Things I Miss About San Francisco -- Elvis Edition

To be fair, this post should really be things I miss about California since a couple of these are from LA, but anyway. . .

Unusual Elvises, in order of unusualness:

#1: TORTELVIS


http://www.dreadzeppelin.com/index2.html
The lead singer for the band Dread Zeppelin, Tortelvis is the self-described "Rock N Roll Singer Inna Reggae Style." The band started out doing reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs (hence the name) then mixed in Elvis, Disco, and whatever else they thought needed to be taken down a peg.

And lest you think they aren't paying proper respect to Led Zeppelin, here's an endorsement from none other than Robert Plant:




Anyway, here's a sample:





#2: El Vez, the Mexican Elvis


http://www.elvez.net/evFrameset.html





#3: Elvis Herselvis, the Drag King



Elvis Herselvis is the alter ego of Leigh Crow. The Elvis Herselvis website is still under construction, and I couldn't find any clips of her band "Elvis Herselvis and the Straight White Males," but this is her other band, the Mighty Slim Pickins:






#4: Extreme Elvis.




Extreme Elvis was born in the 1990's when a San Francisco-based performer thought "what if Elvis had lived? And continued to just let himself go?" The answer would horrify everyone.

I'm not going to post any videos of EE, because I don't want to scare off anyone, but if you're interested, there are plenty here. But I will warn you that none of them will be safe for work. Or home. Or prison. They are not for the easily offended, or the easily sickened. Here is a description of EE from Earpoke.com:

Extreme Elvis is possibly the greatest living Elvis tribute artist alive today. If he’s still living, that is. His site was permanently shut down years ago by the FBI and Homeland Security for copy write infringement and other heinous crimes…or was it? Reality becomes a blur. Aside from a few online interviews, a story in Gigs From Hell and fading memories of the fascinating biography from his old site, nothing remains but a small handful of unforgettable performances which remain seared into my brain.

Extreme Elvis burst on the about scene eight years ago, leaving a trail of carnage, urine stained blue suede shoes, feces soaked mikes and broken hearts.

Apparently, the part about the FBI is true, this is what you get if you open his homepage:

THIS SITE

HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN BY THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT

Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Extreme Elvis network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement

Anyway, if you're interested in a good freak show, check him out, but proceed with caution. And remember the Extreme Elvis motto:

Every generation gets the Elvis they deserve.

(in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that Extreme Elvis once felt me up at Kimo's and I'm still not completely recovered)

Oh, the Stories You'll Find on Page 2!

On page 2 of today's Atlanta Journal Constitution was this headline:

Worker Says BP ignored reports.

For some reason, they apparently didn't think this story was important enough to include it on their website. I found the story posted on "Democratic Underground"

here's what the New York Times is reporting:

In the final days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP continued drilling for oil despite internal reports of a leak on a critical safety device on the rig, a company official testified on Tuesday.

What a shock! A corporation ignoring safety! Well, I never!

Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, said he reported the problem to senior company officials and assumed it would be relayed to the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling. The leak was on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer, an emergency mechanism that failed to activate after the April 20 disaster.

See, now here's the problem with that. Why is the MMS sitting around waiting for BP to report safety problems? Why aren't they out there doing inspections and finding the problems themselves. Do cops sit around the precinct waiting for crooks to come turn themselves in?

“I assumed everything was O.K., because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to M.M.S.,” Mr. Sepulvado said.

He could not explain why the company did not respond to his report.

Oh, I can. I can explain that one. Um, they did not respond to your report because it seemed financially expedient to not do so. If they relay the information to the proper authorities, then they have to shut the rig down and make expensive repairs. They decided to roll the dice, save the expense upfront and just hope that nothing would go wrong, at least nothing for which they could be held liable.

Investigators also pressed Mr. Sepulvado about two audits that found problems with other equipment on the rig and the well it was drilling, including the blowout preventer, known as a BOP.
“In both of those audits, it indicated that the BOP was well past” its inspection date, said Jason Mathews, a panel member.
The audits of the rig were conducted by BP in September 2009 and by ModuSpec in April 2010. The company’s audit identified problems with the rig’s engines, ballast systems, thrusters and drilling equipment, and as a result, BP scheduled the rig for a shipyard visit in early 2011.

