From Reuters:

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Republican candidate John McCain may have used his song in the U.S. presidential campaign, but veteran rock ‘n’ roller Chuck Berry has no doubt whom he wants to see in the White House next year.

“America has finally come to this point where you can pick a man of color and that not be a drawback,” the legendary 81-year-old guitarist said of Barack Obama, who clinched the Democratic presidential nomination last week and would become the country’s first black president if he wins in November.

“It’s no question, myself being a man of color … I mean, you have to feel good about it,” Berry, himself a black pioneer in the 1950s music scene, told Reuters by phone from New York ahead of a Brazil tour that starts next week.

“Definitely a proud and successful moment for all the people of this country, not just black people, but Americans in general.”

Now that Chuck has officially endorsed him, Barack should hit him up for the right to use “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” as his campaign song. Or at least have him perform at the inauguration.

He wore a cobra snake for a necktie. Ain’t really much more to say than that, other than to note that, perhaps just barely behind Chuck Berry, Bo was the best of rock’n'roll’s founding fathers — certainly the most original. Fifty-plus years on and no one has ever sounded like him, although without him, we wouldn’t have a lot things, such as the first Stooges album, “Rudie Can’t Fail” and the countless other songs that jacked the Bo Diddley Beat. And how fucking great do you have to be to have a rhythm named after you?

All aboard Pau Pau’s Party Jeep!

Just four more wins …

There hasn’t been a better time in the two decades since it originally aired to revisit Tanner ‘88 – the Robert Altman-directed HBO miniseries about a fictional Michigan Congressman seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — than right now. The Sundance Channel replayed its 11 episodes in 2004, prompting several critical reappraisals, and while that year’s general election ended up looking a lot like 1988’s (unappealing Dem vs. a Bush), the show is all about the primary season. And since this current one will not fucking end, a good skewering of the process is just what we (meaning “I”) need to keep our (meaning “my”) sanity. I actually got the series through Netflix all the way back in October, watched one episode and stored it away. It looked like something taped for public access, and, as with a lot of things Altman, it was obviously going to take some patience to get into. But, as I have officially grown exhausted with the “Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Baatan Death March to the White House” (c) Daily Show, I wanted to see if things were as fucked up back at what was essentially the dawn of the current Media Age. Writer Gary Trudeau doesn’t prove to be prophetic — Tanner is friends with a black minister, but he isn’t caught on tape damning any countries to hell or claiming the government invented any incurable diseases — but for those of us whose only concern at the time was catching the latest episode of Sledge Hammer!, what he captures is an electoral process that, even without YouTube and 24-hour cable news channels, looks like a similar (if primitive) version of the one we’re witnessing today: skeezy journalists digging through the candidates’ personal trash; campaign managers and other hangers-on who think they’re the ones running for president; general scandal and sensationalism trumping issues. If anything, Tanner ‘88 seems less satirical now and more like the straight-faced documentary its shot to resemble.

From Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — A journalism think tank studying “The Daily Show” doesn’t believe many people get their news from Jon Stewart _ because otherwise they wouldn’t get the jokes.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism also said it was surprised at how much the Comedy Central late-night program resembles “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hardball” and other cable news shows in content.

The Washington-based organization asked its researchers to study a year’s worth of “The Daily Show” tapes _ hardly a grim assignment _ after hearing the frequent claim that many young people learn about the world from Stewart instead of more traditional news sources.

Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director, said he doubts this is the case. He considers “The Daily Show” more of a political satire in the tradition of newspapermen like Art Buchwald, H.L. Mencken and Russell Baker.

“They’re not making jokes about Dan Quayle is dumb or Gerald Ford is clumsy,” he said. “They’re not making jokes that you could get if you live in the country but don’t read the news … . You can’t get the jokes if you’re not watching the news. The jokes are designed to make you think more about the news.”

