ashcroft Senate hearing. "Ashcroft wins the civil liberties debate, " they bluntly proclaim, by facing down "the liberals." I hope (and I'm pretty certain) that this will not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 10:53 AM
According to the Mirror, a man was fined 150 pounds for insisting on identifying himself as "English" on the British census form. Glenn Reynolds/Insta-Pundit (like the man in question) says that this demonstrates that "it's a crime to be English...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 10:36 PM
While Arab anti-semitism is no secret and comes as no real surprise, yet it still manages to express itself in astonishing forms. Earlier this year the Middle East Media Research Institute identified a widespread belief in the Arab world in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 09:18 PM
I finally downloaded Neil Young's web-released song, "Let's Roll." As a professional songwriter (I am, technically!) I can say this with some authority and/or bravado: it's not that bad! I've had the inclination to try to write 911-related stuff, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 05:37 PM
No surprises here, but Canada (as well as Europe) are quietly letting Kyoto slide into oblivion. All in all, the Kyoto treaty was a smashing success at its true objective, which was to provide European governments with an easy, no-obligation...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 04:33 PM
Not surprisingly the tireless lefty-baiters among us have responded to Weisberg's Slate article, with more to come I'm sure. I am a bit surprised at the near-hysterical tone of some of them. Matt Welch gives it his famous "straw man"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 04:12 PM
Here's Jacob Weisberg on the "Sontag Awards" phenomenon (i.e., pundits, webloggers, and commentators who have been having a grand old time challenging the sillier statements about the war by "the Left.") I agree that the anti-American nihilism represented by Chomksy,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 03:38 PM
I'm pretty sure the last thing the world needs is another damn warblog. Some people are born to warblogging, others have warblogging thrust upon them-- I'm in the second category. Ever since the war began I've been irritating my friends,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 02:53 PM