The internet is a little better now, so I’ve got to give some props to Barney Frank before I drift into slumberland. Barney Frank has been on point all day, and his latest statement to the press sums up my position on McCain’s attempt to derail the bailout plan. As much as I hate it, Paulson’s bailout plan must be passed post-haste and with the overwhelming approval of congressional republicans. Any form of disunity will send shockwaves through the market. Tonight I’m predicting that turmoil in Washington over this proposal will send stocks down at least 100 points in the first hour, which may be a conservative estimate. But I guess we’ll know in a little bit.

[BREAKING — Barney Frank: God save us from John McCain’s “help” - Crooks and Liars]

Note in this interview how Mrs. Palin is always looking down when she’s answering. One thing you learn when interviewing criminals — which I do from time to time at my job — is that when they look down, they don’t know the answer to your question and are totally bullshitting you. Not that that applies at all to this clip. Palin is totally on her shit when she babbles on about healthcare and polar bears or something.

Chuck Todd noted earlier today on NBC Nightly News that by limiting Sarah Palin’s interactions with the press, the McCain campaign has ensured that every one of her limited interactions with the press will be analyzed to death and that Palin will never get comfortable in that setting. So I beg Rick Davis and Co., please, keep her sequestered so we get terrible, terrible gems like these to… um… what’s the word Katie? Oh yes, mock. Mock, yeah. I guess that’s the word.

I almost feel bad for Sarah Palin in this clip. Defending McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis — a man she most likely only met for the first time a couple weeks ago — and his well documented ties to morgage giants Fannie and Freddy Mac, she gets stumped on the facts by that sexist/elitist/secret Muslim Katie Couric. Oh, and Katie wasn’t done. Oh no. Trying to weasel her way out of a question about John McCain’s newfound status as Tha Regulator, Palin starts spewing some insignificant red-herring shit like “HUR DUR, JOHN MACKANE IS TEH MAVERICKS.” But Couric isn’t having it, cutting in with this delightful little exchange:

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll… try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

Smell that? That’s the smell of leadership, baby. Like a said, I almost feel bad for Palin. But then I think about how her position on abortion would turn this country into Nicaragua and that we’d probably have to read about her batshit-insane Young Earth Theory in our public schools’ science textbooks, and then all the sudden I don’t feel that bad for her. All the sudden, I hope someone holds this ratfucker’s feet to the fire until after election day… and then a couple days more just for good measure. 

If I were the McCain camp, I’d keep Palin in a soundproof bubble and just roll her around from campaign stop to campaign stop so she doesn’t have to answer any questions but still gets too look pretty for the cameras.

[CBS Sarah Palin Interview - Youtube (via Wonkette)]

Bush to Address Nation to Push Bailout – Well, this is sure to restore Investor confidence. [CNN]

McCain’s Embattled Campaign Manager Skips Lunch With Reporters - Everyday, the McCain campaign’s relationship with the media seems more and more like a messy divorce proceeding.  [Talking Points Memo]

Music:

Obama to release Yes We Can campaign soundtrack - What better way to shake your “celebrity” image than have a whole bunch of elitist, arugula eating, musicians record a soundtrack for your campaign! [Paste Magazine]

V Festival 2008: Amy Winehouse And The Verve Return – Everyday, Amy Winehouse looks more and more like Richard Ashcroft, so it’s only appropriate they’re both performing at V Festival 2008. [Gigwise]

Weezer Kicks off North American Tour - America yawns. [Spin]

NYC:
MP3 Experiment 5 New York Details - Improv Anywhere somehow makes improv less annoying than usual with their 5^thAnnual MP3 Experiment. [Improv Everywhere]

On a $52 Shirt, a Hardscrabble Name - J Crew is apparently now courting poor hipsters in “hardscrabble” Bushwick. [New York Times]

So what’s the verdict on The Bell House? Well, the short story is it’s fucking fantastic. Converted from an old warehouse in Gowanus, The Bell House has a nice rustic aesthetic, not too dissimilar from it’s sister watering hole, Union Hall, although it really feels more like someone added about 10,000 square feet to Quarter Bar in Greenwood Heights. The venue is divided between a homey bar in the front and a large performance space in the back. The draft selection at the bar was impeccable (Smuttyhouse on draft? Hell yes.) and the drinks were pretty fairly priced, with a pint of Sixpoint’s Hop Obama coming in at $5 and cans of beer at $4 dollars. At a venue in this city, those prices are pretty damn good.

But the owners really outdid themselves in the back room. Although extremely spacious, the performance space feels intimate, with a low stage, beautiful chandeliers, and rafters that give the post-industrial warehouse a decidedly pre-industrial vibe. The acoustics sounded great for a relaxed three piece like Low (who were, by the way, on their shit last night). Although it will be interesting to see how a louder band like The Veils handles the venue when the play on Oct. 3rd.

The only real problem I see the venue running into is its location. For Manhattanites, Gowanus is unexplored territory, and despite its safety, a lot of veteran Brooklynites still associate the neighborhood it with the infamous Gowanus Projects (which, I may note, are nowhere near the venue, and are a lot safer than the commenters at Brownstoner make them out to be). It’ll be great for the neighborhood if the venue can start drawing new people below 4th Ave., but only time will tell if that happens. Regardless, I’ll be there.

