it’s a sweet afternoon here at my place. cubs are wailing on the pirates at the moment, there’s a perfect breeze blowing through my apartment, and i’m thoroughly enjoying the next book i picked up, the big sleep by raymond chandler. and the day’s just started.

the other night i got all political-geeky and stayed up late watching the al gore speech for moveon.org on my computer. i must have caught them at the right time because then they still had the full length video up, now it’s just lots of clips (which you should still check out). i thought it was a really moving speech. i don’t want to go on a diatribe or cover something that’s already been covered to death already, but i will say this: how great would it be to have a president who could not only use but understand the phrase ‘faustian bargain’? and we were so close. check out the page, it was a great speech.

the funny thing was i decided to watch it at around 1am wednesday night, when the apartment was all dead and quiet. i felt like a little kid staying up past his bedtime to watch scary movies — only it was me at my computer watching an hour-long political oratory. how far we’ve come, eh?

oh, and saw the shins last night at the wiltern, which was pretty great. they seem like a fun bunch of guys, and they sounded dead-on. i think i’m just burned out on them after listening to chutes too narrow non-stop for basically all of april. and those goddamn fiery furnaces opened for them, which i will never understand. why do they get so much attention? their singer can’t sing and their songs have no melody. as far as i know, that means your band sucks. except if you’re just trying to make an art-rock statement or something, in which case your band still sucks, you’re just trying to impress the staff at kcrw so some nerd can get up and rave about you while giving your intro. *coughbullshitcough*

ps: anyone know why the shins’ website is ‘darkcoupon.com’? that’s creepy.

pps: CUBS WIN 6-1! EAT THAT PITTSBURGH!

[now hearing this: some hey mercedes mix madness.]