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The legend that is Coyote J. Calhoun

Hang the DJ: Black & White, Birmingham’s City Paper:

Men at Work and Duran Duran were just starting to put a harmless face on edgier pop. Meanwhile, Coyote—fresh from California—was quietly staking out airtime on 95 Rock with a playlist worthy of any Los Angeles DJ steeped in the hippest scenes. But in 1982, not everybody was ready for Romeo Void, an unknown band called The Cure, or even a post-punk oldies act like Joy Division. “There were death threats,” Coyote recalls. “I was called a fag many times. Some of the locals considered my playing Soft Cell to be promoting the gay lifestyle.”

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This is why it took until 2001-02 for me to discover most of New Wave. Anything I did know – which was mostly late-80s stuff like Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, later Cure and Smiths – was all because of the Coyote.

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Lame Cocks, Or, No One On The Corner Has Swagger Like Us

24-17. Took the lead in the second half and never relinquished it. For the second year in a row, Steve Superior’s top-25 South Carolina Gamecocks founder on the rock that is the Vanderbilt Commodores. Jared Hawkins is the Vanilla Hammer of Thor and I take back 2/3 of everything I ever said against the state of Texas.

Stand by for a slew of LOL-Dores in tomorrow’s RSS feed. Tonight? Black and gold, baby.

CHEW TOBACCO CHEW TOBACCO SPIT SPIT SPIT, IF YOU AIN’T A COMMODORE…

ETA: The highlight reel =)

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All you need to know…

It’s the Atwater offense. Just remember 1988 and you’ll know how it’s going to go. By those lights, Palin makes much more sense: her job isn’t to win over disaffected Hillary voters or persuadable moderates, it’s to light a fire under the base and keep them at a steady froth and hope that turnout is enough to make up the difference. That’s what Quayle ended up doing, and that seems to have worked out OK at the time.

It might be enough. Then again, it might not. Problem is, you don’t know how many of the Perot 19% will eventually walk back to the GOP and how many will stick with the Ds over the economic issues. In years past I would say that the Perot vote is almost 2-to-1 Republican, but given the changes in economic positions over the last 16 years, I think that independent fiscal conservatives who are ambivalent at best about the social stuff will break hard for the Democrats this time.

Too close to call at this point. I wouldn’t put too much faith in polls until the end of September or so, and even then…grain of salt. Nobody knows what the ground game will produce, especially if it all turns on get-out-the-vote.

By the way, the night of a convention speech is a SUCKTASTIC time to be setting up an over-the-air antenna for your TV.

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RIP Snowman

The great Jerry Reed, dead at 71. Everyone knows the movie role, but I still remember him most for such country classics as “She Got The Gold Mine, I Got The Shaft.”

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Two things:

1) Family members = noncombatants. Free pass. I realize I cannot expect the same courtesy from everyone (e.g. a certain idiot drama queen, who is no less an ass clown than when he was wailing about the fifth column, and don’t think switching sides gives you a pass – who the hell is checking green cards around here?) but rules are rules, and while I reluctantly concede that the spouse is tough to work around these last 20 years or so, the kids are off limits. Period. Paragraph.
2) I would feel a lot better if I could shake the nagging notion that I give more thought to what kind of toilet paper to pick up at Safeway than John McCain gave to making his selection for the second slot. Then again, I doubt the contemporary GOP considers “secessionist” a liability…