Photos/schedule below the cut.

Low @ The Bell House: (excuse the lo-res, camera phone photos)

The Bell House schedule:

September:
25-28 – Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival

October
2 – Bang on a Can Office Night w/ M Shanghai String Band / Get Him Eat Him / Melomane / Babe the Blue Ox
3 – Melissa Ferrick / Matt The Electrician
6 – Department Of Eagles
11 – Liam Finn / The Veils
16 – Crown City Rockers
22 – La Strada / The Loom*
23 – Sam Champion / The Jealous Girlfriends / Mancino / The Silent League*
24 – The Rosebuds / The Ladybug Transistor / Crystal Stilts*

November
14 – The Sons & Heirs
15 – Ac Newman W/Special Guests

December
2 – Vienna Teng / Peter Bradley Adams

*Part of CMJ

[The Bell House]

Though I missed the venue’s first show this past weekend, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opening of The Bell House, the latest club from the same guys that brought us Union Hall. And what better way to get the know the place than with a special performance by the slowcore three piece Low?

Although The Bell House’s location is probably a safe enough distance away from the crotchety Park Slopers who almost closed down Union Hall last May, it’ll be interesting to see if The Bell House can survive in the neighborhood. In my experience, most residents of the Slope are wary of venturing below 4th Ave. — except for an adventurous few looking to “slum it” in Red Hook on Sunday morning for IKEA and food vendors. Considering the venue’s location between 3rd and 2nd Avenues on 7th St., I wouldn’t put much money on a big Stroller Mafia turnout (after the Community Board 6 debacle, that’s probably a good thing). And most Williamsburg/Greenpoint hipsters are too lazy to actually use their fancy bikes to head south of Flushing Ave. Perhaps they’re hoping to tap the limited disposable income of the growing Greenwood Heights-Sunset Park hipster crowd? Only time will tell.

[Low @ The Bell House]

Brace yourself. Bill Kristol’s column this week on the financial institutions’ imminent failure and subsequent fiery explosion isn’t shit. In fact, it actually makes a lot of sense. Wait, what? That’s not true. That’s impossible!

For that to be true, Billy would have to stop carrying the water and show some kind of wariness towards the Bush administration’s bailou—

But is the administration’s proposal the right way to do this? It would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency. Surely Congress can at least ask some hard questions about such an open-ended commitment.

Oh. Oh my. Disclosure? Accountability? Transparency? That actually seems pretty reasonable. I even agree with that. Where was this Bill Kristol when the war broke out? But surely, there must be some kind of obligatory, totally unfounded barb aimed at Obama. I mean, this is a Bill Kristol column after all…

Barack Obama called Sunday for more accountability, and I imagine he’ll support the efforts of the Democratic Congressional leadership to try to add to the legislation a host of liberal spending provisions. He probably won’t want to run the risk of actually opposing it, or even of raising big questions and causing significant delay — lest he be attacked for risking the possible meltdown of the global financial system.

That… that seems kind of true. Sure, it’s almost an attack Obama for not having the stones to oppose the bailout, but from what Obama has been saying so far, that doesn’t seem all that off the mark. Next thing we know, Bill Kristol will start advocating something like taking money from the rich or someth—

Comments by McCain on Sunday suggest he might propose an amendment along the lines of one I received in an e-mail message from a fellow semi-populist conservative: “Any institution selling securities under this legislation to the Treasury Department shall not be allowed to compensate any officer or employee with a higher salary next year than that paid the president of the United States.” This would punish overpaid Wall Streeters and, more important, limit participation in the bailout to institutions really in trouble.

Ok, seriously. Who kidnapped Kristol and started writing his columns? I’m looking at you, Paul Krugman.

[A Fine Mess - The New York Times]

Along time ago, there was a band called Vampire Weekend that really, really liked Paul Simon’s Graceland. They liked Mr. Simon’s work so much that they released a whole album of never heard Graceland b-sides about commas, hanging out on the quad, and The Falklands War. And the whole thing ended up sounding like ska somehow. Of course, that was just the cat’s meow for just about every music critic, and the band members now sleep in beds made of money. The end.

Or was it? Turns out everyone’s favorite college grads are back, with a brand spankin’ new track called “Ottoman” over at Stereogum. And it’s for Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a movie that absolutely in no way is trying to build off Garden State and Juno‘s inexplicable success. No. The film’s executive producers Nathan Kahane and Joseph Drake would never dream of doing something like that. They’re still too busy buying Ferraris with the money they made of Juno‘s domestic DVD sales.

Anyway, to make a long story short, this song is really hackneyed and boring. OH WELL.

Oh, and from now on, every graphic designer that uses that “Hey look, I sketched this my 7th period notebook” font on a movie poster gets thrown off a cliff. Mark it down, that’s a fucking rule.

[New Vampire Weekend - "Ottoman" (Stereogum Premiere) - Stereogum]

Ok, I usually love these pretentious-ass NYT photos, but I’m drawing he line here. This is a newspaper photo, not a Lansing-Dreiden art exhibit. Next thing we know they’re going to be running a photo of a woman’s eyeball getting slit open as lead art for a warrantless wiretapping follow-up story.

Fucking New Yorkers.