He said: "It was hurting a lot and causing my finger to bend.
"It was a as big as my thumbnail. I'd been to the doctors with it and tried all sorts of things but it wouldn't go.
"I didn't expect to lose my finger as well when I shot it but the gun recoiled and that was it. The wart was gone and so was most of my finger. There was nothing left of it, so no chance of re-attaching it."
A comment on a Ta-Nehisi post about Star Wars:
My wife once said, "What's so cool about Star Wars? Why do boys love it?"
To which I replied, "Star Wars is about kung-fu ninjas from outer space with swords made out of laser beams who fly spaceships and fight robots and aliens. Surely I need not explain myself further, as the awesomeness should be self-evident."
!!
A favorite new band : The Modern Lovers. (New to me, anyway)
There are few things I love more than finding a band that stylistically links other bands - one that drops neatly into the gap between two bands that sound somewhat similar. Suddenly, the connections become obvious, and I draw another node into my great mental musical map. A few months ago I heard Gang Of Four for the first time, and they filled in a big gap between early punk and later new-wave. This time, it's The Modern Lovers.
The original lineup only put out one record: self-titled and released in 76, long after the original band had dissolved (a band which contained Jerry Harrison - eventually of the Talking Heads, and David Robinson - of The Cars). They were clearly influenced by the Velvet Underground, and half the record was produced by John Cale of the V.U.. But The Modern Lovers were more direct, more fun, less pretentious, younger in spirit, and a few years more modern than the V.U.. There also seems to be a bit of Doors influence (ex. "Hospital") - something I don't run into very often. The songs on this record were actually recorded as demos, so they feel spontaneous and live, instead of polished and fussed-over.
I called this number three times already today
But I, I got scared, I put
It back in place, I put my phone back in place.
I still don't know if I
should have called up.
Look, just tell me why don't ya if I'm out of place.
'Cause here's your chance to make me feel awkward
And wish that I had
never even called up this place.
I saw you though today walk by with hippie Johnny.
I had to call up and say how I want to take his place.
So this phone call today conerns hippie Johnny.
He's always stoned, he's never straight.
I saw you today, you know, walk by with hippie Johnny.
Look, I had to call up and say, I want to take his place.
See he's stoned, hippie Johnny.
Now get this, I'm straight and I want to take his place.
Now look, I like him too, I like hippie Johnny.
But I'm straight
and I want to take his place.
-- I'm Straight
20-year-old Jonathan Richman's lyrics and delivery are wry, dry and sarcastic, often (seemingly) improvised, and he has one of the rarest things in rock vocals: a touch of a Mass. accent. That "Hippy Johnny" comes out with a long, drawled "Hippy Jawwwwnny". Wikkid cool.
So who did they influence? The Sex Pistols, obviously, who covered "Roadrunner". The Feelies, too. While it's clear that the Feelies sound like the V.U., upon hearing the Modern Lovers, it's clear that The Feelies actually sound like V.U. as filtered through The Modern Lovers, then polished and streamlined. The Violent Femmes entire first album could've sprouted directly from the middle of The Modern Lovers' "Pablo Picasso". The Talking Heads and The Cars, for obvious reasons. And more modern bands, like Spoon and Stereolab, are still keeping that more-taught-VU sound alive.
And what I find really interesting is that the album sounds perfectly like a mid-70's punk record. It was released in 76, and it sounds exactly like a 76 record: it has that same raw energy and defiant attitude of early punk - though not the loud, fast and charmingly-dumb style that the Ramones popularized, more like Television. But, this was actually recorded in 71/72. It sounds like it should've come out at the peak of early NY punk, but it predates that scene by what seems like an eternity in musical terms. Ahead of their time! And I can't stop listening to it!
So, The Modern Lovers first record. Check it out, if you don't already love it.
The Refugio County Sheriff's Office identifies the man as 53-year-old Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez. Sheriff's Sgt. Gary Wright says the incident happened June 2 after he rode two miles by bicycle from his home to that of his 77-year-old victim in the tiny coastal community of Tivoli.
He says the man, weighing between 230 and 250 pounds, sneaked into the woman's house and raped her at knifepoint. During the attack, he said he wasn't feeling well, rolled over and died.
This kind of stuff will stop happening as soon as the public stops demanding that the government protect us all from the evils that candidates use to scare the public when they accuse each other of not doing enough to protect the public from said evils.
Which is to say: never.
The A.V. Club asks:
Not counting books read in childhood—when our horizons tend to be pretty small and we love to read the same picture book or junior novel over and over—or books you’ve had to read for classes or professional purposes or whatever, what books have you voluntarily gone back and re-read most often?
Mine is, easily, "The Lord Of The Rings". I can't actually think of any others that I've re-read more than once. There are a handful that I've read twice, but usually I'm a one-and-done kindof guy. But LOTR is both long and enough and slow enough in parts that every time I read it I find things that I skipped over or just missed the last time.
You?