Alexander McQueen x Puma Scarred Street Low (via sneakerlog)

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EDITED: Thank you for visiting. The Yom Kippur morning service broadcast has completed. To watch the Yizkor service webcast starting at 2:15pm CST, please visit OurTemple.org.

The Yom Kippur morning service is being broadcast live both at 8am and 11am CST from Temple Emanu-El. Watching this morning’s Yom Kippur morning service requires Windows Media Player be installed on your computer. Thank you to Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama for providing this stream.

Remember folks: streaming isn’t free for the temple. You can make donations to Temple Emanu-El here to show your appreciation for their webcasting.

Kol Nidre (Prayer for Yom Kippur) in my Father's Shul by Israel Birnbaum

To all those who visit, I wish each of you an easy fast, a good Yom Tov and L’Shana Tovah for Tishri 5769.

Click here to be taken to the live webcast of Kol Nidre, beginning at 9pm EST (6pm PST), service to be rebroadcast on-demand after the initial broadcast.

After procrastinating repeatedly, I finally made it out (thanks to Mark & Katie) to the beautifully-renovated Levitt Shell on Sunday night for a terrific performance from Samarabalouf (pronounced sah-MAH-rah-bah-LOOF), a Gypsy swing trio from France who energized the crowd in attendance. Seeing this show made me enthusiastic about the future of the arts in Memphis. This isn’t the old Overton Park Shell — it is transformed, ultimately, into something much more grand and beautiful than I could have imagined. More info and a video after the jump.

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Memphians have been speciously fearful after seeing a flurry of McCain/Palin stickers around East Memphis recently. It’s likely because people in Memphis see themselves as having made some kind of benefit from the last 8 years of failed policies by the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled congress. Memphians who support the Obama/Biden ticket shouldn’t be afraid; they should be enthused by what is going on.

The candidates themselves are making the case for an Obama/Biden win through their own actions.

I’m wondering if it could be that the generation of my parents see McCain as a celebratory representative of what people are capable of doing even at age 72. While I respect the desire to identify with a candidate based on a superficial notion, using this reasoning to support a candidate is pretty frightening; age, or lack of age, is not a reason to select someone to be a leader of a country.

Of course, it could be that people cling to the soundbites that speak to supporting their notions. So-called “media bias” has become a talking point of the McCain campaign, used to support the idea that favorable coverage is being doled out to Obama and Biden. I agree that the media is culpable in this situation; and, by the same token, so-called “right-wing” media frequently, as Big Brother is want to, distort the facts and only focus on the pieces of soundbites that make their candidate look good.

Why wouldn’t they? There is a tendency by the media to focus positively on the Obama/Biden ticket, and with good reason: they have made themselves available. Palin’s two horrific interviews and McCain’s continued need to quote half-truths and lambast us with his record as a war hero are really just the kind of fuel that highlights what make Obama and Biden the clear winners in the upcoming election.
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The interception of a submarine containing 7 tons of cocaine (worth a street value of $196 million) has sent shockwaves through the crack addict community. As early as 8 pm on Friday night, lines began forming at crack houses in cities big and small all throughout the United States on short-term investors fear of dramatic price increases and the potential for drought to occur. At one well-known location in Memphis, clamoring, glassy-eyed baseheads stood hoping for a chance to re-up, gripped with terror as the demand for product suddenly stretched clear around the block.

“When I first heard the news,” a man who would only be identified as “Pookie” told Cherry Blossom Special, “I was … well, it was quite disturbing. I actually…I was at my partner’s house and…we had just started hitting the pipe. His buddy had got up and walked down to the store to get a pack of Newports and I guess he forgot he had left the TV on. Then they said 7 tons of cocaine… and in my mind, I was like, ‘WHAT?’ Man, I got so spooked, I broke my stem and almost set my hand on fire.”

“Pookie” was not alone in his concerns. All cross the country, within minutes “Pookies” everywhere, along with dozens of others from around the way, were driven to go on a mission. Klingons began converging en masse lining up out front of the spots, desperately trying to catch a price break before news of the submarine seizure reached the bomb squads and corners. Zoomers capitalized on the situation, leading to widespread complaints about “bunk shit”. Even “kibbles & bits”, pieces which previously ended up on floors, in sofa cushions or behind furniture, have become valued commodities.

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A couple of days ago, word came around that Governor Sarah Palin’s personal email at Yahoo! had been infiltrated by hackers who post on the internet website 4chan. Through some methodology, they had been able to compromise her email, take screenshots, and then post them before a conscientious objector to the activity changed the password back.

The invasion of the Governor’s privacy has raised a number of questions about the privacy & security of public email providers, furthering concern and speculation that such use by government officials to conduct official government business would fall outside the realms of disclosure.

Months ago, Governor Palin admitted openly to routinely having used public email, even prided herself on the choice. Now that the email has been compromised, people on all sides were given a clear, if momentary, glimpse into what amounts to, essentially, very little: nothing untoward was revealed whatsoever. Quite the contrary: it bolstered confidences of people who supported Governor Palin, both sympathetically and contextually, for using public email in her practice as governor of Alaska.

Meanwhile, the CIA and the FBI appear to have become directly involved in tracking down the people (or persons) who infiltrated the governor’s privacy, a completely appropriate action in light of who, and what, was being tampered with. Blame has been placed on someone who, in the eyes of some, must clearly be an Obama supporter — someone who wanted to blow the whistle on some form of corruption. It has stimulated response from both Republicans and Democrats, denouncing the fiendish motivations behind such actions, creating increased finger-pointing by people who were already looking for reasons to chastise one side or the other.

The media has wondered, publicly, how such an attack could have occurred. But in the media’s coverage of this debacle, a series of critical reasoning flaws and motives have been overlooked.

Chief among these logic problems, to this writer, seems simple: what if it was merely an “inside job” by the McCain camp meant to discredit Obama supporters and create a firestorm of controversy?

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I woke up from a sort-of fitful dream scenario in which John McCain happens to die before the November election cycle. This sad, yet highly oddball twist led to Sarah Palin leading the Republican ticket — a ticket on which she managed to get a sympathy vote and become President of the United States.

John McCain’s final gaffe, selecting her to be his running mate, led to an outcome of critical proportions as we struggled to regain a foothold in the world economy, our creditor nations deeming us unfit to continue to invest in and, summarily, leading to the collapse of our weakened infrastructure. Under Palin, we maintained a course towards apocalypse, one in which the things taught in Revelations came true which, ultimately, led to annihilation and destruction in our major cities.

It is the hope of people of intense religious faith, as you may be aware, to push along the notion of “making Revelations come true”, a twisted, psychotic notion of intentional, albeit likely subconscious, “might makes right” behavior. I have no complaint with the concepts of Christian faith, but I take umbrage with extremism and sanctimonious behavior for the sake of completing some puzzle.

So, and with all due love & respect for Eli Parisier and the other fine folks at MoveOn.Org, whose email campaigns about John McCain’s health have riddled my inbox for weeks now, please hear me: you want him to stay fit and healthy for the next 48 days. You’d better pray like hell that he does.

For anyone else who thinks I’m kidding, look at the poll numbers since Sarah Palin energized the party. If John McCain makes it to election day, I believe firmly that Obama can (and will) win. If not, then in this scenario, Sarah Palin suddenly becomes the most disturbing kind of x-factor in this race, one from which America will never recover.

Think about it.

Thanks to a bug with my back end, a lot of my links to old posts went POOF. I lost my database twice while trying to fix this problem. I finally realized the problem & I have resolved it once and for all (I hope). Welcome back everyone.