The International House of Bacon

* Shirley Bassey - “Let’s Get This Party Started”: If there’s any sort of musical style I enjoy almost all the time, it’s Bond themes. Shirley Bassey sang four of them, and experienced a revival of sorts 10 years ago with the Propellerheads’s song “History Repeating.” Her take on the Pink hit is really great, as is most everything she does, and the instrumental flourishes in the background really make the song more than tolerable, where it was just somewhat annoying before.

* The Moldy Peaches - “Anyone Else But You”: Sure, the song is all over the place at this point, and the band has essentially been broken up for five years, but the popularity has driven me to revisit the band a bit, and brings up two conclusions:

a) This is a really difficult album to love. It’s noisy, it’s not always musical, and it’s often obnoxious. I’m certainly in a different place than I was when the disc came out in terms of musical preferences, and I loved this CD when I was first way into it, but I can totally understand why Barbara Walters was absolutely befuddled by the whole thing.

b) It’s surprising this didn’t catch on more. Maybe it will with the added publicity, but how many other bands like the Moldy Peaches have you heard of? Sure, Kimya Dawson and Adam Green have decent indie musical careers now, but why didn’t any of the anti-folk stuff take off? Kind of weird.

* Kathleen Edwards - “I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory”: If the only redeeming part of this song was the line “You’re the Great One/I’m Marty McSorley,” it would still be classic, but this is really a fun little song that, as usual, showcases Edwards as one of the better lyricists out there today. It takes a lot for me to notice lyrical content, and she consistently pulls it off.

Who wants in? I set up a Yahoo Group for those who want to do a friendly NCAA pool.

Group ID #:101578
Group pass: dukewins

* An interesting report from the Washington Timesabout some minor backlash NPR recieved for its “Conversations With Conservatives” series at the end of February.

* Not shockingly, Obama’s talking point that some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than the average worker does in a year is, with one to three exceptions depending on which metric you use, completely false. This is why populism is dangerous - it makes the mistake of either assuming anecdote as the clear reality (see: every John Edwards speech ever, Michelle Obama) or having to purposefully distort reality to make what may have otherwise been a valid, debatable point about a specific issue.

* Obama on the war. In a way, it does a good job explaining why Obama’s current Iraq strategy is so schizophrenic.

* Someone needs to reeducate the Associated Press regarding fair use principles. I think my favorite part is the probable concurrent contradiction by the organization.

* Kos blogger “on strike” because Daily Kos is apparently in the tank for Obama or something. It’s funny - the Republicans had a more diverse slate of candidates, more concern about the future of their party and ideology, and yet largely avoided this sort of infighting.

* Howie Carr’s yearly check-in with politicians in Massachusetts who call for higher taxes was published this week. One of the quirks in Massachusetts’s tax system is that the standard income tax rate is 5.3%. It should be 5% per a citizen vote, but Massachusetts politicians don’t care about Massachusetts residents. ANYWAY, at some point, an optional 5.8% rate was instituted - if you would like to pay the higher rate, the opportunity is there. Not surprisingly, very few people do pay the higher optional rate, including those who say that the state’s finances are in disarray and that higher taxes are needed. I love it.

* A minor follow-up to the Obama/Wright thing - while this was meant to apply to the Rezko situation (hardly finished, by the way), it applies here, too: Obama says that, “In a dangerous world, it’s judgment that matters.” If his “judgment” is to not only stick with this preacher for as long as he did, but also a) talk about possibly having to distance himself from Wright, only b) waiting until the mainstream press gets ahold of it, what does this say about Obama’s judgment? This is his standard, after all.

* More LiveJournal nonsense: censoring interests. Good times, SUP, really.