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Posts Tagged ‘Parlor Mob music video’

I’m not talking about college hoops. Although I must say I felt rather conflicted when VA beat Duke for the ACC title 72 – 63 on Sunday. And it was the first time since 1976 that UVA brought that trophy home. When your husband and daughter went to Duke undergrad, and you find yourself living in Charlottesville because that’s where she went to medical school, along with the Groom who is a “lifer” (both VA undergrad and med), you can understand why my alliances were in conflict.

The madness I’m referring to is the third death that’s been reported of a critically injured person from the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, TX. When we heard that two people died on the scene, my ears tingled. Remember the Rocker is there playing in Nicole Atkins’ band. I didn’t panic, I didn’t call him immediately. In fact, my first reaction was rage. How could the police have chased this drunk driver right into a crowded street, right into a line of people waiting to get into a club? Yes, the drunken/killer made the decision to drink and get into a car, he was responsible for dozens of injured people and now three deaths.

But that cop who was in pursuit presumably wasn’t impaired.He must have had some training about how to apprehend a guy fleeing a sobriety checkpoint that wouldn’t involve chasing his car into a crowd and killing innocent people.  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-17/news/chi-sxsw-austin-car-hits-crowd-20140317_1_southern-mississippi-sxsw-austin

So I casually texted the Rocker, “How’s SXSW going?” This wasn’t his first time at the Austin festival. The Parlor Mob blew through town a few times in the past…”It’s fun for us!” You can see they were head bangin, long hair, hard rock playing back then!

Here’s a clip from a month ago with Nicole. That’s the Rocker over there on the left. His hair is considerably shorter…My son texted back, “Just played the last show, we leave for Dallas tomorrow morning.”

Being on tour, on the road day and night isn’t easy. Don’t cry me a river, but I’m serious. They drive all day, do a sound check, maybe get something to eat and by now the bar food isn’t bad, then they play till the wee hours, get some sleep and get up early to hit the road again. I know he’ll be staying with his sister in Nashville this weekend. At least they didn’t get this last snowstorm. I just hope he has a little time to play with our Love Bug. She’s just starting to sing, and her dance moves are adorable! http://mercylounge.com/calendar/venue/highwatt/2014/03/22/nicole-atkins/

So stay warm and safe out there on the road son. Tell me if you met Lena Dunham, or you listened to Edward Snowden’s Skype chat. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/10/288601356/live-edward-snowden-speaks-to-sxsw And GO DUKE!

The morning aviary view

The morning aviary view

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The first time I heard the phrase, “A law of unintended consequences,” it hit the right note of understanding – that intuitive feeling that no matter what we mortals try to plan, chaos is just one or two steps away.Take our poor Attorney General, Eric Holder for instance. A House Republican has subpoenaed his documents dealing with the farcical operation called “Fast and Furious” that originated out of a Phoenix, Arizona ATF office. Here was a plan destined to go horribly awry. Why not allow ‘straw’ aka illegal gun buyers to sell more than 2,00 firearms in order to track them to drug cartels in Mexico?

It’s as if Shakespeare wrote a play for Cheech and Chong. What could go wrong? According to the experts, there are three categories of unintended consequences.

1) Unexpected benefits – For example, research has shown that after Roe vs Wade, there was a statistically relevant drop in crime in the 90’s. Now the House is supposed to vote tomorrow on a bill that would deny women a life-saving abortion in a hospital taking federal funds. We all know this would only have an effect on the poor – if this passed, we may have the opposite of “unexpected benefits.”

2)Unexpected drawbacks – Let’s look at Prohibition. Watching Ken Burns’ series on PBS this week was compelling. Congress passed the Volstead Act leading directly to the rise of organized crime. It seems we are still trying to legislate morality by our so called War on Drugs. Drug cartels and the increase in our prisons of non-violent drug offenders are the direct result of not treating this as a public health problem.

3) Perverse results – This is exactly what happened in Mexico. Two of those guns registered to that ATF sting were found in Arizona near the killing of a federal agent. The Mexican government has reported finding these guns at more than 170 crime scenes. So I guess the questions for Holder will be along the lines of “….what did you know and when did you know it?”

Anytime we hear about a horrible massacre, like the one in Norway, or this morning’s smaller tragedy at a beauty parlor in California, Bob – who has pulled many a bullet out of patients – will always say, “It’s the guns.” Maybe it’s time to look at gun violence from a different angle.


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Hard driving, pure rock. Here it is, Parlor Mob’s newest video coming out of the shadows. Kudos to Mark, Dave, Paul, Tony and Sam! Release date 10/11 and don’t miss the Stone Pony show on October 14th which will feature Plus Plus Minus (Jed Higgerson of Hello Lovely, Lisa Cusack-English of boy/girl, and Quinn English of The Gay Blades).

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