Journal Archive - September, 2007

what's amazing about the right wing intransigence in the face of the schip childrens health bill is that so many republicans support this bill(and it was actually co-authored and co-sponsored by prominent republicans).
1/2 of the republicans in the senate, and 40 republicans in the house, and a majority of republican governors support the bill.
but the damage has been done, because a bunch of republican senators and representatives have already voted against the childrens health bill.
ah boy, i wonder what these senators and representatives will be doing in 2008 when they're roundly defeated?
how do you win an election when your opponent rightly accuses you of voting against a bi-partisan bill that extends health care to the children of the working poor?
everyone i know in dc, democrats and republicans, are genuinely baffled by the right wing position on this bill.
it's a bi-partisan bill, with republicans desperately asking other republicans to sign it.
gw bush is a lame duck president who will never run for public office again.
the republican senators and representatives who voted against this bill will all be up for re-election soon. their party loyalty(although 1/2 of all republicans seem to support this bill...)will cost them their re-election bids.
kind of like lemmings following their leader off of a cliff.
and all for a bill that provides health care to the children of the working poor that was written by prominent democrats and republicans and costs as much as 30 days in iraq...
ah well, it'll be interesting to see the democrats gain a veto proof majority in the house and senate in 2008.

moby

p.s-it's funny that the right wing are saying that this program is too expensive and that it's a first step towards socialized medicine. to put it in perspective, senator charles e. grassley, republican of iowa, said it was “intellectually dishonest” to make such “outlandish accusations.”

there's a program called 'schip', which provides health care to poor children.
it's a popular program, and it works well. it has the support of a majority of governors, health care providers, democrats, and moderate republicans.
it passed a vote in the house today, but conservative republicans voted against it and president bush is threatening to veto it.
let's remember: this is a program that provides health care to poor children.
it's popular and it was crafted by democrats and moderate republicans.
why is bush going to veto this bill?
and why are right wing republicans against it?
a big reason is that in order to pay for the bill there's an increase in the tax on cigarettes.
and the president and the right wing republicans believe that this is unfair to tobacco companies.
i'm not kidding.
so the president and the right wing republicans are against a bill that provides health care to poor children because they believe it's unfair to tobacco companies.
they also believe it's too expensive.
but to put it in perspective: one year of this health care program costs as much as running the war in iraq for 30 days.
notice to democrats: when running against republicans in 2008 just run ads that say:
'congressman ______ voted against a bill that would give health care to poor children.
why? because he believed it was unfair to tobacco companies.'
it's stuff like this that will give the democrats the house, the senate, and the presidency in 2008, if they're smart.
are the republicans really this evil and stupid?
who in their right mind vetoes or votes against a popular bi-partisan bill extending health care to poor children?
moby

and it is.
and it's much more electronic and dance-oriented(or, uh, 'orientated' as our british and commonwealth brethren and sistren are wont to say)than my last 3 records.
i guess it's best described as an eclectic dance record.
some fast songs. some slow songs. some atmospheric songs. some techno songs that sound like buildings falling down. and eclectic dance record.
and i think we might even put out the first single sometime this autumn.
and it might be a two track single for dj's, consisting of 2 of the songs on the record that are big, piano driven, rave anthems.
because, as some of you might know, i've always been deeply in love with piano driven rave anthems.
right now i'm working on a very odd idea.
i'd like to include a bonus disc with the next record, and i'd like the bonus disc to be comprised of one 75 minute long ambient piece of music.
now i just have to actually make this aforementioned 75 minute long piece of ambient music.
i remember driving home from nyc at 5 a.m years ago and listening to a piece of indian classical music that was an hour long and falling in love with the notion of very long pieces of music that are very repetitive and hypnotic.
so that's what i'm going to try to do.
in fact i'm going to try to do it now.
have a good night,
moby

some people were asking for information regarding october 11th at hiro ballroom.
here's the link to the flyer and the link to buy tickets.
see you soon,
moby

http://www.degenerates-nyc.com/ - this is the flyer
http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionD... - this is the link to buy tickets

1-on october 4th my fun rock band 'the little death nyc' will be doing a small and early show at the mercury lounge for our friends. at 8;30pm. we haven't played lately(apart from the howl festival)so we thought this would be fun. plus we'll be finished by 9;30 and we can have more time for cheap domestic beer, which we all enjoy very much.

and

2-on october 11th i'm dj'ing with my friends juan mclean and stretch armstrong at hiro ballroom.i might've sent a flyer about this, but there was some confusion about the date. confusion be banned, it's october 11th, disco party from 10pm - 4:30 a.m, or so, at hiro ballroom.
i think it's $5 to get in(yes, we're fancy).

