Monday, September 28, 2009

An Open Letter to D.A. Jack McCoy

In the war on crime, one of the worst things that uses to happen is bringing politics into the administration of Justice. Using the political prism for consideration, serious charges are likely to be trivialised and disminished, giving the opportunity to an offender to walk free, just because he is the darling of a movement or political party or has the right ideological sympathies. Fortunately, there are people that still consider that a crime is still a crime, especially when the defendant pleads guilty. These are their stories.

Ka-chunk!

Dear Mr. McCoy,

for many years I’ve been a big fan of your fine work as a District Attorney in New York City. Your genuine desire for see justice done, is enough for a remarkable person like you to keep on going for almost twenty years. And despite your well known personal flaws, you are still an inspiration for your co-workers and the audience, deserving all the respect you get.

In this order of ideas, we just saw on the September 25 episode which conviniently re-ran Saturday night, “Memo from the Dark Side,” how you were willing to prosecute the people responsible of torturing in Abu Ghraib, up to the one and only, the former VP Dick Cheney. Your message may be disgusting for some political interests, but very clear: Torture is a punishable crime, no matter who commits it, no matter for which interest it was committed.

That gives me confidence to ask you to prosecute and convict Mr. Roman Polanski, the celebrated film director, for the rape of a 13-year-old girl on the night of March 10th, 1977, in Los Angeles, California. For reasons I can’t comprehend there is a lot of outrage in France, Poland and the United States, but just because he was arrested in Zurich (Switzerland), before he, the accomplished filmmaker, was going to be honored with a lifetime achievement award. Facing extradition already, this should be a no-brainer for you after your last case: he already pleaded guilty, but fled on January 1st, 1978, to London, so that any previous agreement he reached with the early prosecution should be null and void by now.

Not your jurisdiction? Please, for someone like you, used to find and use tenuous rationales to charge defendants before they can walk, this should be easier than falling from a tree. Please don’t let this sex offender get away with rape. If necessary, police detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson of the S.V.U. would be of great help.

Thanks in advance for your great victory. According to the “ripped from the headlines” policy of your series, I’m confident that I will see justice prevail in an yet-to-be-shoot-but-sure-to-be-shoot episode.

Very Truly Yours,


Dr. sipmac
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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Beatles Catalog (Finally) Remastered – A satiric Beatles-wordplay-and-puns-free assessment

On September 9th, 2009, the entire Beatles original catalog was released to an always avid target: three loyal generations of Beatlemaniacs and unsuspecting buyers we could qualify as collateral damage. As we saw with the 2006 released Love, we could appreciate in the documentary how difficult it was to the producers to come up with decent mashups, even with the entire same catalog at disposition (Yeah, sure. Just look out for Beatles’ mashups in Youtube. Start with Paperback Believer). With this in mind we can infer how difficult it was the remastering of every single song released in the 13 official albums with the singles and EP original material without botching it.

Because it doesn’t matter how many times the marketing team ends up not with a bang but with a wimp: the original songs remained the same. Until now. With such a task, the EMI engineering team, supervised by none others than Paul, Yoko, Olivia and Ringo, worked 4 years straight… until they could not hear a Beatle song anymore. First they searched for similar experiences around the world. Finally, in Colombia they bought the 1998-produced 30 Grandes Exitos – Diomedes Díaz and the original albums. After carefully (and for most of them, painfully) listening, they knew then what to do exactly with the Beatles catalog:

* First, suppress all chat and greetings to zero. Otherwise the recordings get too mundane instead of classy. Since Let It Be… Naked was released in November 2003, people would know already what to expect. Oh! Sorry What Goes On Website, your work is not needed anymore.

* Get rid of embarrassing out-of-tune performances! That means you, Hold Me Tight! Ole Paul was literally forced to re-record the With the Beatles’ track entirely with the early technology and sing correctly this time. When he protested, George Martin said: “You saw this coming from 46 years ago!” Mr. Moonlight? Out with the annoying Hammond solo! And another slap in the wrist for Macca!

* As in "30 Grandes Exitos", where the guacharaca was suppressed and replaced for *stylish, refined* cymbals, the entire drums and percussion of the tracks were removed and replaced with a drum box! In an upcoming Rolling Stone interview, Ringo will talk about how he is finally fed up with being the butt of jokes and harsh and unfair criticism for his drumming job in the band, so he gave up all his work for a bigger share in the Beatles’ business. Finally a point for Macca (fair or unfair his drum parts weren’t removed)!

* Revolution 9 was supposed to be enhanced with disparaging remarks of Michael Jackson made by Paul, Yoko, Olivia and Ringo, but self-styled King of Pop’s death recent death made them quit the project.

* As a special gesture, Strawberry Field Forever was intended to be reworked since the late John was never satisfied with the final result, the originally 1967-released version. But it was not possible to contact him, in spite of all the attempts made.

* In the most controversial move, all non-Harrisongs lead and rhythm guitar work was scrapped and replaced for all new Macca and Eric Clapton’s work. In his final days, close to achieve another happier and peaceful plane of existence, George Harrison couldn’t care less about the request and gave his permission to this. If this was the way for Macca to “finally set things straight”…

Well, speaking seriously now I wish the entire work can be heard as I heard Let It Be… Naked for the first time. Thank you, lads!
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