9:26 - huckabee's speech was more in line with the current party line. that's not necessarily a bad thing. relied mostly on mccain's military background. two interesting quotes:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." - Lincoln didn't say that it was Gerard Ford but wikipedia says it might have been used by Davy Crockett.

"Palin got more votes as Mayor of Wasillah than Biden got as president of the United States"

10:01 - rudy. yech. he's the attack machine. they drill down on the lack of executive experience. "barack obama has never led anything. NADA"

"change is not a destination just as hope is not a strategy"

Cites Obama's Georgian policy - http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWQyMzcxOGIzNmUwYWVkNGEwMzQyYzQ1YTU5OWNkYmI=

10:28 - here we go. why is she introducing her family again?

"i guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities"

"i'm not going to washington to seek their [media's] opinion. i'm going to washington serve the people of this great country."

again with the quotes from last week.

energy - FINALLY.

"[obama] never uses the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

feisty....

"I can't stand John McCain" - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/21/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4369807.shtml

nice speech.

why can't we have a mrs. smith in washington?

The shows kickoff Friday, October 10 in Minneapolis and end with a run up the East Coast that will include a return stop to the New York City area.

A limited number of pre-sale tickets for most shows will be available starting Tuesday, July 15 through Music Today:

http://magneticfields.musictoday.com/

Here's the rundown:

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS - OCTOBER 2008 TOUR SCHEDULE:

Oct 10 (Fri)
Minneapolis, MN
The State Theater

Oct 11 (Sat)
Madison, WI
Capitol Theater at Overture Center for the Arts

Oct 13 (Mon)
Dallas, TX
The Majestic
** (Music Today pre-sale not available)

Oct 14 (Tue)
Austin, TX
The Paramount Theater
** (Music Today pre-sale not available)

Oct 15 (Wed)
Boulder, CO
The Boulder Theater

Oct 17 (Fri)
Atlanta, GA
Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center

Oct 18 (Sat)
Raleigh, NC
Meymandi Concert Hall at Progress Energy Center

Oct 23 (Thu)
Jersey City, NJ
Leows Jersey Theatre

Oct 24 (Fri)
Columbus, OH
The Southern Theatre

Oct 25 (Sat)
Philadelphia, PA
The Merriam Theater
** (Music Today pre-sales start August 4)

Oct 26 (Sun)
Washington, DC
Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University

Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, and Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, have both accepted invitations to meet with Mr. McCain at his home in Arizona, according to Republican familiars with the decision.

If he chooses Jindal this election will be epic.

The Pipettes have two new members, Ani and Anna. We are demoing up 20-25 new songs, with an eye to recording a second album in the Summer. We want to tell you all about them, but we're very much head-down working on new material at the moment

This means that RiotBecki and Rosay have left to pursue other musical pursuits (which will be brilliant when they emerge), we wish them all the best, we're all still great friends and news on their pursuits will be closely supported by us.People may be confused by such a drastic change in line-up but please rest assured - if we were to be an imitation of ourselves we would stop. Plus the Pipettes has more members come and go than major labels have A&R men, it's just another day in the office for us (plus we've got to go one better than the Sugababes).

We refer you to the manifesto on our website www.thepipettes.com for a more in depth explanation on the functioning of the band; this was the natural step to take. For a more in depth series of answers, we direct you to the prepared video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Thanks for all the continued support over this period and we're incredibly excited to be working toward bringing you a new album that will be unlike anything we (or anyone else) have ever done. We will also have limited edition novelty tee-shirts on sale soon, keep an eye out for them and join the growing thousands who can now claim to be 'ex-Pipettes.'

