I am donating the bulk of my soundcloud account to the testimony of Bradley Manning.
Beezy Douglas is an original blues & folk musician based in NYC.
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The Slow Decline of Beezy Douglas
The Slow Decline of Beezy Douglas
My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court
I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.
I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.
Make sure that this story has some legs. Social media is great for sharing hilarious cat photos and memes, but it’s also important to leverage these channels to hit back at the big dogs.
I know I’m just a kid, but I have no future, and it freaks me out. I’m sorry if it looks like I’m just spoiled and petulant.
Sharpen your thumbs and callous up your eyeballs! The Carnivale has returned from the ashes of a minor trash fire with the BEST lineup we’ve ever had. Not to disparage the former ones, but there’s such a good mix of old and new blood that I’m kind of losing my shit about seeing all these performers in one night in the same place.
Join us all night at 9 Bleecker for the next BZ Douglas Carnivale! A celebration of all the best artists I’ve come across in my time as a performer in the NYC open mic circuit. In between acts are raffle drawings, staring contests, nerf dueling, and thumbwrestling.
The suggested donation of $5 gets you two raffle tickets!
Opening up the night will be the return of Charley Crockett, the man who inspired me to start singing and performing (and who first nicknamed me BZ). He’s brought a new band back from New Orleans: The Train Robbers! This is not to be missed, by any means. If you can’t catch the top of my show, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure these guys play again after we switch over to open stage around midnight.
John Murdock
The Gentleman Scumbag, dirty balloon man, radio host, degenerate, no matter what you may call John, it will never be boring or tame. He hosts the weekly activist oriented open mic, Occupational Hazards on Wednesdays at 8pm.
Dan Kinch will perform “How to Stop the Empire While Keeping Your Day Job”, one of best pieces of activist theater I’ve seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGEOnhfi1pQ
Mindy Raf as Leibya Rogers who describes herself better than I can:
“I’m a third wave feminist who stylistically has post modern fourth wave reconstructionist feminist tendencies. Also I regularly change lives at comedy and music shows with my comedy and music. I just sucked you into my womb.
You’re welcome.”
I’m sure some of Ms Raf’s other alter-egos will emerge as well…
Duke Taylor, the resident guitar wizard of the Yippie Cafe. It’s very hard to sit still while this man plays. I’m dying to see what happens when we put him in a room with the Train Robbers.
Lawson Leong
A newcomer to the Carnivale. I’ve only caught a few sets of Lawson’s, mostly at Lucky Jack’s Mic Club, but I saw enough to know I wanna see more. What better way to make that happen than to just book him!
Molly Ruth
Another artist I haven’t really gotten to see as much as I’d like to. Her YouTube channel should be enough of an enticement, but I do have to say there’s nothing like seeing this woman singing her songs live in person.
Umberto MacDougal
Having trouble getting a date to the come with you to the show? Did your date leave you during the show? No matter the source of your manpain, find the companionship you need to get you through a beautiful, lonesome spring evening.
And returning once again with another amazing ensemble, Charles von Rosenberg! I have no idea who he’s bringing, but I know I’ll love it! It’s not too outlandish to imagine some mandolins, banjos, fiddles or upright bass. Even if it’s just him and a guitar, that’ll be plenty.
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
— Shorter Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky): Clean up your own back yard.
A lot of the silliness on May Day was the good kind of silly, the silliness that hurts no one and makes even a cold-hearted capitalist like me smile. Regardless of political affiliation, if you can’t grin at a couple of mimes pretending to be cops “frisking” bystanders, you need to lighten up a little. In the context of a protest like May Day, I don’t know how you define “success.” If the goal was to get any closer to any of OWS and co.’s demands—higher wages, more jobs, raising taxes on millionaires, relaxing immigration policy, legalizing pot and gay marriage, etc. etc. etc.—I doubt any of what happened yesterday helped anything. On the other hand, if you look at May Day as a kind of Leftist Pride Parade, not unlike Gay Pride events or New York’s Puerto Rico day, you can understand the marches as a big party that celebrates a shared identity. “Celebrates” being the key word.
