Dr. Robert

Babylon's back.

So is Emil.

E also is part of the FreeDarko movement, who have the best post ever up right now.

Now excuse me while I listen to some Geronimo Jackson.

I want to laugh at this guy with his arena-fied Neil Young and his "Swiss Army Bass," but he's actually pretty good. Still, one wonders, isn't it easier to just make friends to play the other instruments?

Pink Cookies In A Plastic Bag
Wait, wrong LL reference. It's no matter though, becuase TJ Ford's blazing entrance onto the (you gotta call it a) comeback trail is just about as sweet as the poetically described titular subject of the above-mentioned Cool J ditty.

I honestly thought the little Naismith Award winning dude would never play again, but there he is sonning AI and Jason Kidd on consecutive nights, averaging 1 rebound away from a triple-double, leading the Bucks out to a 3-0 start, and generally being the most exciting point-guard in the League.

Some awesome heavy-metal Bucks fan put together a highlight video, here it is (click 'free' then wait for the DL to appear). Marvel.

I gotta meet Pete, dude's pond is about the coolest place on Earth. AFRICA! (say it in a James Earl Jones voice. Awesome.)

Just busy that's all...

Since I'm so good at keeping up with two blogs, I figured I'd go ahead and start a third.

All those into numerology, Southern Rock pirates, mapanguari, Adebisi, and assorted castaway cheesecake, please do check out Flight815, a new blog from Chris Lemon-Red, Jon Caraminica, and little-old me.

Due to Babylon priorites, I've been gone for a minute, and probably won't be back too frequently in the near future, so I thought I'd reward my faithful clckers with the hottest shit I've heard in a long time. This...


Savor. Dude is still doing it, and doing it well.

The only thing that makes me happier than this mix are the rumors that Shadow's next production project is a certain big scary/spiritual dude from Misssisippi.

• NOLA musicians are settling into Austin, for a little while at least. TX is stepping up big time on the hospitality front. Keep it up y'all, wish I was there to help.
• Some dude in Mississippi walked up to Dick Cheney and put his evil ass on blast.
• A Will Ferrell/Ali G NASCAR flick? Sounds promising.
  
• Philly ain't ready for Monday night. ATL stand up!

• I love TEXAS football, and am firmly convinced we're gonna stomp a mudhole in Ohio State's ass on the upcoming epic Saturday night, but this Bill Little shill is still the worst, most sacharine, cliched writer of all time. Excuse me while I throw up through my nose. Think that's bad? You should read the bullshit he spews when the 'Horns lose one.
• Purple Drank (whose GA Girls photo essay/article thing in the recent White Stripes/Damian Marley FADER might as well have been an epic poem about South Atlanta--prom dress on the suburban track-mansion deck like what!) posted this up a while back, and I forgot about it, but ATL folks are gonna love this exhaustive retrospective of all Monica Kaufman's many hair-do's. Old bird used to live across the street from my boy Ian, and even shopped at the Kroger when I was 16 and working there robbing them blind.
  
• I often refer to boring blogs that are all, "so then my awesome friend Sara called and we had the most hilarious conversation while Sammy (my cat, isn't he the cutest!) lay on my face, yakk, yakk, what's the fucking point already?" as "What I Had For Dinner" blogs, but my erudite friend Luisa's Wednesday's Chef blog actually is about what she had for dinner, and it's great. That's what I'm talking about, y'all. Focus. Words are making me fucking hungry.
• Finally, big up to the Onion for keeping their sense of humor yet not pulling any punches about the worst thing I've ever seen.

On a grind all day. Babylon is back. Getting some press shine too. Peep today's NY Sun (you gotta subscribe to read the whole thing, but if you're local you can buy the rag for only a quarter!

• A little shaky, but Kanye speaks truth to power.
• O-Dub, without the burden of being nervous and emotional on live TV, expounds further on Katrina and race and class.
• Johnny Cash Red Cross ads here and here. I dare you to watch these and not pull out your wallet.
• NO Mayor Ray Nagin is pissed and not mincing words.
  
• CNN has been really on top of and pointed with the government about their lack of timely and adaquate response to the hurricane. Even Anderson Cooper (Carson Daly the grey) went off on a senator on live TV; "I'm sick of hearing politicians congratulate and thank each other when these people have been without food and water for days." Check this article comparing what incompetant FEMA chief Mike Brown says and what others are reporting.
• The Feds aren't allowing the Red Cross into New Orleans. Unacceptable.
  

