Blog: Culpepper Log

New Album Releases, 12-25-2007: White Stripes, Radiohead, Nick Lowe I don't think there are really any actual new releases this Tuesday, for starters on grounds that no one's going to be open absolutely on Christmas day. The nearest thing to a new listing is the Radiohead album In Rainbows . It was premiered some weeks ago, allowing fans to download the album from their official website for whatever they wanted to pay. An actual physical CD release is listed here for today, though Amazon lists a release date for next Tuesday - [...]

A Huckabee supporter responds An evangelical supporter of Mike Huckabee responds to my " vicious attack " on the Huckster: Dear Sir, You may think that you are not a believer, but you are. Unfortunately, in yourself. I feel bad for you, because you attack Christianity at it's core without knowing Jesus Christ Himself. If Mitt Romney were a Pastor, would you attack him in the same vicious way that you wrote this article? I think not. It is apparent by your writing that you [...]

New Album Releases, 12-18-2007: Bram Tchaikovsky, Mary J Blige, Rivers Cuomo Surprisingly, there are several fairly big name releases this mere week before Christmas, far too late to get much good from seasonal shopping. Mary J Blige has her eight album out this week, Growing Pains . Also, Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo , which date from 1992 (two years before Weezer's debut) to this year. Also, Chingy is back with Hate It or Love It . But the [...]

Mitt Romney makes a better Christian than Mike Huckabee Rev. Mike Huckabee is supposed to be the most adamant, pure Christian candidate in the race for president. But to me, Huckabee seems to be the least truly Christian of the Republican field. I might cite several grounds for that, but mostly I'm saying this because of the sleazy and underhanded way he's demagogically using his religion specifically against Mitt Romney. For starters though, it's absolutely asinine the way that Huckabee goes putting God on his side in the Republican primary election. He's [...]

John Belushi, Soul Man The Blues Brothers were a pretty powerful phenomenon for a couple of years, but inherently suspect from the beginning. The genesis was that Chevy Chase had a gig at the White House doing his Gerald Ford impression for the president himself. As an excuse for Dan Akroyd and John Belushi to tag along, they were cast as Secret Service agents. The suits and the Ray Bans from that became the basis for Jake and Elwood Blues, building on an old sketch about blues playing bees back on [...]

Standing up for George Clinton and the P-Funk New pal Brother Bennie wrote me with some remedial notes regarding my professedly middling knowledge of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic: I discovered your reviews of P-Funk albums through Wikipedia, and I find myself inspired to comment accordingly. When it comes to the funk, one has to consider the several definitions of that term: Fright, depression, earthiness, lack of sophistication, foul smell (especially from sexual intercourse). Also, funk is an amalgamation of jazz, soul music, the blues, strong syncopation, numerous rhythms, etc. [...]

New Album Releases, 12-11-2007: Wu Tang Clan, Bow Wow & Omarion, Pink Floyd box There are but a dozen or so shopping days until Christmas, but there are at least a couple of fairly high profile new releases. The Great Debaters sounds like a classy, ambitious movie. About half of the original recordings for the soundtrack album feature the under appreciated Sharon Jones singing among other things "Up Above My Head." So that would probably be the top likely new album on which one might wish to take a blind flier. [...]

Mitt Romney flunks Steve Chapman's anti-religious test for office "Reason" my butt. The supposed "Reason" based magazine has a particularly dishonest and unreasonable syndicated article by Steve Chapman condemning Mitt Romney's big speech on religion in America that he gave last week, 12-6-2007. If you had seen or read the nicey-nice Romney speech, you'd know that Chapman was whack in the very first paragraph. "He thinks it would be much more in keeping with America's noblest traditions if Mormons and other believers joined together to punish people of no faith." [...]

Mark Steyn's fake musical sophistication Really, I'm pretty much of a fan of Mark Steyn, the conservative wag whom I know principally for his writing at National Review , but he published an article bashing popular music in The New Criterion a few weeks ago that stuck in my craw. This article was framed as a 20th anniversary tribute to Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind . Not having read the whole book, I won't presume to critique it. But [...]

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Review, 1975 Photo Gallery, Cast, and Credits The Rocky Horror Picture Show from 1975 was based on an English stage musical by Richard O'Brien. It has become known as THE textbook example of a "cult film." It was a cheaply made film that flopped in the initial regular theatrical release, but soon became a staple film for midnight matinees for at least 20 years, with many of the same people seeing the film hundreds of times apiece. The Rocky Horror audience became more noted [...]

