By now you have probably heard that Bush’s buddy and FEMA appointee Michael Brown has absolutely no experience in emergency management. We decided to look into what his former job as head of the Arabian Horse Association entailed overseeing:

From the AHA website:
The Arabian Horse Association(AHA) provides an association of like-minded Arabian horse enthusiasts and a focal point for your favorite recreational or competitive activities. AHA is the official breed association and registry in the U.S. with more than 40,000 members who own Arabian, Half-Arabian and Anglo-Arabian horses.
As a full-service breed association, AHA seeks to meet the breeding, competitive and recreational interests of all Arabian horse owners. As the official breed registry for the Arabian horse industry, the AHA Registry has registered more than 1 million Arabian, Half-Arabian and Anglo-Arabian horses since its founding in 1908, ensuring the integrity and perpetuation of the breed.
AHA offers over 400 events and competitions and the largest online marketplace and community forums on the web, bringing people together to share the joys of Arabian horse ownership. Membership in the AHA has its privileges and provides access to registration, programs, competitions and other services.

Not too much about hurricane relief or disaster readiness in there. Thanks for the qualified appointee Dubya. Glad to know you are putting the safety of the country first. As Bush said: “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” Click here or here to see some examples of the great job he’s done thus far.

Interview by Monte Holman

Does the world really need another rock band? If the band is fronted by Mac McCaughan, yes. Heralded since the late eighties as an indie music legend — he was in Superchunk and co-founded Merge Records — you’d think someone with Mac’s successes would bask in the glow of being an acknowledged avatar of independent music. Not so. McCaughan is full-steam ahead, most recently with a new Portastatic LP, Bright Ideas.
Portastatic has primarily functioned as a side project for Mac, who’s put together some innovative DIY recordings over the years. The name Portastatic even pays homage to the band’s method: Porta for 4-track brand Portastudio and Static for, well, the sound of a shitty home recording.
With each Portastatic record, different avenues are investigated, from electronic instrumentals to a collaboration with Ken Vandermark to traditional Brazilian jazz. With Bright Ideas, the exploration continues, though this time the frontier is the rock and roll past. It’s a return to Superchunk and the Boss. The record was recorded live at Tiny Telephones in San Francisco with his brother Matthew McCaughan, a Portastatic veteran, on drums and Jim Wilbur of Superchunk playing bass.
Superchunk is on hiatus, and Portastatic is shaping up to be a real live band. Mac spoke with us when he was in town for an in-store at Other Records to commemorate the release of Bright Ideas.

Bright Ideas
I Wanna Know Girls MP3 (4 MB – From Bright Ideas)
FREEwilliamsburg: How do you have time for all this; Merge, Portastatic, Superchunk, family, North Carolina…
(laughs) Yeah, North Carolina does occupy some of my time. You know, it’s weird, but I don’t think about it too much. I just kind of plow forward. With all the things you’re talking about, Superchunk hasn’t been terribly active for the last couple years. We played a couple shows this summer and put out those live cds.
FREEwilliamsburg: The Clambake Series…
Yeah, but in general, I’ve been concentrating on Merge and Portastatic, pretty much since we started working on Summer of the Shark. I have a kid, and that makes you have to rationalize your time a lot more, but in some ways it means that when you are working, you get more done because you have to. When I was writing songs for this record, I would have, basically, a day per week to work on music. I made a goal to write a song every week.

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