Folks are coming together and doing their part to raise money for relief. People on Soulstrut are auctioning some amazing records, with all profits going to hurricane victims. They've raised over $7000 already. Emil is donating any and all money raised last night TONIGHT (Philly area people better represent!) at his DJ gig. Schools around the country are doing "shoebox drives." The Red Cross has raised almost $20 million. People are opening their homes. Celebrities are donating millions out of their pockets. Home Depot is matching in-store donations up to $1 million. Shit, even evil corporate behomoth Walmart donated $17 mil.

What about Big Oil? Exxon alone banked over a $7.6 billion profit in the last fiscal quarter. So how much did Exxon pledge so far? A whopping $2 million. Two. Million. That's the same amount as the combined gifts of Diddy and Jay Z, individuals, who--despite considerable success (and some posturing) as rap artists and executives--have never seen close to $7 billion between the two of them. Chevron donated a comparatively large $5 million, which (assuming their quarterly profits are also in the $7 billion dollar range) is about 1/15th of what these guys are profiting in a single day.

But they've got to repair their refineries and rigs which took extensive damage! You cry, fictional Big Oil apologist reader. It's all insured, and with the profits these companies are bringing in with the current oil and gas prices, they'll have plenty of loot (if perhaps not quite enough actual oil) to burn.

Step the fuck up Big Oil! Hell, America is fighting a war or two around the world in order to insure your continued profitability (thus depleting the precautions, manpower and resources we have here at home in order to alleviate this disaster,) the least you could do is give more than a (pretty sorry) token back.

Update: Exxon has generously offered to up their donation to $7 million, which my rudimentary math figures to be about 1/12th of the amount of profits they'll take in TODAY (and that's not taking into account that profits have undoubtedly gone up since the hurricane. Misers.

Random Katrina Related Thoughts:

• The government (such as it is) needs to let folks loot. Rescue and evacuate everybody you can. Property loss should not be a priority.
• People criticizing looters on principal need to think long and hard about what they'd do in a lawless infrastructure-less situation. You take what you need, then you take what you can and hope it comes in handy.
• Air Force 1s are unlikely to come in handy when you're thigh-deep in filthy, toxic flood-waters.
• There's a fine line between "looting" and "finding." That line is called racism.
• New Orleans was dangerous and scary as Hell before this storm. The fact that gunshots are popping off and vicious crimes are being committed, in many ways, is just another night in the NOLA.
• That said, people that are shooting at rescue workers are sick and misguided.
• That said, N.O. police force (widely reported to be looting and marauding themselves) is the most corrupt big city police force in the country and has been forever. You can't blame folks for not trusing them.
• Finally, one more time for the deaf and blind; the fact that individuals are sacrificing and donating to help Katrina victims is heart-warming, the fact that corporations (to varying degrees) are stepping up and donating is reassuring, the fact that our government (who take half my damn paycheck in taxes every two weeks) is unable to take care of this shit on their own and must depend upon what President Bush calls the "Armies of Compassion," because they're pouring hundreds of billions in money and manpower and equipment into an unjust war no-one wants, is sickening.
  

I got a real bad feeling in my stomach when I heard earlier today that the levee broke in New Orleans. I've got people down there. They were lucky enough to be able to evacuate, but it looks like their homes will be gone. To everybody there, and all along the Gulf Coast, our hearts are with you. Damn.

'Scrips:

• Let's just go ahead and declare it the Summer of Wayne. I already told you dude was on The World, now check out the positive pub in the Boston Phoenix. Big up.
• This Spike Lee endorsed "Confederate States of America" flick looks sociologically interesting (and maybe even funny) but historically retarded. Ignoring the fact that slavery was on economically shaky legs even before the war and surely wouldn't have lasted until today, wouldn't a more interesting premise have been to suppose that the South was able to secede and form their own nation (which is what they were after, after all) and not that the whole country would have become Confederate?
  
• For the insensitive and heartless among you, this is sick but funny Craigslist Katrina-related humor.
  

The new John Waters flick, A Dirty Shame, which due to its NC-17 rating didn't see theatrical release and was banned from Blockbuster, is a fucking riot; as slick as his more recent stuff, but just as filthy and outrageous as Pink Flamingos (noting of course, that nothing could ever be as filthy and outrageous as the talking sphinctor butthole dance*).

The casting is brilliant. Tracy Ullman is incredible, Selma Blair has the best fake fake-tits ever, Chris Isaac makes a great square, and even Johnny Knoxville is great as a beatific sex-addict. Mink Stole and the rest of Waters' regulars are top-notch as usual. Track this joint down or else we'll all know what a neuter you are.

B-More free with your sexualities y'all.

*If anybody has a clip of this, please share... oom-bow-bow-oom-ba-oom-bow-bow...

Nothing to say here.

