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This and that

On Monday, Sony Music announced that Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine would finally be released on October 4th. But this won't be the version that leaked onto the internet earlier this year. That version was produced by Jon Brion. It was a masterpiece.

Having heard two tracks from the retooled version, produced by Mike Elizondo, I'll say it has more of a sheen on it. Definitely more commercial than Brion's take on the songs. Apparently, Apple is happier with the new version.

I'll reserve judgement until the album's released, but it'll be hard to top the first version.

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A shout out to blogger Jay Gnospelius. I told him I'd give him a plug for a new venture of his: Kidparazzi.

Kidparazzi is basically a modern version of a kid photographer. He comes to your public event, free of charge, and shoots the hell out of it. Then you go to his site and buy prints. He makes a cut of all the sales. Pretty good deal. There's a nominal fee for private parties, but that's only natural.

I don't receive anything except Jay's gratitude, so check out his services.

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Last post I said I was working on some redesigns of parts of the site. The first upgrade is up: the Martial Artist's Guide to Hong Kong Films. All the reviews are written by my good friend and sometime columnist Passenger 58. He's been practicing martial arts all his life and he knows his shit. In fact, his subdomain is one of the most visited parts of my site. Check it out if you're into chop socky flicks.

Heartless

From the Associated Press:

President George W. Bush got his first look at an anti-war vigil near his ranch on Friday as his motorcade took him by the protest site lined with small white crosses representing fallen American soldiers in Iraq.

[...]

Cindy Sheehan, whose son was one of the nearly 1,850 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, held up a sign that said: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?"

[...]

Bush left his ranch to go to Stan and Kathy Hickey's Broken Spoke Ranch for a barbecue lunch to raise more than $2 million for the Republican National Committee. The 230 people attending were among the party's biggest donors.

O'Reilly gets his ass handed to him

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, a soldier who was killed in action in Iraq, has been staging a protest outside of Bush's Crawford ranch. She vows to remain their for the duration of Bush's five week vacation (the longest by a president in 36 years).

Sheehan would like Bush to explain why more Americans have to die in the name of a lie. She says she's staying until he comes out and speaks to her personally. her cause has garnered national attention. She's been pegged for interviews and coverage by Time, People, Vanity Fair and even Oprah.

So Wednesday night Bill O'Reilly invites Dolores Kesterson on his program. Kesterson also lost a son in Iraq. He was looking for an anti-Cindy Sheehan; someone to counter the attention Sheehan was getting. It backfired.

Not only did Kesterson agree with Sheehan, she laid into O'Reilly hard and he had to sit there and take it. His usual strongarm tactics wouldn't work on a dead soldier's mom.

It was priceless. Enjoy the video.

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Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been redesigning my Spider-man art site along with my illustration section. I've also been messing around with a different look for this blog.

First change, I've decided to forego the comments links at the end of each post. If you're inclined to leave a note, you can still post comments at the Blogger version of this site or simply send me an e-mail. frankly, it was a bit of a hassle to code the comments section.

In a few weeks, I'll be changing the look of the site. I also plan on adding a search function which will along you to find old posts.