Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, friends!  The Dream will be back online soon with an interview you won't want to miss.  Meanwhile, kiss 2011 goodbye with a song to soothe the soul and acknowledge the passage of time...

Listen to more Stephen Stills at Wolfgang's Vault.

Step Off, Katy Perry

Colorado Girls holding it down and representing D-Town!

"Can I Have Some of Your Hair?" and other great pick-up lines

The Mad Men School of Seduction...Season 4 begins July 25

We Are All Kobayashi Now

What says "fight the power and stick it to the man" like trying to force your way into a hot-dog eating contest, and being dragged off to the pokey for your trouble? 

In this age of unchallenged corporate power, a collapsing middle class, hopelessness and despair everywhere, perhaps all that is left to us is one last defiant act of individuality.

Somewhere, Karl Malden is smiling.  Kobayahsi wouldn't join the corrupt hot-dog-eaters union sign a contract with Major League Eating, so he was denied a seat at the table for the Nathan's 4th of July hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island.  But he wanted to eat hot dogs for the people all the same.  You see, Kobayashi is the greatest competitive eater of all time.


True to himself, his vision, and his vocation, taking no heed of the cordon of police officers between him and his hot dogs, Kobayashi stormed the stage at Nathan's.  One man against the system, against the machine.

We are all Kobayahi now.

What if America had been founded by mediocre white rappers?

Only Screwing Up A Wet Dream and the video geniuses at Jib Jab have the courage to tell you the truth about this crucial issue....Happy Fourth of July!

We're So Sorry, Uncle Tony...

...but we haven't done a bloody thing to plug this leak all day.

After receiving the heart-felt apology of a grateful nation of Republican stooge Dan Barton, Tony "I'd like my life back" Hayward for being asked to pay for British Petroleum's devastating underwater oil gusher, Hayward did what any self-respecting CEO would do: he brushed the United States Congress right off his shoulder and went yachting.  Using a high-powered telephoto lens, the Dream's investigative reporting team captured this image of Hayward relaxing aboard his pleasure craft:

The rich really are different, aren't they?

 

So, how did President McCain Obama take advantage of the tremendous political gifts handed him by Barton and Hayward?  By going golfing, of course.  Because nothing says "in control," "crisis management," " man of the people," and "in touch with the plight of everyday folks" quite like 18 holes with the cameras clicking away.  

 

Letterman: When he heard Tony Hayward went to a yacht race after testifying before Congress about the oil spill, "Obama was so angry he missed a putt."  Rim-shot.

So how did this triumvirate of clowns get their tone-deaf butts off the front page?  Luckily for them, a bunch of drunk frat-boy ugly-American tourists General McChrystal and his staff blew themselves up in a rock 'n' roll rag.  

Firing McChrystal and replacing him with the near-sainted Gen. Petreaus allowed Obama to look shrewd and in control, for once, and to have the chance to end a very bad month of June on a high note.  But like any purely political victory, it's a hollow one that doesn't touch on the heart of the real problem.  As astute commentator Eugene Robinson has it, "The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? Now we're supposed to pretend that Gen. David Petraeus does."

Insert your own unpluggable, underwater oil leak / endless, unwinnable war metaphor here

World Cup Highlights

The Dream isn't that big on soccer.  It will never steal our heart away from curling, that's for sure. 

But we've decided to get on board with all the World Cup excitement, in the interest of international peace and understanding and whatnot.  Check out this stunning footage from the riveting 1 - 1 tie between England and the USA:



Brilliant stuff!  No wonder it's the world's favorite game!

The Other Shoe Drops in Afghanistan: There's Gold in Them Thar Hills!

Well, NOW I get it.

Are you, like me, wondering what exactly we're doing in Afghanistan?  America's longest war ever has failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, failed to build a strong central government while aiding and abetting the power of unaccountable and corrupt warlords, and failed to defeat the medieval Taliban and prevent them from terrorizing the population, particularly the women and girls who bear the brunt of their theological insanity. 

Longer than our involvement in World Wars I and II put together, longer than the fruitless muddle in Vietnam, Afghanistan has exploded our national debt, frayed our alliances, and generally served no useful purpose.  But a recent news splash from the New York Times may explain why President Obama McCain recently doubled down on the quagmire at the top of the world: vast stores of mineral resources!

According to the article, "huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium" lay beneath the blood-soaked ground of Afghanistan, just waiting for the gentle machinations of Halliburton and friends to coax them to the surface.   So much lithium -- an element critical for the manufacture of batteries for laptop computers and other mobile computing devices -- that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium."

The dubious timeline given for the discovery of the vast stores of mineral wealth claims that survey data gathered by the Soviets indicated likely treasure as far back as the 80's.  Highly promising American surveys in 2006 and 2007 were supposedly ignored until "[i]n 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data."  Uh-huh.  Can somebody tell me when the Pentagon got into "business development?"

More importantly, are they hiring?

As you can imagine, Afghan officials are giddy.  These guys got in on the ground floor; their efforts to better themselves through graft and corruption are about to pay off beyond their wildest dreams.




