This recent no-holds-barred political speech (above) made in Congress by Representative Pete Stark (Democrat) --  in which he just relentlessly tells it as it is on the issues of kid's health care juxtaposed with the expense and moral issues of the war in Iraq and the GOP's stance on immigration etc. (perhaps even going a little over the top in some of the personal comments at Bush in making his points, but nothing obscene or anything like that) -- made me wonder how different the world would be today if more politicians constantly spoke their minds as freely as this. You know, like in that Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar, where he had no choice but to tell the truth no matter how undiplomatic it might sound.

More importantly, what if politicians also fully acted on their words by fully following through with concrete actions? And what if -- no matter what -- they stood by what they said? Note that since this speech, Pete Stark did apologize. Full story in today's LA Times.

As reported by the BBC, the popular torrent-sharing network OiNK has been shut down in a joint operation by the British and Dutch police. The home of a 24-year-old IT worker from Middlesbrough, England plus his father's home were raided, as was his place of employment. Meanwhile, OiNK's Amsterdam based servers were also seized by the Dutch authorities. The BBC report speculated that OiNK was responsible for leaking 60 major pre-release albums this year to date and many stateside fans, who flooded message boards today, speculated that it was because of the more mainstream artists available on the network that the popular and high-fidelity network was busted.

According to the BBC report, the IT worker, allegedly the mastermind of the operation, "is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law." As explained in a report on the bust by PitchForkMedia, OiNK was an invitation-only service in which "membership was maintained by
the consistent sharing of new music torrents. The more tunes you uploaded, the better your standing. Monetary donations were also encouraged."

Rest in peace to Italian-American Napa Valley resident Vincent DeDomenico, who was the inventor of the "San Francisco treat," RIce-A-Roni, and who died in his sleep last Thursday at age 92. DeDomenico's legacy will live on forever and Rice-A-Roni is something that will always be synonymous with cable cars and San Francisco, California. Vincent was born in San Francisco in 1915 to Sicilian immigrants who had moved to California and set up the family business in San Francisco's Mission District -- the very successful Gragnano Products, Inc, which supplied pasta to Italian stores and restaurants all around San Francisco and which by the mid 1930's had changed its name to the Golden Grain Macaroni Company. A couple of decades later the invention of Rice-A-Roni would come about when in 1958, apparently inspired by the pilaf recipe of mixing rice and macaroni with some chicken broth, Vincent mixed all the ingrediants together dry: rice and macaroni plus a dry chicken soup mix and voila, "The San Francisco Treat" (its registered trademark) was born. Within four years Rice-A-Roni went national and just took off from there. By the 1960's it had become a cooking staple of US households and is still extremely popular to this day. In 1986 the Quaker Oats Company purchased the family business from the Golden Grain Company and has continued to expand its product line.

The catchy Rice-A-Roni advertising jingle is one that everyone seems to know and has become synonymous with the City by the Bay -- especially to outsiders/tourists -- because it repeatedly identifies with San Francisco imagery (including the sound of cable car bells). Additionally, the jingle has been sampled in many hip-hop releases and also the words "Rice-A-Roni" have been included in rap lyrics by both Bay Area and non Bay rap artists. Some rap songs over the years that have included the words "rice-a-roni" in their lyrics include Timbaland And Magoo's  "Up Jumps Da Boogie" from Welcome To Our World  featuring Missy when Magoo raps, "Eating Rice-A-Roni with Toni Toni Tone/Keep Cindy Crawford, to me she's to boney" and by the 2Live Crew in their take on Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" (the one that got Luther Campbell in a high profile lawsuit) with the lyrics, "Ya know what I'm saying you look better than rice a roni." 

The image to the left is the album cover art from the soundtrack to the film Juice that starred Tupac Shakur as the crazy & wild, revolver-carrying character Bishop (one of a group of Harlem teenagers). At the time of its release in 1992, the film stirred up quite a bit of controversy over said gun in the artwork that was also used in the movie's advertising campaign. I remember back then, as you probably do too, seeing the ad in magazines, on big billboards and also on AC Transit buses driving by. The image was identical to the one at the left with a gun-toting Pac. But soon after, a heated controversy arose over the inclusion of the gun in the movie poster and the artwork was altered, with the gun being airbrushed out of the image altogether.

The whole controversy over the Juice advertising campaign was instigated by reporter Anita Busch at the Hollywood Reporter when she wrote a critical article about Paramount Pictures' advertising campaign for the movie. She wrote that some people feared the ad dipiction would lead to violence around the movie theaters. The article triggered a landslide of bad publicity, which in turn triggered fear, which ultimately led the studios/producers of the film to alter the artwork and remove the gun (a revolver) from all movie related materials -- as in the DVD cover art, on the right.  

Among shocked rap fans at the time (myself included), the feeling was that it was a bullshit censorship move, with the real irony being that Hollywood was not airbrushing out guns from other (non rap related) movies. Clearly it came off at the time as a double-standard targeted at black youth and at a genre of music that was prone to controversy. (This was around the time of Ice T's "Cop Killer" and other hot-button controversies.) In fact, just a year earlier Vice President Dan Quayle used his high-profile position to slam Tupac's first album, 2Pacalypse Now: "There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published … It has no place in our society," was what Quayle said at the time of the rap album by the former Digital Underground member.

Last night (10/19) I went to check out Z-Trip, who sold out Studio B in Brooklyn during busy CMJ week, and the DJ totally rocked it. As at his San Francisco concert a couple of months back at the Independent, he again broke out the full drum kit and between DJ'ing played some mean drums. In the true Z-Trip tradition, his set was as much (if not more) classic rock than hip-hop and included his ever popular rendition of Rush's "Tom Sawyer" remix (included on the recent All Pro Soundtrack on Decon).

But the classic rock track Z-Trip dug up and remixed live for the energetic twenty-something crowd that got everyone going the most crazy was Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Everyone was going audibly wild to the point that it was like he was breaking out the hottest new record of the moment -- amazing, considering the Freddie Mercury-penned song was released (on the 1975 album A Night At The Opera) before most in the house were even born. Of course, the song never really went away -- it has constantly popped up in pop culture, including back in the 90's in Wayne's World and on jukeboxes and radio stations to this day. 

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a truly brilliant piece of music: one that can transcend time and genres and always remain fresh sounding -- even if it is the Manualist doing his (fart sounding) microphone rigged sweaty-hand version (below, along with Waynes World, plus an a capella rendition by the UC Men's Octet.):