Love
The Pipettes

This was a response by Monster Bobby, one of the Pipettes founding members, to the Pipettes forum:

ok, amusing though i do find it to see you lot constantly slagging nettwerk off, i feel, nonetheless like someone should leap to their defence just a little when people are getting the wrong end of the stick about things. sometimes you guys have a crazy idea about the role of management in a group like the pipettes. for starters, the "badly worded" statement was written by the band and not by nettwerk (well, we thought it was funny); second, the forum is closing, temporarily, because the whole website is closing, temporarily, in order to be completely revamped and relaunched to fit around the new thing. apart form anything else, i started a big discussion on here a few months ago about what to do with the forum and the general conclusion from most posters on that was it would be a good idea to close down the forum and possibly relaunch it in the future in a slightly different form. i'm sorry if our little statement implied that we were closing down the forum as some sort of punitive measure for bad behaviour. this was misleading and regrettable. as for a PR disaster, well, what did you want us to do? two members have left, this was not exactly part of the plan, but frankly we're dealing with it, and overcoming this little hurdle has given us the momentum to write and play better than ever before. the pipettes was never a group about the identities and personalities of its members, much more about a certain idea, an approach to doing things, involving careful study, analysis and thought. being in the pipettes is, in many ways, and i have said this before, a little like school. we have a few graduates from our school now and we are very excited to see what becomes of them. ideally we would have waited to announce anything until we had something to show for the new line-up. we wanted to say, ok, becki and rose have gone, but listen to THIS, and everyone would've gone f**k me Reg, that's amazing, instead of having to spend months speculating about whether we were still gonna be as good as we were and what have you. but, well, everyone was gossiping, perhaps inevitably, and barding was making a nuisance of himself again like some spurned lover... i personally was all up for letting people talk and getting on with the task at hand, but certain people began to take the opinion that it was getting ridiculous, and pitchfork were sniffing around and saying, 'ello, what's all this then, so we released a statement, and it got on the front page of nme.com, pitchfork and popjustice. now i wouldn't call that a pr disaster. actually, i'd call that quite a tasty bit of press. besides, announcing everything at once seemed to conform to larry david's 'double transgression theory', and as we have recently come to realise that larry david is the only ethical subject in southern california, his advice on managing bad news seemed as cogent as anyone's.

while we're at it, this polydor thing. everyone on here who's at least half-awake has known for sometime that we signed to interscope records in america last year. interscope is a part of universal music group, polydor is a part of universal music group. interscope over there, polydor over here. get it? no big change there. for the one chap on the popjustice forum who is concerned about indie rock bands signing to major labels, well, first off, what is he doing on the popjustice forum with such antiquated rockist views? and secondly, please don't besmirch the good name of the pipettes with a word as sullied as indie, which these days seems to be little more than a synonym for soft rock. actually, according to simon reynolds (in rip it up and start again) the word indie first starts cropping up (to replace the word 'independent' or 'diy' or'punk' or whatever) at precisely the point in the 80s when indie labels started making deals with majors (see Blanco y Negro) and majors started producing little boutique fake indies, so indie, from the very beginning, referred to music that appropriated some of the key signifiers of independent music but was in fact on a major label, if a somewhat concealed major label.

the pipettes, however, nailed their colours to the wall from the off, we are a pop group. a meta-pop group, if you like. we do not script everything we do in advance, although we have considered doing so. however, even if i had written the script for our whole career long in advance, neither i, nor any of the rest of us, would have come up with anything half as funny as recording a second album (second! that's all, just the second one!) with, at least as far as the public eye is concerned, none of the original members. i am grateful for destiny's extraordinary sense of humour for throwing this our way. It makes perfect sense for the pipettes to do all the things that pop groups do, but more so, in a slightly more exaggerated and preposterous fashion, in much the same way that erik satie was best able to poke fun at the french bourgeois society establishment by dressing like the very model of an average bourgeois functionary. according to slovenian lacanian philosopher, slavoj zizek, there are two kinds of rules in any given society. there are the official rules which say you must do this (but really, everybody knows that you don't really have to) and you must not do this (but really everybody knows that you can get away with it) and then there are the somewhat more hidden, unofficial rules of conduct. anyone who follows the rules precisely as written, with no regard for those unwritten rules or the tacitly accepted exceptions to the official rules, is either a psychopath or a revolutionary. such, in some ways, at least, is our approach to pop music. we must, in a sense, do everything wrong in order to know that we are doing the right thing.

