The party is about to start, and here's a thread for people to share gossip, anger, awkwardness and bitter rants about their fellow party-goers. You're not just partying for yourselves, but for the millions of us watching at home.

Looks like there might still be some need for a thread where people can coordinate DC stuff.

Oh my.

That must be some kind of subtle political code.

Story here, follow-up here.

Asked if he stood by his comments in the earlier Guardian interview, Deady said:

"I most assuredly do. I've been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."

In the earlier interview with The Guardian, Deady said of Muslims: "We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."

When I asked Deady to elaborate on his suggestion that we need to "get rid" of Muslims, Deady said:

"When I say get rid of them, I wasn't necessarily referring to genocide. What I was referring to is, stand up to them every time they stick up their heads and attack us. We can't afford to say, `We'll try diplomacy.' They don't respond to it. If you look into Islamic tradition, a treaty is only good for five years. We're not dealing with a rational mindset here. We're dealing with madmen."

When I asked Deady if this was also a reference to all Muslims, he said: "I am talking about Muslims in general."

I know this guy is a Giuliani surrogate, but surrogates will say any damn thing, and we'll see how Rudy responds--even I assume that Giuliani will disavow the remarks; we'll see if he does it in code. But it's worth noting again how acceptable anti-muslim sentiment is in the US, and watching how many people defend this guy.

I realize I'm alone with my snot on the blog right now; nevertheless, I share a couple of tunes I've been enjoying.

Tom Waits with Gun Street Girl, and Alvin Youngblood Hart rocking out, blues style, with Big Mama's Door (Might Return).

I believe in free speech, but I also believe that evolutionary psychology should be banned and all its practitioners sentenced to a diet of boiled sock broth. A dilemma.

Maybe these people should also look at the studies showing how much more housework women do, how much time they spend on childcare, and how tired they are, four years into a relationship. But back on the veldt, confidence always won out over correctness...

We're in "the back room".

Speaking of music, I've been meaning to post about the recently deceased Cast King, who Ben mentioned to me in the comments a few weeks ago. Really great stuff. Which is not to say that you barbarians will like it.

I'm party prepping, Ogged's diseased, Labs is at APA, and Ben's traveling, so that puts many of us out of commission. Things might be a little slow around here through the end of the year. But feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Yglesias lists his ten favorite albums of the year and adds,

For next year, I resolve to listen to more actual hip-hop albums instead of just downloading the odd single.

Which seems like a good opportunity to ask, as non-trollishly as I can, why do you listen to hip-hop? Very broadly put, I listen to music either to replicate that bodily feeling which most humans recognize as the urge to dance (in me it manifests as the urge to play basketball, but whatevs), and that accounts for anything from M.I.A. to Soundgarden to Those Talking Heads. Or because the music is pleasing to my ear and conjures feelings or thoughts that I'd like to sit with for a while. This is where Dylan and Jackson Frank and The Be Good Tanyas come in.

But hip-hop isn't danceable music, is it? It certainly doesn't make me want to move. And I can't understand most of the words (can you?), so it doesn't do a lot to conjure thoughts and feelings. Seriously, I don't get it, and I know I'm not alone. So what is it that you're thinking and feeling when you enjoy hip-hop? Introspect! And report back honestly!

So you're all going to be sympathetic and understanding if I don't make it to Unfoggity, right? I might feel better tomorrow, but not only is getting on a plane the last thing I want to do right now, but if I had to sit next to someone for six hours who was sneezing and coughing the way I am now, there would be murder in the air.

I sure have seen a lot of Ron Paul bumper stickers driving around Midwest Hometown this week. My brother even asked me what I thought of him today, saying he's the "in" candidate on his college campus.

I'm kind of surprised he's gotten so much of a foothold out here, although I guess I shouldn't given that Perot did really well in 1992.

Almost now. From 3pm until lord knows when, Jackmormon, Josh, Jake, and the later-arriving Magpie will be staking out a spot at Jupiter in Berkeley (Center and Shattuck). Join them if you dare.

Ogged's sick. He needs to get better before UnfoggeDCon. Help him out, folks. What should he do to speed the process up?

I was picking some things up at the grocery store for Christmas dinner the other day and saw this for sale -- an attachment you can put on your sink's water filter so that you can get a Crystal Light-type product right out of the tap instead of water. Has it really come to this?

You can read it as the cool kids taking to the pages of the Washington Post to make fun of the dweebs, or you can read it as patrolling the discourse to keep other voices marginalized, or you can read it as a take-down so effective that no one can attend a Reason party again. Up to you.

Be it known that it is still this blog's official policy that Tom Hanks sucks.

Woman ahead of us when leaving the theater, in all earnestness: "I think I would have liked it better if it wasn't so much about politics."

J. Emerson sez:

BTW, there will be a Portland mini-meetup on the 27th at Higgins', 1239 SW Broadway near Jefferson. Jesus and I will be there, and Not Prince Hamlet.

