Out Of Gas

I thought I should forward this while it's still timely.  


Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a "GAS TAX HOLIDAY". You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

But bear in mind that this transaction requires absolute confidentiality. Do not visit WWW.GASTAXSCAM.COM where there is information about dangers of our proposal and a petition to stop us from this diversion of funds.

PLEASE NOTIFY US URGENTLY OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PROPOSAL

Awaiting your rapid response

Yours truly

SENATORS HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN MCCAIN

Just like Spring rain

Today marks two years since we lost Grant McLennan, and two weeks since the release of Robert Forster's latest solo album The Evangelist.

The album has three songs co-written McLennan before he died and instrumental backing by Go-Betweens bassist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson, so it's like tribute tribute to Grant McLennan by his former bandmates. Here's Forster's description of the album in his own words.

It's 10 songs long and is my first solo album in 11 years. In May 2006 Grant McLennan, my song writing partner died, bringing to an end The Go-Betweens. I wasn't sure if I was ever going to make another record but this summer it just materialized. It's a direct record. I've written seven of the songs, and three are co-written with Grant. Adele and Glenn from The Go-Betweens are with me. It's not Oceans Apart 2 - it's something else, but with trails going into the past and I'm proud of it.

Robert Christgau said in his NPR review of The Evangelist that "The impolite truth is that Robert Forster was The Go-Between's lesser half", but the actual impolite truth is that Robert Christgau doesn't know what the hell he's talking about (and doesn't know proper apostrophe usage either -- "Go Between's" wtf?). The Go-Betweens were very much an equal partnership. Robert was darker and more cerebral Lennon to Grant's poppier and more conventional McCartney, but there was no greater or lesser half.

I agree that Forster and McLennan were stronger as partners than by themselves, so one fun exercise for fans is to assemble their 90's solo albums into pseudo Go-Betweens' albums. Last year Beggars Banquet assembled a two-disc compilation called Intermission with the best of Forster's and McLennan's solo material (one disc for Grant and one disc for Robert). If you listen to both discs on shuffle play, you can almost pretend that you're listening to a long lost Go-Betweens album.

Despite the obvious Grant McLennan influence (both in scope and in sound) The Evangelist sounds very much like a Robert Forster solo album. It's still a major bummer that we won't have any more Go-Betweens albums, but I hope this is only the first of many more Robert Forster albums! Maybe Robert was the lesser half of the Go-Betweens, but he's the only half we've got.

Pork Chile Verde

Today is Cinco de Mayo, so I prepared my traditional pork chile verde. I think chile verde might be nature's most perfect food (with the possible exception of pork vindaloo, which was the dish I made with the other half of this pork loin). Both dishes are astonishingly easy to make in a slow cooker, and very yummy to eat when you get home.

Pork Chile Verde
2lbs Pork Loin (cubed)
1 bunch cilantro
2 onions
3-4 cloves garlic
5-6 tomatillos
5-6 green chiles
(any combination of Anaheim, Jalapeno, Poblano, Serrano)
1 cup chicken broth
12 oz. beer (Dos Equis Amber)

Chop the pork into one inch cubes then brown in a pan in batches. Meanwhile roast the tomatillos and "large" chiles (Poblano or Anaheim) in a cookie sheet on the top shelf of an oven preheated to 450 degrees. Remove the skin from the chiles then blast in a food processor or blender with some of the broth until slightly chunky. Seed and chop the smaller chiles (jalapeno or serrano) and add to the tomatillo mixture with some cilantro (if you like cilantro, and who doesn't?).

After the pork is finished browning, toss the onions and garlic in the pan and slowly brown. Add the onions and garlic to a crockpot with the meat and tomatillo mixture, add the beer and the rest of the broth and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Serve with corn tortillas and garnish with sour cream, cheese, and lime. There's no need for salsa because the chile verde is spicy enough by itself. The sour cream and cheese helps to cut the heat.

Not surprisingly, chile verde goes really well with beer and I'm mixing it with Dos Equis Amber. You can usually tell which holiday is coming up by which brand of beer is on sale at BevMo. Tsingtao means Chinese New Year is coming up, Guinness means St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and Dos Equis and/or Corona means Cinco de Mayo is coming up.

I usually only buy Dos Equis Amber once a year (when it's on sale the week before Cinco de Mayo), but it's pretty good, both as a base for chile verde and to drink by itself.

