courtship dating + the closing of the American mind... .. .

Crystal Castles was totally wasted on stage at their LA show, but i still enjoyed them a lot... although i find it less excuseable for an electronic act to stumble around & fall over to the point of fucking up the machines laid out on stage. i wouldn't mind seeing the Stones (back in the day), Amy Winehouse or a cool local indie rock band owning the stage in a drunken stupor, but when there's nothing more to the act than the music coming out of machines & you can't even hold your own, well... ok, i still enjoyed it, and after a few interruptions, Crystal Castles delivered in the fashion of a punk band or whatnot. i don't think they gave us 100%, which is the whole point of doing a show, dont u think? but still... it was close to that, which is better than nothing, right? the crowd went wild that's for sure. my white shoes were blackened by several stampedes!

Crystal Castles should take a lesson from Glass Candy. now that is what i call having a great stage presence, considering there was nothing else on stage than a singer & a sequencer/synthesizer/dj...

now on a more serious & unrelated note, i just read this opinion & feel the need to share something a little deeper. even if it's not my own opinion, i fully agree...

As an atheist who takes a dim view of the influence of religion, said author Susan Jacoby, I am greeted enthusiastically in nearly all of my public appearances. I am not bragging. It's just that everywhere i appear, "95 percent of the audience shares my political and cultural views--and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience." Indeed, it's getting harder to find anyone who's willing "to give a fair shake--or any hearing at all"--to opposing viewpoints. "Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs, or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold." So when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress, liberals tune to radio or TV shows that mock him and insist that Iraq is lost; conservatives, meanwhile, comfort themselves with echo-chamber pundits who proclaim that victory is at hand. Such close-minded stubbornness is not only lazy; it makes you very vulnerable to being duped and misled. "As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads," we have no one to blame for our growing national ignorance "but ourselves."

so true. eh, still... living in America beats living anywhere else! well, as long as we're talking about Los Angeles or New York, San Francisco or Miami, Portland or DC... anywhere else in between would be scary!