If an Unfogged Central Committeeperson happens to see this, they might elevate the post to invite lurkers. Or not. Come one come all.

What that means, you'll have to figure out for yourselves.

Merry Christmas, Ogged.

It's not technically Modern Love but it might as well be. And I'm just baffled as to why it exists.

You're probably not bored enough to play this game. I, however, am at work. 21 seconds is my best so far. Heh.

During a particularly quiet stretch of I Am Legend, a man a couple of rows up said, at the top of his lungs, "TURN OFF THAT FUCKING PHONE." This was perplexing, since no one else had heard a phone, but maybe he objected to the screen light, which I can understand. Still and all, it seemed a bit over the top, but now I reflect that the guy two seats over from us would not fucking shut up, despite my friend and I turning simultaneously to give him the death stare for about ten seconds. Yappity yap yap yap. It's enough to make a guy move to the suburbs and buy a big-screen TV.

And: It occurs to me that had that line been in the movie, it would have probably gotten an R rating, instead of PG-13, and half the people in the audience couldn't have been there. They're now scarred for life, obviously.

1) My mother, god bless her, has the most random movie rental tastes in the universe. Every time she goes to the video store, she comes back with five straight-to-video movies I've never heard of. I don't understand -- she has great taste for movies that are in theaters but once they end up on DVD it all goes out the window. I'm not complaining, though -- if anything, it makes watching DVDs with her an adventure.

2) Our old video store shut down so we have been trying out a new place this trip. We were shocked to realize that all of the movies we'd rented were full-screen pan-and-scan and not widescreen. Who the fuck watches full-screen DVDs?

Via Yglesias: dude waterboards self, really doesn't like it. Worth reading. American ingenuity, baby.

But again, I note that although this is a good refutation of the "waterboarding is no big deal" argument, lots of things that are no big deal when endured in a controlled/consensual situation can still be torture depending on the circumstances.

My artwork is never bad,
There's no right or wrong way,
My effort makes me feel glad,
I would draw anything,
an ocean or a bay.
Bright colors, lines are bold;
artwork is like gold.

--Attributed to a student of one Cedar Creek Elementary

Art tour plans for Friday and Saturday below...

[ Friday ]

14th Street Galleries: Contemporary art by local and nationally recognized artists at a cluster of galleries along 14th Street. Meet at 1515 14th Street NW; we'll start at Hemphill Fine Arts on the third floor and make our way down (there are four total galleries in this building), then cross the street to Transformer Gallery at P Street, and time pending, up to 14th St and Rhode Island for another stop. See art by Armsmasher's associate. Begin at 11 a.m. We're going to be hustling on this leg. (Directions; free)

Corcoran Gallery of Art: Like that one house that leaves the Christmas lights up through summer, the museum never took down Jennifer Steinkamp's Loop from its atrium gallery (installed in 2005); let's hope that it's still up. Jeremy Blake's posthumous show of digital video portraits is the main draw. You may know him from the cover of Beck's Sea Changes or the coverage that followed his bizarre death. We'll Metro over from 14th Street; the Corc is at 500 17th St NW, near the White House. Meet here at 1:00 p.m. (Directions; admission is $6--unless it is $14, the price for the concurrent Ansel Adams and Annie Leibowitz exhibits, which you are welcome to tour instead, so long as you don't mind inviting on your head a little scorn from me)

National Gallery of Art: Meet here at 3:00 p.m. to tour the wonderful J.M.W. Turner exhibition. I'll be leaving you to your own devices at around 4:30, but there should be plenty here to keep you occupied (including some few but tremendous works by Homer from the permanent collection--closing soon!) until you're expected at the Brickskeller at 6 p.m. (Directions; free)

[ Saturday ]

Kreeger Museum: A twofold tour of the Philip Johnson-designed building and the small, private collection of work it houses, with a focus on the Eastern influence on the building and the West Coast painting tradition within the collection. Doors open at 10 a.m.; let's get hopping at 10:30 a.m., which gives everyone time to get there. I would suggest cabbing over: The address is 2401 Foxhall Road NW, and though it's far from the Flophouse, this is a situation in which the ridiculous District taxi zone system will probably help you out. (Directions, and know that even I wouldn't attempt public transportation to get here; admission is $8.)

Hirshhorn: Last stop on the tour offers the Smithsonian's modern and contemporary holdings. A lumbering show by Morris Louis gets a meh, but recent acquisitions should be exciting. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the video collaboration between Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimaraes, Quarta-Feira de Cinzas, which I have not yet seen. Meet at Bunshaft's Bunker at 1 p.m.; I'll be leaving everyone at 3 p.m. to finish setting up for the party, but the sculpture garden nearby offers diversions. (Directions; free)

baa wonders about religion, materialism, and why any materialist would be happy.

I don't think I agree with him, but things to think about, in any case.

The results of the Unfogged presidential poll.