Worst reality show ever

From TPM:

California Gubernatorial candidate Douglas Hughes (R) is running on a platform of expelling all convicted pedophiles from his state.

Don't worry though, Hughes has a plan for where they'll go: Santa Rosa Island, or as he calls it, "Pedophile Island."

Remember when that kid wandered into the jungle and got attacked by a bunch of nasty little dinosaurs at the beginning of Jurassic Park 2? Yeah, like that. But not dinosaurs.

Monáe is money

I've been listening to a lot of Northern Soul lately, and James Brown's "Brother Rapp" has always been one of my favourites, so this just hits me in the sweet spot:



(Don't know why half the video is cut off. Just double-click it to see it in full.)

Habs

Pretty stunning.

And to the good people of Montreal:

What is David Cameron reading?

So... the U.K.'s new prime minister is an untested Tory heading up a coalition government propped up by a left-of-centre third party. He replaces the stodgy, uninspiring Prime Minister who took over – unelected, and after a long time in charge of the purse strings, waiting for his chance – from a deeply flawed (but charismatic) PM who took his centrist-with-lefty-pretensions party to three straight majorities.

How long before Martin Amis starts sending David Cameron used paperbacks accompanied by glib and self-satisfied personal notes about "cultivating stillness"?

Lukashevsky on WNYC

My friend Alex on the air in New York with a new song and a new musical set-up:



You can listen to the entire show here.

In the photos, Alex looks like a messianic bigamist who performs alongside two of his wives. But that's a good thing, I think.

NB: Alex is recording some music with these two fine singers, but he also has a very limited-edition CD out called Prints of Darkness that has some old and new songs done up with over-the-top orchestration. As far as I know, it is only available at Soundscapes in Toronto or here. Prints, along with the new Johnny Cash and an Orchestra Baobab compilation I found at the Gladstone library, was the soundtrack to a whole pile of unpacking and shelf-hanging I had to do last month

Uno de Mayo

At last: the first day of National Prose Month.

ADDED: Yikes, I was joking - now I hear tell it's actually Short Story Month or sumpin' like that. I've said this before (on this site, I think - too lazy to look), but I always find the idea that literary forms need protecting, like endangered waterfowl, very much beside the point. I'll stick up for a given writer's undeserved obscurity, or argue the merits of an unjustly unloved book or story, but a form? People will read more short stories (if that is, indeed, a desirable thing - let's assume for the sake of argument that it is) if there are good stories written and good critics writing about them and good editors working to get them attention and provide places for them to be read. That's true of all literary forms, though, as well as of all artistic forms and mediums, more or less.

If there is a story (or book) I love and am excited about, I will try and bring attention to it however I can (on this blog, in an email to a friend, as part of a drunken rant), but I could care less whether "more people," defined in the abstract, read stories in general. It won't change a word.

Maybe there are too many stories being written and read. Ever think of that, huh?