let’s smoke some crack!

the supreme court decided today to allow judges some leeway in sentencing for crack cocaine offenders, loosening the stranglehold of racist judicial policy created with the nefarious Rockefeller laws.

i’m not cynical enough to assume that the white republican males who were responsible for passing the rockefeller laws were motivated solely by racism (i don’t recall anybody but the most aclu-minded democrats opposing the draconian legislation at the time). but it didn’t take long before the trend of imprisoning a huge portion of an entire generation of young black americans became obvious, so this is a long time coming.

led zeppelin piece on 10 zen monkeys

i wrote a kind of “led zeppelin for dummies” piece on 10 zen monkeys for those of you who haven’t been obsessed with the band since the age of 13.

tonight’s the big reunion show, and because the instant gratification freak in me will be denied seeing or hearing it in real time (i’ll have to wait till the dvd comes out, i hope), i’ll focus instead on the setlist, which as of this moment hasn’t been leaked onto the interweb, an impressive feat.

the online version of britain’s nme, tho, managed to wrangle a couple of tracks, all of which give me a boner to one extent or the other. they’ll also be the first opportunity to see what the band plays, through a song-by-song blog.

i respect zeppelin for not turning this into a pay-per-view spectacle, but at the same time it pains me to have to resort to the contemporary media equivalent of my dad huddled around the radio to hear play-by-play of a sonny liston fight. jeez.