IMG_8843 copy, originally uploaded by dead-ro.

Sign says, "Would we have allowed Nazi Germany to host the Olympics?"

By Gary David Goldberg

It’s been almost 20 years since “Family Ties” went off the air. And Alex P. Keaton’s political idols, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, have each gone off to their deserved places in history. Yet I still get asked a lot — O.K. maybe not a lot but more than twice — whether Alex Keaton would be a Republican today. And, if so, who would be his candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

Before I go any further I should point out that I’m a registered independent. I vote Democratic most of the time but not always. I am part of the 75 percent of Americans who strongly disapprove of the job George Bush has done as president.

I should also point out that to properly represent Alex and his political point of view I, as well as the rest of the “Family Ties” writers, did a great deal of research on this subject. And during that time I developed a very healthy respect for the true conservative point of view. A powerful and proud strain of American political thought. And even today I bow to no one in my desire to see the capital gains tax eliminated.

Alex Keaton was a true conservative Republican. He was for limited government. He was strongly against government involvement in the personal lives of its citizens. He was competent and capable — the ultimate over-achiever. But, above all Alex Keaton was a firm believer in the power of ideas. He believed in the competitive marketplace of intellectual discourse, where the best ideas win — usually Alex’s. And so it’s difficult to recognize in this current incarnation of the Republican Party, a party whose legacy will include Terri Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina, a place where Alex Keaton might feel the least bit comfortable.

Alex was smart. Real smart. And, proud of it. He also believed deeply in the power of science. And, the free exchange of scientific ideas. Uncensored. Unfettered by excessive government regulation. Not stifled by religious orthodoxy. Not rewritten by political hacks with no academic or scientific credentials. So it’s hard to picture Alex in a party that seems to be waging war against science, and where their presidential candidates seem comfortable debating whether or not the earth is round.

On the other hand, I can’t see Alex easily voting for a Democrat. I think his natural inclination would have been to go for John McCain. But, that would have been John McCain in 2000, when he was still talking straight: Jerry Falwell was an agent of intolerance, and waterboarding is torture. McCain going back on those two key points would have certainly kept Alex from pulling the lever for him now.

I think Ron Paul’s message is one that would resonate with Alex. And he would appreciate Paul’s intellectual power and his willingness to state his positions unequivocally and without regard to which way the political winds were blowing. I think he’d really like Mike Huckabee’s ideas of getting rid of the IRS. (I know I do.) But ultimately Alex likes to win, and I think that would have kept him from fully committing to either of those guys.

Hillary Clinton? I have to disclose that I’ve known Hillary Clinton for more than 20 years. I think she’s a warm, funny and caring person of formidable intelligence. I admire her, and I would love to be able to say that Alex would vote for her. But I don’t think it could happen.

So what about Barack Obama? I honestly don’t know. I think Alex is an independent now, and as deeply engaged in politics as ever. He would be intrigued by Obama — impressed with his eloquence and intelligence. He would be unhappy with his plan to tax the wealthy at a higher rate, but keenly aware that eight years of neglect and corruption and no-bid contracts have to somehow be overturned. And, I think Obama’s slogan is very similar to Alex’s own personal mantra: “Of Course I Can.”

I think that Alex might just be ready to take a chance. I can picture him stepping into the voting booth, closing the curtain behind him, taking a deep breath and then for the first time in his life putting his hand up to the Democratic Party lever. He’d touch it tentatively, trying to get comfortable. Take his hand off. Put it back. He’d grasp the lever firmly. Squeeze it. And as he was about to pull, we FADE OUT.

For what its worth Michael J. Fox and I have differing opinions about just where Alex Keaton is today. I believe he does pro bono legal work for the Children’s Defense Fund.

Mike thinks he’s just now getting out of prison.

RIP William Buckley