"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Friday, August 09, 2013

This is the greatest thing in the history of things.
Posted by Jill | 5:27 AM
You know, I love a dorkalicious surrealist art video of a cat in a shark costume riding a Roomba as much as the next person. But for sheer glad-to-be-alive silly, nothing beats Stephen Colbert and friends busting a move -- and making lemonade out of band-booking lemons.

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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Saturday music blogging, or Note To Young America
Posted by Jill | 6:03 AM
Dear Youth of America:

This is why you ought to be careful about your online and video image. Behold seventeen-year-old Bono, 1978:



Let this be a lesson to you. In thirty years, you too could be rich and famous and respected and still have stuff like this out there, ripe for the picking.

(And The Edge is still playing the exact same style as he did back then.)

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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

This is all kinds of win
Posted by Jill | 5:08 AM
Last Friday, Rachel Maddow featured Texts from Hillary as the Best New Thing in the World Today:



The best thing about the internet has never been the way it allows everyone to be a writer, or that it lets you have friends all over the world. Those are awesome things, to be sure, but the best thing has been the seemingly endless supply of memes. Whether it's LOLCats and their many imitators, babies who love Betty White and laugh at dogs, awareness of all internet traditions, or Cats That Look Like Hitler, the internet has for the last fifteen years provided us with an every-more-necessary dose of silly.

Hillary Clinton would seem to be an odd choice for an internet meme, but Texts From Hillary spread so quickly that its creators found themselves with an invitation from the Secretary of State herself:

Two gays walk into a bar ...

... and out they walk, less than a week later, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office, laughing all the way.

It's an "only in D.C." story, but for Stacy Lambe, Adam Smith and Texts From Hillary, that's how it happened.

The two communications professionals -- Lambe works on clean energy and Smith on campaign finance reform -- went for drinks a week back. It was that recent? Yes. "We were on the rooftop of Nellie's last Wednesday," Smith tells Metro Weekly.

The photo of Clinton looking tough, calm and in charge "in a military C-17 plane from Malta bound for Tripoli, Libya October 18, 2011," as the original Reuters story captions it, became the topic of discussion. 

Once Lambe returned home and launched the Tumblr site, the meme was born. Diana Walker's black-and-white photo shot for Time and Kevin Lamarque's photo for Reuters became the underlying foundation of an internet laugh that has outlasted many others. Besides cats.

Looking at the many Anna Wintour, Meryl Streep (below, left), Rachel Maddow and Arianna Huffington posts on the Tumblr, one can't help but notice a bit of a pattern.

"I just kept coming up with perfect results of people like Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep on their phones, and there's just this natural alignment. I think a lot of people associate those three women in similar circles," Lambe says by phone this afternoon. "Having seen a couple of videos of Meryl Streep introducing Hillary Clinton at the women's summit, there's just this camaraderie there. There's just so much respect between those two women, you can't help but have this awesome little exchange that you think might happen.

"I may be only speaking for me, but I'm sure a lot of gay men, gay women too, have a lot of respect for them."

Talking with Smith today after he and Lambe left their meeting with Clinton, he laughs.

"It was sort of unbelievable. Her staff had emailed us yesterday, said that they liked the site and that the Secretary wanted to meet us. They asked if we could come over to the State Department, and we of course said, 'Sure, we'd love to!'"


And now even the Secretary of State herself has decided to get in on the fun.

Maureen Dowd thinks it may mean something for 2016. I'm not so sure, but if Hillary is not the heir apparent to the White House, she's at least in the running to be the next Betty White.

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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Happy St. Patrick's Day
Posted by Jill | 3:37 PM


Or, for the snarky among you:





Wow! Everyone IS Irish on St. Patrick's Day!

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