Rose Bowl

I'm ready for the "Granddaddy of Them All," the 103rd Rose Bowl.

USC and Penn State could have been in the final four, perhaps should have, as they each beat a team that ended up there.

USC handled Washington much like Alabama did Friday.  Problem: The Trojans lost two games they shouldn't have before settling on a QB.

PSU beat Ohio State earlier this season, but not quite as thoroughly as Clemson did, also Friday,

Yep, this might be the best bowl of the season.

I'll be watching.  Soon as the requisite militarism is jizzed out of the crowd and slimes my screen.

UPDATE: I was right.  Best Bowl game ever.  Haha.


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5 Short Films

About the project.


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True West

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Great Rant

Don’t agonize over the creature now president. The impetuosity, bigotry, and misogyny of the man who makes retard jokes is neither new, nor unique. He’s actually quite precedented.

This shit was normalized years ago. The only shocking thing about it is that people are somehow still shocked. Because the president-elect simply unifies under one big toxic tent all the worst component parts of his numerous vulgar hypocrite predecessors.

For a quick pick me up, just pause to consider our nation’s many discredited past generations of white christian landowners. Truman, Johnson, and Nixon always said nigger. JFK’s sexploits so enraged LBJ that he’d bang the table and shout he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose. And Johnson shook his dick at people.--AC

Rant of the day is hilarious, in a good way.


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Big Game Tonight

In Eugene tonight: UCLA and Oregon jump it up at 6 p.m.

Will be interesting to see if Oregon can hang with the Bruins.  I would expect not.

Hope I'm wrong.  A good diversion for the evening, however.

Final: UCLA 89, Oregon 78.

UPDATE: Wrong again.  Oregon wins a thriller 89-87.  Look at that, I got one of the totals correct, just the wrong team.  The other score had the right digits, but in the wrong order.

Hmmm...


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Sordid Tale

For those unfamiliar with, new to, or fuzzy about the details of what happened, here is the entire sad, sordid story of the rise and fall of Will Vinton Studios.

In 1977, I was introduced to Vinton at his Northwest Portland studio. There it was, the Oscar statue Vinton and Bob Gardiner won for Closed Mondays, the short Claymation film that started it all.

Vinton pulled the Oscar down and let me fondle it before placing it back on the shelf behind his desk.

The article is 3-years old but worth a read.


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Obama's World

Further, the law authorizes grants to non-governmental agencies to help "collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda" directed at the U.S. and its allies, as well as "counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability" of the U.S. and allied nations.--LM

The absurdities continue to mount.

But hell, it doesn't matter.  George Michael is the important story, blah, blah, blah.

This brilliant John Pilger film is the sort of project the power-elite--Democrats and Republicans-- want to silence.  It has the famous scene with John Bolton, who accuses Pilger of being a commie after the journalist destroys Bolton's arguments in a tough Q&A.

With Bolton likely to settle into the Trump administration in some capacity, Obama and the criminal Congress have paved the way toward a proactive assault on dissent and a free, anti-corporate press.

The repression is worsening folks, get ready for it.

Again, I suggest that something in the streets massively larger than BLM and Standing Rock will be the only recourse for ordinary citizens eventually.


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Performance Art

A number of writers and critics have noted the astounding smugness and outsized indignation of white liberals during this election season. The Clinton supporters, basically. And I think it is useful to examine the relationship between the media and the Clintons. For no political mafia has ever penetrated Hollywood and NY media to the extent the Clintons have. Shows such as Madame Secretary and House of Cards could well have been scripted by the Clinton inner circle. Hell, by Bill himself. And outlets like Huffington Post and MSNBC and CNN operate as the press outlets for the DNC.

But the real nadir of media capitulation and bad faith was the response to the brutal murder of the Russian diplomat Andrei Karlov in Istanbul, on video, at an art opening. The western press spun this as a freedom fighter attacking the brutal Russian empire and defending Allepo. Almost nothing was said about the family of the slain Russian, or about terrorism. I guess terrorism doesn’t exist if its directed at the enemy du jour. The celebrations on the streets of Aleppo seemed to have been erased by western TV and print editors, too. And all of this is in line, of course, with Hillary Clinton’s (and her advisors) pathological and obsessive hatred of Putin. And with the Clinton imprint on mainstream media.--JS

Top of the list.