Speaking from experience, never doubt a journalist’s ability to waste time. Seriously, they studied a year’s worth of Daily Show and came to the conclusion that the show is a satire of the news. Exactly how far was it into the year that they came to that conclusion? I’m guessing mid-March.

The Huffington Post put this article up under the headline “‘Daily Show’ Very Similar to ‘O’Reilly Factor,’” which admittedly piqued my interest. And how, exactly, are they similar?

Politics, government and the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq accounted for about half of the show’s content, making it quite similar to the focus of serious cable news shows, the study said.

Quite the observation: the content of a satirical news program resembles that of actual news programs. Excuse me while I collect the bits of my mind that have blown out the back of my head.

I did learn something from reading about this study, though: Apparently, The O’Reilly Factor is a “serious” cable news show. Who knew?

Received this nugget of information in my In Box today:

Hi Matthew,

I thought you and your readers would like to help us congratulate James Peters, a Thousand Oaks, CA, resident who recently won the ‘GORE-TEX® Footwear Diamond in the Rough’ contest by finding a hidden GORE-TEX® brand logo in Ventura, CA.

James Peters will receive $500 in GORE-TEX® gear for his next vacation.

…

W.L. GORE & ASSOCIATES NAMES FIRST WINNERS IN ‘GORE-TEX® FOOTWEAR DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH’ CONTEST

– Game Pieces Found in New York and California; Contest Continues in International Destinations —

Elkton, MD – April 30, 2008 – W.L. Gore & Associates, a leading manufacturer of advanced technology products including the GORE-TEX® brand, today announced that two hidden GORE-TEX® brand game pieces have been found in Ithaca, New York and Ventura, California, within one week after the launch of the ‘GORE-TEX® Footwear Diamond in the Rough’ contest. The ‘GORE-TEX® Footwear Diamond in the Rough’ contest challenges U.S. travelers to uncover a hidden GORE-TEX® brand game piece in eight of the 10 destinations selected as Top 10 GORE-TEX® Footwear Summer Travel Destinations for 2008. Each winner will receive $500 in GORE-TEX® gear.

…

Ventura, California

On April 18, 2008, avid rock climber, James Peters, learned about the ‘GORE-TEX® Footwear Diamond in the Rough’ contest and decided that he would make the trip to Ventura, CA to join in the fun. Peters traveled 30 miles from Thousand Oaks, CA and found the hidden game piece at Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau.

“I am an avid and frequent traveler, so when I learned about the ‘GORE-TEX® Footwear Diamond in the Rough Contest, I could not resist making the trip to Ventura. Not only did I find the game piece, but I was able to enjoy the charming downtown and the cool coastal weather of this Southern California beach town. I am very excited to be the winner for California and I am eager to get and use some new GORE-TEX® gear,” commented James Peters.

First off, I like the insinuation that this “avid rock climber” made some sort of daring trek — possibly across a jagged, unforgiving landscape, fighting off giant scorpions and dysentery — from Thousand Oaks to Ventura in order to win this prize. And I especially enjoyed his “comment” on “the cool coastal weather of this Southern California beach town.” C’mon, did he really say that? As if this guy who lives in 20 minutes away just happened to stumble upon some quaint oceanside oasis in his quest for free GORE-TEX. This is why I chose not to go into the PR wing of journalism, even though all my self-loathing college professors insisted that’s where all the money is.

And am I the only person who thought GORE-TEX was something Seinfeld made up?