and i just finished my record. as in yesterday. it'll come out in february. or march.
so now i'm not as psychotically anxious and busy as i've been for the last few months.
in case you wanted to know.

and, an aside, a friend of mine recently asked me, 'why do you play small shows in the lower east side and do small dj'ing dates when you could be touring and playing venues that hold 10,000 people?'
good question.
my simple answer is that i actually enjoy playing small shows in the lower east side way more than i enjoy playing venues that hold 10,000 people. sounds crazy, but it's true. for years i thought that doing long tours and playing huge venues would make me happy. but then when i found myself doing long tours and playing huge venues i also found myself to be quite depressed. so, simply, i've decided to not do long tours, and to rather play fun, small shows with my friends at venues that are only a taxi cab ride away.
i might be coerced into touring in the future, and i might even end up playing shows in big venues again, but for now i really enjoy what i'm doing.
and money? sure, you make a lot of money playing big venues and going on tour for 22 months.
but so what?
what good is making a lot of money if you're miserable?
maybe some musicians love going on tour for long times and playing bigger and bigger venues. i don't know, i certainly don't.
playing a show at 8;30 on a thursday night at mercury lounge for 100 people and then drinking cheap domestic beer with my friends holds about 1,000,000 times more appeal than living on a tour bus and waking up in parking lots and playing in front of 10,000 people a night. i've done both, i choose the former.

ok, thanks, and hopefully see you soon.
moby

here's a whole collection of them.
the one 'da bears' worries me, as i'm not so sure that bears and humans can be pals.
bears are awesome, just probably best appreciated from a distance.

moby

http://animalliberationfront.com/News/AnimalPhotos/No_Speciesism_Here.ht...

if you watch his answer you'll see that he doesn't, not even for a second, deal with the question that was asked of him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/13/maher-asks-edwards-if-he_n_6431...

bill maher's question:
"senator edwards, you've suggested that americans should give up their suvs for the sake of the environment, but a recent un study found that deforestation for the purpose of creating grazing land for cattle, and methane emissions from cattle generated more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars and planes in the world, so it's not just the suvs, it's the c-o-w-s. taking a shot at suvs was gutsy. do you want to take a shot at meat?"

moby

hi,

here's a flyer for a fun dj event i'm doing with the juan mclean and stretch armstrong and alex frankel and alex english.
it should be a really, really fun night, i hope you can come.

moby

a-last night was the mtv music awards? wow. i honestly had no idea. either i'm woefully ignorant as to the ways of televised pop culture, or mtv didn't put up enough posters.
i hear that britney's performance wasn't so, uh, stellar. that's sad. poor britney. she's like the blanche dubois of pop culture.
and apparently tommy lee and kid rock engaged in some ribald fisticuffs during the show.
huh. how about that.
did anything else happen? or was i not the only person who didn't actually know that last night was the mtv music awards?

b-general petraeus(which is a cool name, kind of like a cross between a dinosaur bird of prey and an ancient greek warrior-statesman)is testifying before congress about the 'surge'(and not the caffeine fueled sports drink). what's this called, 'operation mutton as lamb'? or 'operation king lear'?
the surge is a big, fat failure, and everyone knows this. the administration established 18 bench marks for evaluating the success of the surge and thus far there's only been success with 3 of the benchmarks according to the g.a.o.
how many hundreds of billions of dollars have we spent?
how many americans and brits and iraqii's have been killed and maimed?
it's not working. and it's not going to work.
the only thing that will work is a loose federation in iraq with kurdish, sunni, and shi'ite areas/states.
that's how it'll end up eventually. and a huge western troop presence is just providing a huge western target for insurgents and terrorists.
very sad.

c-tomorrow's my birthday. and september 11th. the first september 11th to fall on a tuesday since 2001. it's also the easiest day of the year to be a tv news producer. just dust off the footage from 9-11-2001 and push people's raw, emotional buttons. maybe this year the news broadcasts will be a bit more dignified and a bit less reliant upon emotional pornography(do we really need to see that footage of people jumping from the burning towers again?). or maybe not. my friends in broadcast news refer to september 11th as the easiest news day of the year. they just show the same old footage and push people's emotional buttons and everyone gets upset all over again.
speaking as a new yorker i'd like to say 'enough'. can't we have a moratorium on this terrible and tragic footage that we've all seen a million times? some of us actually lived through it, and, speaking as someone who did live through it, watching it all again 6 years later sucks.
we lived through it. we watched it up close. we grieved, almost inconsolably, for years. now we're healing and doing much better. cant the media just let it rest? let us get on with our lives and let us grieve and remember as we choose, without these terrible images being shoved down our throats for the 500th time? i call for a tv news blackout day on september 11th. remember what you want to remember. grieve how you want to grieve. but remember and grieve without the tv news pornographers showing us graphic and horrifying footage from 6 years ago.
ok, that was a long 'c'.

