"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
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Another reason to pick up a pint or twelve of Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream
Posted by Jill | 9:50 PM
Ben and Jerry's Board of Directors issues a statement in support of Occupy Wall Street:
We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance to all of us. These include:


•The inequity that exists between classes in our country is simply immoral.
•We are in an unemployment crisis. Almost 14 million people are unemployed. Nearly 20% of African American men are unemployed. Over 25% of our nation’s youth are unemployed.
•Many workers who have jobs have to work 2 or 3 of them just to scrape by.
•Higher education is almost impossible to obtain without going deeply in debt.
•Corporations are permitted to spend unlimited resources to influence elections while stockpiling a trillion dollars rather than hiring people.

We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and hardships borne by so many, or accurately conveying what this movement is about. All this goes on while corporate profits continue to soar and millionaires whine about paying a bit more in taxes. And we have not even mentioned the environment.

We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy.

— Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors


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Monday, October 08, 2007

When giving away the printed word is a subversive act
Posted by Jill | 9:48 AM
One would think that the Paterson, NJ police would have better things to do than harass a couple of guys giving away free books in front of an abandoned storefront:

With an embarrassingly high rate of illiteracy in Paterson and no major bookstore for the city's poverty-burdened residents, two local activists took matters into their own hands.

Why not give away books for free?

To anyone.

So began the great Paterson book giveaway, the brainchild of a retired biology teacher and a tattoo artist -- definitely an unlikely pair.

Two mornings each week for the last year, former teacher John Sargis and tattooist Tom Silva have set up a table on a Paterson sidewalk and handed out Saul Bellow novels or travel books or Arthur Miller plays or memoirs by South African political activists -- to name just a few of their selection of free books.

In just the last month, the sidewalk table and book-brimming milk crates that Sargis and Silva bring to downtown Paterson has been visited three times by police.

What gives?

Police say they are only responding to citizen complaints -- and have not shut down the book giveaway or written any tickets or put anyone in handcuffs.

"There's probably a citizen complaint," Lt. Anthony Traina, Paterson's police spokesman.

But who is complaining? And why?

So far, police won't say.

Sargis and Silva say police have asked whether they have a sales license, then discover Sargis and Silva don't need one because they are merely passing out free books.

"We said this is not a sale," Sargis said.

"We know what our rights are," Silva added.

On other visits, the activists say police complain that they are blocking the sidewalk and ask if they have a permit to congregate. On a recent weekday, the activists' table took up barely 2 feet of the 8-foot-wide sidewalk. During the two-hour giveaway, pedestrians had plenty of room to pass by.

But Sargis and Silva say they don't want to pick a fight even though they both say they have a constitutional right to pass out free reading material. But on one occasion, when police suggested that they should leave, Sargis and Silva packed up their books and went home.

"No one likes to get arrested," Silva said.

And so what began as a community service has become a community question mark for Sargis and Silva. Can they continue to give away books?

[snip]

Sargis and Silva are decidedly liberal in their politics. When they set up their table of books, they also post political signs on nearby walls.

On a recent weekday, on a wall outside the abandoned El Nuevo Teresita Restaurant on the corner of Ellison and Church streets, the sign for "Free Books" was book-ended by two other signs.

"Impeach Bush," said one.

"Out of Iraq," said another.

Piled on the table with computer books and a biography of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and a memoir by retired U.S. Navy admiral and former Joint Chiefs Chair- man William Crowe were leaf-lets advising young men and women not to enlist in the military.

Sargis and Silva hope their political messages might provoke passers-by to talk to them.

"Knowledge is free," Sargis explains. "There shouldn't be any price on knowledge. In a democratic society, people need knowledge to make adequate decisions."


Exactly. If, as I suspect, the harassment is less about taking up space on the sidewalk and more about trying to suppress the messages that Sargis and Silva have posted on the doors of the abandoned storefront in front of which they ply their wares.

Story and video of the project is here.

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Friday, August 10, 2007

The Good Bad Girl
Posted by Anonymous | 7:32 AM

Bad Girl, Bad Girl,
What’cha gonna do?
What’cha gonna do
When they come for you?

Why, if you’re Angelina Jolie, you snap your fingers and make ‘em do tricks. Roll over. Play dead. Beg.

Aw, isn’t Brad cute? Tee hee hee.

On Alexander, Oliver Stone’s Achilles heel of an epic, there were rumors that a boozy Colin Farrell opened up his toga and repeatedly exposed himself to the women on the set. Some of the guys thought it was funny. I suppose some of the other guys didn’t think so, but they didn’t say anything. As you know, Angelina played Olympias in the film. No, she wasn’t good. Then again, neither was anybody else.

Anyway, Colin decided to share his dumb parlor trick with Angelina. To his surprise, she didn’t get angry, upset, or embarrassed. Instead, Angelina grinned at the Irish one-dick pony, grabbed not-quite-a-handful of Colin, and squeezed. Hard. Ouch. The other guys cringed. The women didn’t say anything, but they thought it was funny.

That’s what Bad Girls do. Independent, smart, tough-minded women who don’t start trouble but know how to finish it. Ida Lupino, Louise Brooks, Christina Ricci, Debra Winger, Barbara Stanwyck, Denise Crosby, Sharon Stone, Bette Davis, Frances Farmer, Glenda Jackson are in the club. Angelina has a key. Most of the time, they’re better than their movies.

Angelina’s career has been the usual seesaw. Sometimes she’s eye candy on a silver plate, as in the (ugh) ridiculous Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow or forgotten in The Good Shepherd. A Mighty Heart, the biopic about the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, was criminally underrated. The studio's decision to dump it in the middle of the popcorn blockbusters Spider-Man, Pirates, and Shrek was idiotic. (Please see it on DVD, all right?) But, as poor Wynona (“Hey! That was supposed to be my Oscar!”) Ryder found out too late in Girl, Interrupted, Angelina is an excellent actress when given the opportunity. Her three Golden Globe awards next to the two Screen Actors Guild awards, tell you that other people think so too.

Even better, Angelina is one of those celebrities that gets it. The money Lindsay Lohan spent for a limousine to get sick in would have bought a lot of schoolbooks. If you got a few extra bucks to give, why not? Angelina gets it. After a visit to Sierra Leone in 2001, she understood “how completely naive I was to think I had a difficult life. It was as if someone slapped me across the face and said, ‘Oh, my God, you silly young woman from California, do you have any idea how difficult the world really is for so many people?’ I got out of myself pretty quickly.” Angelina is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. Paris Hilton probably thinks the UN is a nightclub.

Does Angelina say dumb things from time to time? Oh yeah. I bet she belches, farts, and picks her nose, too. And I’m sure that there’s a couple of bad films in the future with her name on them waiting to be sold for half price at Blockbuster as well. Hey, she’s not St. Angelina, y’know? But I give Angelina credit for trying, as Gandhi said, “to be the change you want to see in the world.” Maybe she’s a rich white woman living in a bubble, but it’s not a mirror.

Angelina is a Bad Girl who gets it. Good.

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