So in 2009, their own audit (and why the hell they get to do their own audit is a whole other problem) their own audit showed a bunch of problems, so they scheduled it for maintenance TWO YEARS LATER? If you see that your car's brakes are shot, would you think, gosh, that could cause an accident, I could maybe even kill someone, I'd better see if my mechanic has any openings in 2011?" Of course you wouldn't. But that's because you have a soul and a conscience and common sense. BP has none of those things. No corporation does. Corporations are not people. They may be run by people, but they are not people. And, hell, we don't just trust people to do the right thing on their own. That's why we have cops and jails and courts and laws, because we know that people, who presumably have consciences and empathy, will sometimes do very bad things if left to their own devices. So why would we expect a soulless, faceless entity like a corporation to behave any better? And yet we keep hearing certain people repeatedly calling for less and less regulations on businesses. It's goddamned insane. No company should be allowed to do anything as potentially dangerous as deep-sea oil drilling without an enforcement agent looking over their shoulder every step of the way. Because we've seen what happens otherwise.

And any individuals within BP who were responsible for the decision(s) to cut corners on safcety should be held criminally and civilly liable. Tony Heyward and his cronies intentionally took reckless risks with safety and 11 workers died as a direct result. These assholes need to do time, then be sued into the poorhouse by the families of the victims, as well as every fisherman, shrimper, hotelier, and boat operator whose livelihood was destroyed by their thuggish behavior.

On Law & Order, it's called "depraved indifference," and Jack McCoy has sent better men than Tony Heyward to prison on that charge.

Go get 'em Jack!

Happy 75th Birthday to Sleepy LaBeef

Today is the 75th birthday of the great Sleepy LaBeef, one of the great rockabilly pioneers who for some reason has bever really gotten his due.

Lyrics That Somehow Snuck Past The Censors

#1: Start Me Up, by The Rolling Stones

As the song fades out, Mick Jagger repeats the line
"you, you, you make a grown man cry."
But in the last repetition of this line, he clearly says
"you, you, make a dead man cum."

How that ever got on the radio without being bleeped is a mystery to me, and no matter how many times I've heard it on various radio stations, I have never heard that line censored.


The Rolling Stones - Start Me Up - MyVideo

#2: Who Are You? by The Who

Towards the end, while Pete Townsend, John Entwhistle and Keith Moon are repeating "who are you? Who, who are you?" He slips in the line "Well, who the fuck are you?" I have never heard this line bleeped.
It happens at about the 5:40 mark in this video:


CSI- The Who- Who Are You - MyVideo


#3: Walk on the Wild Side, by Lou Reed
The line "But she never lost her head,
even when she was giving head"
got past the censors in 1972, and it still gets played on the radio today.
The story I heard, which may not be true, is that the expression "giving head" as a slang term for oral sex was not in the common parlance in '72, and so the censors just didn't realize what the line meant.



#4: Relax, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

The entire song could really have been bleeped, I think it was banned by the BBC. The song is about trying not to climax too soon during gay sex.
Here are a few sample lyrics:

Relax, don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna cum

Relax, don't do it
When you wanna suck it to it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna cum.


And it's not like the video wasn't a tip-off:



Although, I think they did end up having to make a different video for MTV with the band performing on syage with lasers and whatnot but still, this has to be the dirtiest song to ever get mainstream airplay.

Another (alleged) Domestic Terrorist

I-580 shootout suspect mad at left-wing politics

Bob Egelko,Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writers

San Francisco Chronicle July 18, 2010 05:59 PM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Oakland -- A 45-year-old parolee, described by his mother as angry at left-wing politicians, opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers on an Oakland freeway early Sunday and was hit by return fire while wearing body armor, authorities said.

Williams' mother, Janice Williams of Groveland. . . said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about "what's happening to our country."

Williams watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," his mother said.

Police found in the truck a suspicious object that prompted investigators to call a bomb squad to the scene. The object was detonated Sunday without mishap in the center divide of the freeway.

Law enforcement sources said Williams has a history showing he is both anti-government and anti-corporation, and against liberal causes.

The Alameda County Bomb Squad robot takes a handbook from the shootout suspect's truck on I-580 in Oakland on Sunday.

"There is no doubt in our mind, given the body armor and the extensive amount of ammunition he had, that he was on his way to do a very serious crime against either someone or a group of people," Cross said.

Among that evidence was a white three-ring binder recovered from the truck by a bomb squad robot. Scrawled by hand on the cover of the binder was the word, "California." Officials would not describe the contents of the binder.

(full story here)

Janice Williams [the suspect's mother] said she kept the guns because "eventually, I think we're going to be caught up in a revolution." But she said she had told her son many times that "he didn't have to be on the front lines."

She said she had no explanation for his actions.

Really? I can think of one. Being raised by a paranoid lunatic, maybe?