• Matt Jones is a freak of nature; 6'6" and runs a sub-4.4/40. Druing their beatdown at the hands of the mighty Falcons, Leftwich kept tossing 'em up for Jones to go get, and he did. Not bad for a fucking hippie.
• Speaking of, Gerald Green is the Jerry Garcia of the NBA.
  
• There's a war going on inside the heart and mind of Ricky Williams.
• Loquacious Wayne is making moves. Check dude out on NPR's "The World" dropping that Reggaeton knowledge.
• Where are those fascist Utah stormtroopers when you need them? Idiots.
  

Hate Scions 'cause they're ugly? Hate Scions 'cause they perpetuate played-out backpacker aesthtics? Hate Scions 'cause they're exploiting a subculture to make that money?

All valid resons. I'm gonna go ahead and hate them 'cause they censored Bavu Blakes.

Huge thanks to whoever had the ingenuity and focus to pair two of my favorite people in the world, Vince Young and Bubba Sparxxx, on this stupendous highlight video. (I ain't mad at Luba Luba either, though I would have preferred some T.I.P.)

The neighborhood of West Campus, Austin, TX is about as college (big state university style) as you can get. White kids with well-worn baseball caps in shiney new SUVs with Jerry Jeff Walker and/or Sublime stickers. Hemp necklaced girls and guys cruising by on shiney new Gary Fisher or Rockhopper mountain bikes. Big columned frat-house mansions with manicured lawns. A few rat-trap apartment and co-op complexes for the hippies and hipsters and various hipster vegan type kids. Lots of large, new, pre-fab looking condo complexes. Grande Mart convenience store where two randy Pakistani brothers have been selling booze to under-age co-eds (and kegs to their boyfriends) for two decades now.

This neighborhood--wealthy, idyllic, ridiculous--was the scene of a gruesome murder on Monday. Colton Pitonyak, a 22 year-old douchebag ex-frat boy drug dealer shot a girl named Jennifer Cave to death in her condo. Then he drove over to the local over-priced chi-chi hardware store and bought industrial strength 55 gallon drum liners, rubber gloves, carpet cleaner, and a hacksaw.

He hacked her into pieces and then either lost the stomach for the clean-up or was interrupted, because he disappeared, and that's how her body was found, shot, stabbed and chopped up.

Authorities traced a call made on his cell-phone to somewhere in Mexico, and dude was on the run. In the midst of this manhunt someone tracked Colton the killer down on online college social network Facebook, where he had all kinds of creepy quotes and mob-movie appreciation things going on. Typical wannabe gangsta frat-boy drug-dealer steez, except we know dude had made his fantasies reality. Creepy.

He also belonged to a number of French-speaking clubs, fueling speculation that he might be fluent in Spanish (and thus much harder to catch South of the Border) as well, or at least on his way to Martinique.

Then somebody noticed that our violent fugitive frat-boy was logged-in to Facebook from somewhere in Mexico and had even updated in the time after the murder. Holy shit. So wrong. Not just creepy; super-nerd creepy. Internet beef has calories too!

Mexican authorities caught the manpris-wearing guy yesterday and sent him back to Texas.


Further complicating matters is the fact that he was with an ex-girlfriend, Laura Hall, who wasn't charged with anything. Was she kidnapped? Coerced? Unaware? Maybe, but her Facebook profile is pretty creepy in it's own right. Under "Additional Info:" she wrote, "I should really be more of a horrific person. Its in the works." Woah. Sounds like they were on some '05 Bonnie and Clyde ish to me. Hell, maybe she killed the girl and dude was only trying to help her cover it up.

Update: She has now updated her Facebook profile to say, "Colton's innocent. He's the most generous, kindest person that I have even been blessed to spend time with."

UPDATE!!!: Some guy named "pimpology" over on Hornfans is in the midst of an IM conversation with Laura Hall. This is so super-secret-internet-google-cheat-codes, that I'm beside myself. I can't wait to live-chat with dude live from Death Row dude while he's waiting for the needle.

Update (8/27): Hall has been arrested for helping Pitonyak escape.

(9/29): Here's the arrest warrant for Laura Hall. "That's just how I roll," the poor confused little murderess stated when asked how she could help Pitonyak. Sounds like she's been hanging out at a few too many "Kill Whitey" parties.

A TV movie, no doubt, will let us know soon enough.

Excuse me while I go throw up.


Back in the Game 'Scrips:

• Loquacious Wayne, doing a terrible job of dispelling the myth that Harvard folks are smarter than the rest of us, is back from the Cape.
• B-More is so depressing. The Police Chief's daughter is a crack-whore.
  
• I have no idea what the story behind this fascist police action at a Utah rave is. Anybody?
• Is it September yet?