¡¿Mogwai and Palin?!

The question is, which is cooler. I'm thinking the McCain campaign screwing up is way cooler, although those of you who care about music more than politics might be more inclined towards the former.

Mogwai's sixth LP, The Hawk is Howling, has some of the classical Mogwai signatures but with a more epic feel to it than some of their more recent works; somewhat of a throwback to Young Team without taking too much away from the freshness they bring to this album. The dissonance and crescendos are lightly dispersed throughout the album in a way that they have been doing since they started, without giving way to the influence of many purely commercial post rock composers that are so prevalent in jingles and pop ditties, to say nothing of the W.G. Snuffy Waldenesque take; which I may, or may not, be referencing. This is one things I think Mogwai has always done really well, putting the focus more on the composition of their nuanced melodies rather that the structural elements of the genre. Definitely an album worth buying, if you're into that.

But on the more pleasant note, I had to be extra nice to my father today. We've been going at each other for some time now any time the names of Obama or McCain were mentioned, but today, we were finally able to reconcile our political differences and reconstruct our filial bridges over the ideological divide that had been severed by the hail of political uncertainty and in light of the "fierce urgency of now." I consoling my father over the joyous fact that McCain might have blown it. If this is some sort of political maneuver a la Carl Rove, I'm not seeing it. It all seems a little bit short sighted of the Republican campaign, especially a day after Obama's speech. As all the pundits keep acknowledging, he has just lost one of the major points of contention for the Obama camp, that of experience. Not only that, but she's not really even qualified.

There are a million different reasons why this is good for Obama and Biden, and I personally can't wait for the debates, especially the vice presidential debate. I heard one of the Fox News pundits say today that Palin is going to be a difficult person to tackle by someone like Biden, especially given his "loquacious" persona as defined by the media. He went on to say that the public was not going to be very receptive to the hard hitting commentary that democrats are so accustomed to when it comes to someone like Palin, and that democrats were going to soften their blows if they wanted their strategy to be effective. What bothered me most about this commentary was the sexist intonations of it; which I'm sure may be obvious to most people. I'm sorry buddy, but if you're going to bring a woman into the picture who does not come close to filling the shoes of some of the other prospective Republican VP choices, as a political move to attract Hillary voters, you better bring in someone that can stand there blow for blow with the rest of the boys. After all, isn't that what Hillary was all about?