1.) Killer Hunches video I discovered on YouTube. It’s a string of pretty sweet songs from a European tour two years ago. Also it may be a reference in a piece I’m working on about BANDS NEEDING TO MOVE while they play. That sucker ought to surface in a few days.

Back to the Hunches though. Their new album is almost done. You’re going to absolutely die when you hear it and it’s only going to become more maddening when you find out they’re breaking up.

2.) Something almost totally unrelated to music so you’ll have to follow the jump to get it: Thought’s On William F. Buckley’s Passing I wrote at 3am Friday night while hideously drunk.

people are saying that wiliiam f buckley jr. may have written more letters than any man alive. it's a noble achievement, no doubt. for it's time. and yes, buckley wrote his fair share of columns too. but goddamnit, these are milestones that may yet be overtaken, yet never chronicled.

i'm paid a pittance to write daily for this blog. and were i paid slightly more i might take the time and do the math to see whether or not, in actual dollars--not adjusted for inflation--buckley made more than me in his early days. it's not just my time that stops me from doing it. really, it's the fear that even back then he made more than i do.

if i were paid more i'd say my ideas would be presented in a more well rounded form. i could AFFORD to spend more time smoothing them out. but equally sad is that these posts aren't something tangible. they don't stack up on a desk. volumes aren't bound (though i suppose the could be). 40 years from now they will probably all be lost (though only my ego may care). same fucking thing with emails. doubtful anyone's collected emails will ever form a book -- they're just to flippant. and an artform is lost. (ok, shit, the death of america's leading jack-backwards conservative is actually making me long for older, simpler times?! fucking horrible irony...)

but in this case, case is point. writing don't pay so well anymore. in turn, american ideas aren't so valuable--not the philosophical ones anyway. we're a dying breed. or, at least, a diminishing one. and no eighteen letter words can turn it around.

so i suppose buckley, it's fitting you passed when you did. and for god sake, i never knew you properly until you passed. but as things go, i see you as little more than a tonguey, pedagogical play boy who caught the wave of a century. for if you had the balls to live a few years longer you'd seen the whole movement crash right back up your nostrils. and then, death wouldn't have been so easy.

so with the death of william f buckley jr dies the conservative movement, as we shall soon see. but sadly, with it goes the strength of american letters and a chunk of the culture of ideas...