Wednesday, November 28, 2007

I mean, seriously, I get the Oprah thingee, but does anyone really give a fuck what Barbra Streisand thinks anymore (besides dickless wingnuts)? Even 82-year-old queens in Chelsea have pretty much forgotten about her, so why is my google news all aflutter?

She does look very patriotic these days, though:

read the whole post »

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/28/07 at 06:58 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Hey, at least he’s not Bernie Kerik…

From Inside Catholic:

Since 2002, Msgr. Alan Placa has worked for Rudy Giuliani as a consultant at Giuliani Partners. In 2003 a grand jury report of Suffolk County, NY, accused Placa of sexually abusing multiple victims.
A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners told Salon Magazine that the former New York City mayor believes Placa was “unjustly accused.” The grand jury report contains accusations from three alleged victims, including two children (Placa is named as “Priest F” in the report.) According to testimony before the grand jury, “Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F.”
[...]
Placa and Giuliani have known each other since they attended Loughlin High School in Brooklyn. They became close friends and occasionally double-dated. After high school, they attended Manhattan College and joined the same fraternity, Phi Rho Pi.
Placa was ordained a Catholic priest in 1970. He served in various parishes and a preparatory seminary on Long Island before working for Catholic Charities and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. At Giuliani’s first wedding, Placa was the best man. Placa helped him get his annulment in 1982 before he officiated at Giuliani’s wedding to Donna Hanover in 1984. Placa also officiated at funeral services for Giuliani’s mother and father and baptized both of his children.
Because Placa has a law degree from Hofstra University, he became a legal consultant to the diocese and was part of a three-person team reviewing charges of sexual abuse by priests. According to Newsday, Placa was the “chief architect” of the Rockville Diocese sexual abuse policy.
In addition to containing accusations against Placa, the Suffolk County grand jury claimed that the evidence “clearly demonstrates that diocesan officials agreed to engage in conduct that resulted in the prevention, hindrance, and delay in the discovery of criminal conduct by priests.”
The grand jury report includes excerpts from a letter in which Placa brags about his ability to settle multi-million dollar clergy abuse claims for “$20,000 to $100,000.”
During the 1980s, Placa was the legal advisor to the House of Affirmation in Worchester, MA, which offered counseling services to priests accused of sexual abuse. One person who worked at this facility called it a “pedophile boot camp.” An abuse victim referred to it as a “breeding ground for sexual predators.”
In June 2002, Giuliani called Placa “one of the finest people I know.”

(via Sullivan)

MORE:

• Brian Ross covered this story back in October.
  
• Two stories from The New York Times: here and here.
  

RELATED: Ross has info on another dirty Giuliani crony here.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/27/07 at 12:32 PM
Permalink

I woke up this morning to hear that horrible clacking noise (unfortunately, I’ve heard it before on an older computer) coming from my external hard drive and see a “delayed write failed” error message on my computer.  Fortunately, I don’t have anything critical on the external ... mostly just a lot of MP3s. I was hunting around the innertubes for data recovery options when I came across this blog post that says that freezing your hard drive works as a short-term solution for data recovery.  Judging from the comments on the blog post (and on other message boards I found afterwards) this appears to have worked for some people. I don’t think Rumproast gets a lot of geek traffic, but has anyone successfully tried this?  Also, can I just put the whole external hard drive, case and all, into the freezer or do I have to crack it open and take out the disk (or disks)?

We now return to our regular non-geek programming.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/27/07 at 08:45 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

There’s a coffee shop for sale in Maspeth, NY:

Listing Description

Low Rent $2000 5 year lease - Landlord willing to extend Basement No other restaurant nearby. Busy commercial area. Schools, offices, retail, lodging and industrial all nearby. Large Irish, Italian and Hispanic base. High breakfast/lunch traffic. Full inventory included. Ready to go! Smooth transition. Currently open at 8am, close at 7pm six days. Increase earning potential by adding pork products such as ham. Also beers. Motivated seller. Please call to schedule appointment. SERIOUS INQUIRES ONLY.

(Thanks for the tip, Colin!)

UPDATE: I guess we were driving a little too much traffic to the listing because Restaurants For Sale Online has pulled it.  Or, I guess, someone with an excess of pork pouring out of their pockets might have bought it. You can view the Google cache here or check out our screencap.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/27/07 at 06:20 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Monday, November 26, 2007

According to The Brooklyn Paper, the G train will start running to Park Slope and on through to the F’s Church Avenue stop (Kensington) permanently once construction begins at the Smith-Ninth Street stop.  This is great news for folks like me who have been struggling with frequent Slope to Williamsburg/Greenpoint trips.  The G still sucks, but it is considerably less sucky now.  Bravo.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/26/07 at 12:21 PM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/26/07 at 08:21 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

This morning, while watching an Ocean Spray commercial, I realized that I know next to nothing about the harvesting of cranberries.

This concludes this morning’s edition of Things I Know Nothing About.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/26/07 at 08:14 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Sunday, November 25, 2007

I want to get out and enjoy what remains of this crisp fall day, so I’m going to keep this Selector short n’ (except for the FReeper link) sweet…

• THE LOST SOWETO COMP: The always terrific Matsuli Music is featuring a wonderful out-of-print find of South African music released in ‘83 called Soweto. It’s a stellar comp, lovingly converted to MP3 from vinyl, and the instrumental “Here We Come” that they spotlight in their post is one of the best (and most original) African instrumentals I’ve ever heard.  Highly recommended!
  