d-and it's my birthday. and i'm going to see the new david cronenberg movie. and i'm excited.
i still think that 'dead ringers' is one of the most remarkable movies(and one of the most disturbing)ever made.

e-ok, have a nice monday.

moby

in 1939 billie holiday was a huge pop star and she wanted to record 'strange fruit', a song about racism and lynching, and her label wouldn't let her.
so she recorded it for a tiny indie label and it went on to become her biggest selling record.
it's regarded as the first recorded protest song, and this performance of it is one of the best things i've ever seen.
moby

i was reading an article about caffeine consumption and i came across
this quote:

"the addition of caffeine in a beverage is largely as a flavoring," garza, a coca-cola spokesperson, said.

yeah...and people look at internet porn out of anthropological curiousity.
nothing against the nice people at coca-cola, but caffeine as a flavoring?
i've tasted caffeine, it tastes remarkably like bitter dirt.
and please don't get me wrong, i love caffeine in all of it's forms, i just think it's fascinating
that it's become such a ubiquitous drug.
so ubiquitous, in fact, that marine researchers were doing a chemical analysis of
the water in boston harbor and they found a significant percentage of caffeine.
not from the boston tea-party of 220 years ago, but from people's pee.
people are consuming so much caffeine that it's ending up in bodies of water, like boston harbor.
i do think it's fascinating which drugs are deemed legal and which are not.
100 years ago, as far as i know, just about everything was legal, including cocaine and heroin.
and clearly the drugs that weren't criminalized(alcohol, tobacco, etc)remained legal
due to the depths of the pockets of the people who owned the liquor and tobacco
companies.
do you know when it became a crime to posess ecstasy(mdma)?
1985.
before then it was a controlled substance, easily obtained from any pharmacy.
what's my point?
i don't know, actually, just that i'm fascinated by the quantities of caffeine that we
assume and i'm also fascinated by the seemingly arbitrary way in which drugs
are criminalized.
i truly believe that an enlightened democracy wouldn't infantalize it's population
by telling them what they can and cannot do, so far as the people's actions only
have consequences for themselves as individuals.
but i also recognize that believing in the abolishment of 'consensual crimes' puts me in
a pretty slim minority.
am i on my soapbox again?
i guess so.
i like my soapbox.
now i think i'm going to go and have some caffeine and revel in one of the few legal drug pleasures
that are afforded us.
moby

there are many stages, we'll be at the south stage.
-moby

south stage, location east 7th street

2:00 pm.

heavy trash (jon spencer) if rockabilly can be funky, this is it! the ubersoulful sound swings out to skin the cats to their rock and roll bones. catch these good looking guys at the height of their game.

2:30 pm

the little death nyc featuring moby: electronic god moby changes tracks as he switches it up to play with the little death nyc. the result sounds like a drunken bar fight between john lee hooker and kurt weill or the desperate love-child of big mama thornton and robert mitchum.

3:15 pm

the living theatre: excerpt from their critically acclaimed production the brig, directed by judith malina. ms. malina will be honored by the federation of east village artists for her outstanding lifetime achievements. join us as we celebrate a living legend.

3:45 pm

rene risqué uses music to connect with life's most primal desires; a man who is hypnotically sure of his message, his wealth and his prestige. the fashion icon delivers what every man and woman desires; a musical fantasy of rock. worship the glamour!

5:00 pm

low life: jackie factory producers chi chi valenti and johnny dynell create a brand-new spectacle showcasing the east village and its bowery as the birthplace of nightclub performance traditions from vaudeville to neo-burlesque. expect period star turns from michael t, dirty martini, sweetie as boss tweed, robert la fosse and his broadway b'hoyz, miss delirium tremens, vangeline theater, duelling bankheads, voltaire, jessica rabbit domination, dean johnson, acid betty, heaven leigh domination, trina rose, darlinda just arlinda, jackie 60 mcs hattie hathaway and paul alexander and chorine choreography by julie atlas muz.

admission is free but we ask that you participate by observing the suggested dress code: nyc demimonde evening glamour (1860-2010), gangs of new york, victorian/edwardian rags, newsboy caps, b'hoy for butch women, corsets and vintage lingerie, bowery belle ringlets, vampyre of gotham, black parasols, bowery twink, velvet, 19th century clownwear, top hats or bowery punk. http://www.mothernyc.com/