Cups

View down an Amherst alleyway.

Presidential cups in the window of a Northampton shop. Are there really people who will buy a Jimmy Carter mug?

They ain't all prezadenshul. I think I might gag if I tried to drink from this cup.

And check out the price - 45 bucks! As for the cup in the background, does it come with a warning that the mixture of Ted Kennedy and liquids has been known to result in mysterious drownings?

Speaking of presidents, one of the last eyewitnesses to the assassination of JFK has died. Click here.

On this day in 1933 the 21st Amendment was ratified, thus repealing Prohibition. Happy Repeal Day! Read more here.

Meanwhile, despite being shut out of the Obama campaign this time around for his critical remarks, Boston hotboy Matt Damon says he's still hopeful about Obama's second term. Read more here.



Dinosaur Jr. made this advertisement for the Valley Gives campaign.

Some folks look for answers, others look for fights. I don't trust to nothin' but I know it'll turn out right.



One interesting detail in this video is how at around 9:50 you see drummer Bill Kreutzmann hit the drum several times with his elbow. Of course there is a slightly different tonality created by the wider edge of an elbow as opposed to a drum stick, but I doubt that the audience could hear the difference in a civic center sized hall like Winterland. That means Kreutzmann is going to the trouble to create that slight tonal difference not for the audience as much as for himself and his own sense of exactly how the drum should sound at that point in what many would describe as a formless jam. It is an example of how carefully and precisely constructed those soundscapes were and how those critics who accuse the Dead of being aimless psychedelic jammers just aren't listening carefully enough.