General Petraeus is excited too.  So excited that he passed out while testifying before the Senate today.

In any case, now we're REALLY in it for the long haul.  Endless war isn't just a slogan...it's a way of life!

All in all, the Dream prefers this Colorado man's approach to Afghanistan.

You're welcome!

Beatles to the Rescue

So, the Dream is finding it kinda hard to get his funny on right now.  What with the oil spill that can't be plugged, the President who won't take charge, aid flotilla massacres, the Koreas on the brink of war.  The only funny thing to happen in 2010 so far was Betty White hosting SNL, and chances are she's going to keel over any minute now and join the great Golden Girls syndication deal in the sky.

Talking smack over the usual polyrhythm of politics and pop culture is one thing, but who really wants to get all MC Snark with it when things are this bad?

Leave it to The Beatles to give us a couple of unexpected chuckles in this darkest of 21st century springs.  Why The Beatles?  Why now?  I have no idea.  They're just still with us, in one form or another, and this is what they do.



Paul swung by the White House to pick up the Gershwin Award for Popular Song.  While he was there, he serenaded the first lady with her eponymous song, making for an awkward little family sing-and-sway-along.  Is it just me or does Michelle seem rather brittle towards her husband?

But Sir Paul also stepped up and did some political heavy lifting for the boss this week, praising Obama as a "great guy" and telling his critics to "lay off."   My man Paul, taking one for the team.  Obama will take whatever political cover he can get right about now.  Macca went on to get in some Bush-bashing on Barack and Michelle's dime.  Noting the performance's setting at the Library of Congress, the cute one quipped "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is."  Paul's corny Lenoism at W.'s expense led GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner to issue a hilarious demand for an apology.  What a tool.  Thank you, Paul McCartney, for wringing some unlikely political laughs out of these dark days.  Now that things are cooling off with Arlen Specter, maybe Paul can be Barack's new bromance.

I had another Beatles-related grin when I heard Andre 3000 -- the creative Lennon to Big Boi's conventional McCartney in hip-hop's Outkast -- had recorded a Beatles tune for a commercial.  Check it out:


Thumbs up that the commercial takes place at the happy intersection of music and basketball; thumbs down that it requires us to worship at the altar of the indestructible Kobe & the Zen Master some more.  It's ultimately a mildly charming if unremarkable version of a mildly charming but unremarkable song.  Those seeking the sonic sophistication of The Love Below songs like "Love Hater" or Andre's interpretation of "My Favorite Things" will be disappointed.  Well, it is just a Nike commercial, after all.  The end product is significantly less wonderful than the potential the combination of Andre & Fab Four implies, but good for a smile or three nonetheless.

Culture on Trial: "Lost" Edition

"LOST!"

I know you, like me, will miss the way the ABC announcer called out the show's name over the fuzzy floating letters at commercial break: his voice full of bogus innuendo, horror and wonder of kind that can only exist in the world of network teevee.

"Lost” reminds me of a game I played with the neighbor kids when I was about 8: The Mystery.  The Mystery had no real story, no cohesive narrative, even though we made occasional stabs at one.  It was simply whatever pseudo-military toy set-up scenario we came up with on a given day.  Indoors, outdoors.  Plastic army guys, dinosaurs, farm animals, Matchbox cars, Star Wars figures.  The imaginary battles changed, reinvented, from day to day.  Scrunched-up blankets, Lego castles, a plastic “Guns of Navarone” diorama, or backyard dirt pit 'forts' could all be settings for The Mystery.  American soldiers, cowboys and horses versus Nazis and Stormtroopers was some intense fun; what it meant could be worked out later on.  And of course it never was.  We weren't ready for character development or narrative arcs.  But we excelled at making things look cool.

It seems to me Lost had a lot in common with The Mystery.  It was preposterous in every way, if hypnotic to the eye.  The concluding "explanation" was bound to disappoint.  Why not just leave it - a mystery?  Ambiguity was good enough for The Sopranos finale.  But this is network TV.  It was network TV from the second the plane crashed on the island, with the impossibly good-looking actors with $500 haircuts playing comically over-acted stereotypes, uttering painfully witty, cutting dialogue from behind dead eyes - just like every other network show.

Which reminds me...seen the "V" remake?  Those are hours of my life I'll never get back.  Why remake a show from the 80's with an 80's TV aesthetic?   Tepid network melodrama in cheesy costumes hasn't changed in 25 years.

But I digress.

Lost wasn't about anything.  They made it up as they went along.  It was just supposed to look cool.  If they achieved anything, it was to create the atmosphere of something going on just below the surface.  A meaning, a real revelation, just beyond the mind's reach.  But there was nothing happening here, Mr. Jones.  Just some  Hollywood TV writers frantically shuffling through ideas and images and a few clever lines of confrontational dialogue.  Like kids in the backyard with all their toy soldiers and spaceships and Transformers.  Imaginations in overdrive, making no sense, but thrilled with their creations.  "Smoke monsters" indeed.  Know your strengths, writers. 

Stay up for Letterman or shell out for cable if you want good television, people.