54.2 percent baseball

The A's had a promotion where plaza level tickets for today's game against the Rangers would be reduced by one dollar for every hit the team got against the Angels on Thursday. After they ended that game with 20 hits (winning 15-8), the $24 tickets were on sale for $4 each, and I managed to grab a couple before they were all sold out.

Nothing makes a baseball game more exciting that sitting among a bunch of people who paid just four bucks to get in, since everyone who was in the plaza level was there because they managed to buy tickets during the 30 minutes after the Anaheim game when they were available. Everyone arrived early and stayed to the end of the game, and were rewarded with an exciting one, with a game winning home run by Jack Cust (as we approach the first anniversary of Custy At The Bat)

I still don't know what to make of A's team. They were tied for first place at the end of April, and are currently one game behind the Angels at 19-14. If the season ended today, they'd be the AL Wild Card team, even though the A's don't look anything like a playoff team. They just look like a .500 team that happens to be playing at a .542 clip. Their motto this year is "One Hundred Percent Baseball", and they're more exciting than they've been in a long time, even though they don't seem as talented as they were a few years ago. It's better for a team to be overachieving and undertalented than the other way around!

Meanwhile, the Sharks are heading to double overtime with Dallas, and are on the verge of tying up their semifinal series with the Stars after being down 3 games to none. Only three teams in NHL history have rallied from 0-3 series deficits, but this year looks to be San Jose's turn. If the Sharks end up winning tonight, they should be a lock for game seven on Tuesday. Anyway, the fifth period awaits!

Beneath the hawthorn on the green

I've been trying to keep things fresh by modifying my blog description each month. My description for the month of May ("just a Spring clean for the May queen") comes from the lyrics to this British Invasion-era obscurity that was later ripped off by some unscrupulous copycats from the early 70s, who tried to pass it off as their own song.



My two favorite lines in the song are "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. It's just a Spring clean for the May queen".

What, exactly, does that mean? That's the part with the (alleged) satanic backmasking, so maybe Page and Plant were pledging allegiance to Aleister Crowley and Anton LeVay through coded messages that were only meaningful when played backwards? Sometime words have two meanings, and sometimes they have no meaning at all. It really makes me wonder.

"Stairway To Heaven" is proof that words don't have to mean anything to be meaningful. I mean, what's this: "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now"? If I found anything bustling in my hedgerow I'd get out my shotgun!

-- Chuck Eddy

Three Minute Heroes

I've decided to keep updating my muxtape each week with whatever theme tackles my fancy.

This week is dedicated to the three minute pop song.

Here are ten songs from my collection that are exactly 3:00 long, which for some reason that adds up to a total time of 29:59, so there's a missing second somewhere!

Ten Three Minute Songs (10 songs, 29:59?)

1. The Dukes Of Stratosphear - Vanishing Girl (3:00)
2. The Electric Prunes - Too Much To Dream (3:00)
3. Fountains of Wayne - Hackensack (3:00)
4. Game Theory - I Turned Her Away (3:00)
5. Let's Active - Blue Line (3:00)
6. The Magnetic Fields - California Girls (3:00)
7. The Move - I Can Hear the Grass Grow (3:00)
8. Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl (3:00)
9. Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Who Invented Himself (3:00)
10. Tracey Ullman - They Don't Know (3:00)

The Magnetic Fields track is a stay-on from last week, but the others are freshly added. There's another 3:00 song on Distortion ("Too Drunk To Dream", which I thought would fit with the Electric Prunes track), but that would have required removing one track and adding another one, and "California Girls" fits the mix's pseudo-theme (songs by, about, and for girls) better.

Mission Accomplished V

On the fifth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished", George W. Bush is now the most unpopular president in American history.

28% of the American public approve of how Bush his handling his job as president and 71% disapprove (with 1% still undecided?). 28% is not the lowest approval rating a president has ever had, but no U.S. president has ever had a disapproval rating over 70%. Back on Mission Accomplished Day (five flippidy-flopping years ago), Bush's approval rating was where his disapproval rating is now.


"I’m thrilled to be anywhere with high ratings these days"
- GWB on Deal Or No Deal

A graph of Bush's approval ratings over the last five years looks just like a graph of the U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro over the same period.

On the bright side, it's now just 264 days until the end of an error.