Help me give you my music.

Say, I wanna give you all music. Does anybody know how I might go about exporting an iTunes playlist into a way that I could put it up for download?

I know a couple websites people use to put up files for download, and I imagine I'd need a program for making zip files. Or does my Mac already have one? Ugh, three years later and I still barely know my own computer, how sad.

But yeah, I've seen people on LJ in the past put up whole playlists, including custom CD cover art. I've thrown a little something together and wanna share it with you good folks, if'n you're interested.



Oh, and in other news, BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM? Saw it all the way through, and yeah, still the best Batman movie ever. Yes, it's deeper than THE DARK KNIGHT.

Patton Oswalt on McCain: An American Tragedy Worthy of James Ellroy

Speaking as...

1.) a solo performer struggling with trying to be a success without cheaply exploiting my family connection (too much)

2.) a casual fan of James Ellroy

And 3.) one of the many who feel betrayed by John McCain

... the following essay by comedian and animated-rat-voicer Patton Oswalt was the most personally meaningful I've read throughout this whole crazy-ass election. Indeed, from a strictly non-political performer standpoint alone, it might be up there with finding Steve Martin's BORN STANDING UP. And from a political standpoint... well, just check it out for yourselves.

***

And You Will Be Fascinated By Defeat
By Patton Oswalt
10.24.2008

I'm fascinated by John McCain.

Forty years from now, some future James Ellroy (or Ellroy himself, if we can find a way to remove his head and attach it to an indestructible writer-bot) will write a "Millennium Trilogy", covering the Clintons, the rise and fall of Bush, and the ascendancy of Obama.

We stumbled into the early 90's, led by a Southern good ole boy on a constant pussy hunt. But the good ole boy made everyone richer and then got impeached for a blow job. Then it was time to enter the new millennium with an East Coast, rich-boy, born-again cokehead draft dodger who got us into an unnecessary war. Now we're about to elect a black guy raised by a single mom, whose middle name is the same as the dictator we toppled in the bullshit war the cowardly draft dodger started.

Try pitching that to New Line.



I've just done a blaze-through of Ellroy's American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, in anticipation of Blood's A Rover being released next year. Ellroy writes like a machine-gunner dry-swallowing Benzedrine, and that's how you stutter-lurch through the Kennedy years - the 1960 election, Papa Kennedy's power-lust, Bobby's justice-lust, and Jack's just plain lust, fueled by back pain and an obliquely expressed death-wish. I'll probably re-read the goddamn things next summer, so I can fall straight into the third when it hits the stands. 1300 pages that read like a Chick tract.

And what the books do - with eerie cameos by J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Jack Ruby and Carlos Marcello - is show how the sure-footed and graceful actually dodged the darker, more instructive areas of our history. It was the confused, misguided, violent and despairing people who cracked reality, and sent us into the jungles of Vietnam, the streets of Chicago, and outer space. It took an innate failure of spirit to defeat and re-shape reality.

Obama is sure-footed and graceful. He's going to win. He knows the moment he becomes angry he gets tagged as "militant". So he's armed himself with calm. Let his opponent shriek and bark like a meth head, and scare the populace.

He's going to make history.

But McCain, someday, is going to make a great novel. He doesn't want to be a part of it, but it'll be one of the most readable things to come out of this dark spiral we've been going through for eight years. And worry - the spiral isn't terminal. At the last minute - just like America's always done - we'll pull ourselves away from the spinning blades. There's going to come a day when we won't. That day isn't now.

So, Obama's going to win.

( But all I can think of is McCain. )

source

Some people found that funny. Not me, man. Just insightful. Kinda makes you wish Patton's stand-up routine featured this guy more often, rather than that hobbit with Tourette syndrome talking about fast food (although that Famous Bowls bit is kinda legendary now).

Still, comparing Old McCain/New McCain to crushed sell-out comedians pandering to their crowds... it kinda puts this in a whole different perspective, doesn't it?

(Cindy stole the whole bit, IMO).


*I wanna reiterate that part: "There's a part in every human you can reach that laughs and thinks and maybe disagrees with you, but stays intrigued with you, in the long run. And that's how you build a career and a body of work. It takes longer, but every minute is fun. And you never have to swallow anything that tastes sickening."

THAT'S why I'm not wearing goddamn bunny ears.