NP: The Roots, Phenomenology (CD)

Sometimes, media bias is glaringly obvious. Other times, it's a bit more subtle. Take this cover story from the Tribune's Red Eye on Thursday. The curious part is that they out John Kerry as having said "fuck," but offer no insight as to what bad word our president uttered near a microphone (it was "asshole").

Although, given the "hip, urban" vibe the Trib is trying so desperately to achieve, dropping f-bombs is a distinction that could work to favor Kerry, which is undoubtedly the whole reason the Democratic senator used that language in a Rolling Stone interview anyway. This, in turn, makes you wonder why a publication aimed as us "younger folk" would go with an article basically scolding our generation for bad language on it's cover, but Red Eye is pretty reality-challenged as it is.

Now that I've zeroed my chances of working for the Trib -- I applied for a job there a month or two ago, and noticed a tribune.com host on the site a week or two ago -- there are a few more interesting bits in the profanity story. First, it completely ignored Jon Stewart's unbleeped "fuckers" from last week on The Daily Show. Stew gets no respect, dammit. And I'm contintually surprised at the localized outrage with regard to Bono swearing at the Golden Globes last year. Doesn't anybody watch the Grammys? U2 won for Best Alternative Artist some five or six years ago, and a bemused Bono said on that telecast that "we will continue to abuse our position and fuck the mainstream." A mainstream with very short memory, it would seem, so it may be easier than the band thinks to accomplish.

Heading into tonight's Abi gig, I'm trying to get funky by osmosis, with The Roots, Propellerheads and the Rhino comp in the changer. Yes, it would be better to actually practice, but I'm still pretty wiped from playing soccer last night. Feeling my age, to say the least, although I had a heck of a goalline clearance in the second half.

Third call has gone unanswered, although I'm tempted to consolidate the two that happened on the same day and face one more pitch. It's now been over a week, and I have to think that things are not going well, but I may be wrong. I'm trying not to think too much about it, but that's pretty much against my nature. On the other hand, I'm pretty focused on getting other areas of my life in order. SourBob nailed it, and while I wouldn't say "rock bottom," this all went down during a tough stretch. There's only so much of a brave face I can put on things right now, and I'm not going to sugarcoat things just to create a positive (and false) impression.

That's as much as I can say about that without knowing who may or may not be reading. Seeing as how I've already potentially killed an employment opportunity -- although another good option presented itself yesterday -- the goal of this forum is not to continually shoot myself in the foot. Granted, I don't know what the goal of this forum actually is, but it's not that. The new options is on top of and in addition to becoming the sandwich music king of Chicago, of course. Yes, I'm going to keep coming back to that, 'cause I think it's really fucking funny.