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Who Knows?

To say that my work has been uneven over the years would be an understatement.

Blogging is a curse in that regard.  One blogs, and one fucks up a certain percentage of the time. The main reason I don't subscribe to Twitter is that I know what I'm incapable of--that is always having the insight it takes to not come off as ridiculous at inopportune times.

Blogging came first, and it is as dark and full of trap doors as things need be for me, and in any case many of the things I say here could be tweets.  Besides, I don't have dexterous enough fingers to cope with our instant news/celebrity culture.

I'll leave it to others, including our moronic president-elect, to attempt to explain themselves via the twitter world.

It's been the year that was, whatever it was, that is for sure.  Here's what RBPB published in this the sixth year of its existence.

Charles Deemer's 3 Plays About Family.

My collection of opinions (the serious ones), Along Came the Death Squad: Political and Scattered Notes.

Two videos I claim among a cluster of attempts:  Here and here.

Good enough?  Good lord no, but tangible in an increasingly ridiculous world.

So good riddance to 2016.  Like you, I can't wait to see what the despots and assholes, as well as the good people of the world, have to offer in '17.

For my part, I'll bring out a book or two and improvise and publish some more music.  I plan on doing this until I die, and I've already arranged to pass the enterprise on to my family to do with what they please when I'm gone.

Worthwhile?  Who knows?

A piece from my book.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and good luck.  (My sentiments exactly.)

To all of my visitors from around the world, no matter your faith or political persuasion, thank you for helping to make 2016 a good year.

You're growing in numbers and return visits.  I look forward to your continued interest, however fragile or complete, in my detritus.


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Breaks of the Game

Broken legs in the NFL today.

Mariota
Carr
Lockett

Love this game for its pure violence.



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No Shit

No politician or security official wishing to retain their job can tell a frightened and enraged public that it is impossible to defend them. Those in charge become an easy target for critics who opportunistically exploit terrorism to blame government incompetence or demand communal punishment of asylum seekers, immigrants or Muslims. At such times, the media is at its self-righteous worst, whipping up hysteria and portraying horrifying but small-scale incidents as if they were existential threats. This has always been true, but 24/7 news coverage makes it worse as reporters run out of things to say and lose all sense of proportion. As the old American newspaper nostrum has it: “if it bleeds, it leads.”--PC

''...reporters run out of things to say..."

How true.

How's the "war on terror" working for you these days?

It's been very kind to the corporate-media world.

Some nuts and bolts on the domestic front.


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Path of the "Elite"

The U.S. government has quietly started to ask foreign travelers to hand over their social media accounts upon arriving in the country, a program that aims to spot potential terrorist threats but which civil liberties advocates have long opposed as a threat to privacy.--NP

A can of worms, the creepy kind that are crawling around in the belly of the Empire.

In Obama's defense, with a name like Nadia the writer has to be a Russian agent, which means this is anti-American propaganda of the highest order.

The policy doesn't differ much from the "Registry;" in fact it could be more dangerous, which is why Trump will back it all the way.

It's a "beautiful" thing...

Ha!


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NIN

Bow down before the ones you serve
You're going to get what you deserve...


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Sloth

Ain't into it lately.

Have a job to do as well and I'm procrastinating a wee bit.

Editing a book by a Massachusetts writer.  Will have to push my self-imposed deadline back.  Not a difficult editing chore at all, but my sloth/inattentiveness a problem.

Need a new year and a fresh start.  If the writer can hang with me his book will be the first one I publish in 2017.

Glad I don't have a McJob these days. Would hate to disappoint the world with my lazy ways.


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Show Time

Saw a good one in Malik Monk yesterday.  Reminded me of this, though Pete was a better passer.

That said, the game has changed a lot, particularly the stress on defense.

Still, I don't know if today's players could have stopped Pistol, who averaged 44 a game over three seasons before the 3 pt. line was instituted.


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