• ELISA FLYNN’S TWO-MAN BAND: My talented pal Elisa Flynn is unveiling her new live set-up with an accompanying drummer this Tuesday at Union Hall in Park Slope. Lurid Culture recently gave her a great endorsement (scroll down) in a blurb about this show.  As they say, “Catch her on the way up.” [UPDATE: Sadly, Elisa’s performance has been cancelled due to illness.]
  
• PUBIC HUMILIATION: Nobody is better at tearing down wingnuts with just a few words than TBogg. Nobody.
  
• AND SPEAKING OF WINGNUTS: Someone at Free Republic posts a story about celebrities in California having to flee their homes due to wildfires, a few FReepers launch into predictable thick-headed rants about Hollyweirdos and environuts (“I say let the whole state burn! Get rid of the nut jobs, I do not even like to admit California is one of the states.”), and all hell breaks loose (“I am beginning to wonder if ‘conservative’ is such a good thing if it means heartless.”). Hilarious.  But remember, liberals are the crazy and angry ones…
  

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/25/07 at 10:58 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Above: The first 5 minutes of Bound to Lose.

Normally I only write “The Selector” on Sundays but I am so freakin’ excited about the new documentary Bound to Lose that I had to shoehorn in another post. The Holy Modal Rounders were the most godwonderful skull fuck to crawl out of the NYC folk scene in the early 60’s. Their first two albums, unimaginatively titled The Holy Modal Rounders and The Holy Modal Rounders 2, stand to this day as first-rate alterna-folk treasures and have thankfully been re-released by Fantasy as a jam-packed two-fer that is one of the best deals you can find on a single CD today.

I had the pleasure and displeasure of seeing the reunited Rounders twice in the late 90’s in NYC.  The first show at the now extinct Bottom Line was a real treat, an ear-to-ear smile-athon ... just way too much fun.  So much fun, in fact, that a totally inebriated Steve Weber (is there any other?) had to, quite literally, be dragged off stage.  The second show I witnessed at the also extinct Tonic was a contentious mess, Weber and Peter Stampfel clearly not enjoying being in the same room together, let alone sharing the same planet.  Bound to Lose appears to cover all of the love and all of the loathing and it has finally crawled (probably on its belly) to NYC for a seven day run (12/7-12/13) at the Anthology Film Archives.  The first and last nights will feature performances by Stampfel (with Jeffrey Lewis & the Jitters—and an open bar—and Gary Lucas, respectively) and they’ve tucked all sorts of goodies into the length of the run (including playwrite and ex-Rounder Sam Shepard rejoining Stampfel for a performance at Pianos following the 12/9 showing).

For more information, check out the film’s MySpace page (you can see the trailer and an outtake there, as well) or look below the fold for the info I lovingly cut n’ pasted for your edification.

read the whole post »

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/25/07 at 10:21 AM
Permalink

Saturday, November 24, 2007

From The New York Times, about Richard Perle:

Mr. Perle knows no such shame.

And this has nothing to do with him being completely wrong about everything regarding Iraq (and, now, Iran), it’s about how much he likes shopping at Costco.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/24/07 at 01:34 PM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

A great overview of Rudy Giuliani’s shameless cronyism in today’s Washington Post:

Giuliani “had a blind spot when it came to people he knew well” and “very little respect for the vetting process,” [Jerome] Hauer said. “The competent people in the administration all tended to leave because they got tired of the borderline-incompetent people who got in. He ran off the professionals because they were difficult to work with. If they didn’t do things the way he wanted or overshadowed him, he got furious.”

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/24/07 at 09:54 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

I guess this is as good (and appropriate) a time as any to brag that I was in Eli Roth’s fake Thanksgiving trailer in the middle of the movie (movies?) Grindhouse directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. I was cast as a “hooligan” during the parade scene and you can see me (wearing sunglasses) for approximately a millisecond right after the long-haired guy yells, “Get out of the way!”  I’m the hooligan who spins the tuba player around. A pivotal scene and expertly executed. Here’s a screencap so you can see how fucking intense I am:

And here’s a take that didn’t make it into the faux trailer.  You can see me running in from the right in the black jacket and blue jeans. Once again, bathe in the intensity:

And I took the photo below of what I nearly tripped over in the special effects trailer.  I’m putting it after the fold for the benefit of my more sensitive readers. I hope your turkey looks a lot better than this one:

read the whole post »

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/21/07 at 04:28 PM
Permalink

This is pretty funny. (via Eschaton)

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/21/07 at 12:08 PM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Presented without comment:

While expressing hopes that the situation would not lead to military action against Iran, [Richard Perle] warned that this might be needed if other tactics failed to prevent the country developing nuclear arms.

And Mr Perle, a former assistant Secretary of Defence to President Reagan, predicted that such a move would have an unexpected level of both international and domestic support.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/21/07 at 10:39 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

AOL (yeah, I know) has a pretty decent run-through of the 25 biggest box office bombs and if you ever wondered why you don’t see much of Kevin Costner or Warren Beatty anymore, well, look no further.  And if you ever wondered why you never saw the supposedly-halfway-decent Heaven’s Gate, let me enhance your bewilderment by presenting The.Most.Awesome.Movie.Still.Ever.:

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/21/07 at 09:53 AM
Trackbacks (0) • Permalink