Frenchman Don Cavalli’s earlier work was little more than a decent genre exercise: retro rockabilly performed with enough authenticity to trick people into believing he was not only recording in the 1950s but that he was born in a bog somewhere in the southern United States. Good, but nothing a million other artists obsessed with American roots music around the world weren’t already doing. Cryland, however, is something else entirely. It remains hogtied to the blues, but spackled with minimalist funk, garage rock, Cajun and even dub influences, with the constant churn of a wah-wah pedal bubbling underneath. Cavalli performed to a small but highly appreciative crowd of mostly uninitiated folks at the Mercury Lounge in Goleta this past weekend. He hasn’t quite gotten the hype in this country yet — the album has been out in France for a year; it was just released stateside last week — but with a few more tours he should reach at least a level of cult status. I mean, how can you deny the awesomeness this video:

“I’m Going to a River”

Dishin’ dimes to the nation’s underprivileged, d’in up America’s enemies, drainin’ jump shots on the economy…

Just as your pulse begins to slow from watching that documentary on fonts, along comes a film about a subject nearly as thrilling: search engines. Google Me — which sounds like either the title of a terrible romantic comedy or the lamest setup for a porno ever — follows Jim Killeen, a struggling 38-year-old actor originally from Detroit, as he meets other people with the same name he discovered by typing “Jim Killeen” into that famous search bar. These include a swinger from Denver, a retired New York cop, an Irish priest and an Australian corporate exec (and, judging by this picture, “Jim Killeen” might be the whitest name on earth).

The film will premiere tomorrow on YouTube, the DVD hitting shelves with surely meteoric force on Tuesday. According to this profile in the Washington Post, what the director discovered from this odyssey “was not a better way to be a Jim Killeen, but an inspiring (if “Breakfast Club”-y) truth about being human. Says Killeen: “People are fundamentally good. They will invite you over to their houses. They will meet you halfway.” OK, that’s nice to hear, since I don’t know if too many people would want to see a movie where the ultimate conclusion is, “Y’know, humans are kind of assholish.” But this quote, about what triggered the journey, makes me question if the teddy bear-like Killeen went into this project with a heart too big for these cynical times:

“I wanted them to be doing well in life,” he says. “I wanted them to succeed. They were members of a very special club.”

Obviously, Mr. Killeen lacks a basic understanding of the digital age. Yes, it has made the world smaller. Yes, it has made it possible to connect with people we may have never known previously. Before the Internet, mankind was comfortable hurtling through space, each individual occupying his or her own solipsist universe, satisfied with the fact that, as far as most of us know, there is no one else out there like us. Now, though, with the single click of a mouse, all of us can come to the crushing realization that we are not as unique as we used to believe. We are, in the words of Tyler Durden, “the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” And we’re being ranked by robots.

As amiable as they may appear in person, these other Jim Killeens are not Jim Killeen’s friends. They are his opponents in the game of life. That Post article acknowledges that Google is a universal status symbol; it is the only measuring stick we have which stretches across cultural boundaries to prove who is truly worthy of the air they’re breathing. Myself, I am currently the third greatest “Matthew Singer” on the planet, behind a Duke University grad student whose published works include The 2002 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Bolivia and Trends in Opinion Research in New Democracies: Professionalization and Quality Control? and a guy who worked as a crew member on the set of Empty Nest (the situation with my informal name, Matt, is more disheartening: I went through 14 pages of search results and I have yet to show up). If the Dukie and the production staffer showed up on my doorstep unannounced one day, I probably wouldn’t invite them in for dinner — the Panamanian electoral system and Richard Mulligan aren’t exactly my ideas of scintillating subjects of conversation — but I would definitely be cordial. That doesn’t mean I’m not viewing them as competition — and hoping, secretly, that they aren’t doing well, or at least doing mediocre, because nothing shoots you up the Google ladder more than a headline-grabbing flameout (of course, considering that one of the superior Matthew Singers apparently hasn’t worked since the late ’80s is still seeded higher than me makes me wonder what the hell I have to do to overtake this guy). I don’t think this makes me a bad person, though it sadly might make me a virtual yuppie social climber. But that’s how it is these days: It’s an increasingly crowded world with diminishing wiggle room. You either jockey for position with vigor, or get banished to the Invisible Web.

Of course, Jim Killeen probably knows this. After all, what better way to become Google’s top Jim Killeen than making a movie about Google?

Can we get that stuffonmycat.com documentary now, please?