Republicans can quit whining about the YouTube debate Last week (November 28, 2007), the Republican candidates for POTUS appeared in a CNN debate based on questions posted by YouTube users . For my money, this was the most interesting debate of the campaign season so far - which is not to say that it's the one that has made the candidates look the best. This was in large part because CNN picked out some relatively adversarial questions, and also some perhaps more oddball questions (as appropriate to the YouTube gimmick). [...]

A Mighty Wind Movie Review, Cast, Credits, and Photo Gallery The more I watch the Christopher Guest movie A Mighty Wind , the more impressed I am with it on multiple levels. More than anything though, I guess I'd have to say I'm in love with Catherine O'Hara. Well, actually I like Catherine O'Hara pretty much - she's an under appreciated actress. But I'm pretty much in love with Mickey Crabbe. She makes for a distressingly age appropriate object of affection for me, but what can I do? Anyway, [...]

New Album Releases, 12-4-2007: Blake Lewis, Ghostface Killah, Dewey Cox It's slim pickings for new music in these last few weeks of the year. Probably the most interesting new thing is a movie soundtrack. John C Reilly has a new movie coming out, which sounds like it's largely musical parody, including original songs aimed at Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and of course Johnny Cash. The soundtrack album for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story has gotten some good notices for the actual songs. Then there's the unlikely image on the [...]

Empire BAD!!! As a good libertarian, I'm pretty skeptical about those "entangling foreign alliances" that George Washington warned against - and the money involved in paying for such things. More importantly in recent years and with hopefully a little more maturity in my thinking, I've become more specifically skeptical of our ability to do everything for everybody. We've only got so much money, so many soldiers, and limited US public patience. Thus, I would identify my own qualms about interventionism as reflecting more my conservative practicality rather than my [...]

New Album Releases, 11-27-2007: Chuck D, Pirates of the Caribbean box, Ron Wood live There isn't a lot of major league new stuff this week, as the Christmas product is pretty much all out. For something new, you might try Chuck D's new Tribb to JB , which also includes a DVD. I notice an album Bubblegum Christmas by the 1910 Fruitgum Company. I don't see much info on this, but it would likely be circa 1970. If you can't stand to hear that Phil Spector album [...]

Reasons to Love Fred Thompson I'm not entirely thrilled with anybody who's running for president at this point, although some of them have their good points. Right today, I'm just thinking broadly on some of Fred Thompson 's good points. That's because he had an interesting confrontation on Fox News earlier today with reporter Chris Wallace, to whom he gave on air criticism of FNC for their coverage of his campaign. He didn't try to intimidate the host with a wagging finger and threatening gestures like Bill Clinton, or [...]

George Will on Compassion vs Sentiment Quote o' the Day - Here's a particularly good pithy comment on bleeding heart government from the ever insightful George Will : "We have a responsibility," Bush said on Labor Day 2003, "that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." That is less a compassionate thought than a flaunting of sentiment to avoid thinking about government's limited capacities and unlimited confidence.

Andy Griffith Show Photos and Credits Out here in Kornfield Kounty, Andy Griffith and especially Don Knotts are close to our hearts. Here's a guide to all the Mayberry related pages here at MoreThings: The Andy Griffith Show on MoreThings.com Don Knotts 1924 - 2006 Don Knotts is beautiful Andy Griffith Photo Gallery Andy Griffith Show "The Big House" Images [...]

New Album Releases, 11-20-2007: Koop, U2, the Residents, Alvin and the Chipmunks Soundtrack This week the star of our new albums pile is a Swedish duo+ called Koop. Koop Islands is the second album by Oscar Simonsson and Magnus Zingmark. I hadn't heard of them before getting this CD, but looking at the press that's a wonder. Atlantic is definitely pushing this act, and they've gotten these songs into multiple tv series and ad campaigns. Notably "Come to Me" was in last spring's season finale of Grey's [...]

Former ABC News anchor endorses Hillary Clinton Carole Simpson anchored ABC News World Tonight Sunday from 1988 to 2003. Age 66, she's now teaching journalism classes at Emerson College. She took her "Road to the White House" class to a Hillary Clinton campaign rally for instruction on covering pollitical rallies. In the midst of the event, she made an apparently spontaneous endorsement of Hillary Clinton. "I want to tell you tonight, because I happen to be here with my students, that I endorse [...]