Rock chick whose music I've never heard dies in alcohol-related incident. She was 27, the age of rock'n'roll death. Representative from Oregon suddenly starts copping a guilty plea to inappropriate relationship with internet minor just after a 50-something man marries a 16 year old girl. Anthony Weiner's in rehab.
I've been working long hours and carried it over into the weekend, and somehow I've found time to get much of the 4th draft edited, passing the 75% mark lately. I become more pleased with it, and think it's getting closer to finished. I haven't done the math but I'm pretty sure the first draft took the least time, although I put in more hours per day for that one. More motivated, more free time and I also had a goal that didn't involve words on a blank page. I already had those and didn't reckon with the time involved of editing as opposed to writing.
For the weekend, I've trashed my room. It was sort of a mess anyway, so the best way to fix it is to make it worse. I even tried to do the whole bohemian thing. I'm still wearing the clothes I had on Friday even though I did laundry early Saturday and a shower early today. I tried to sleep on the closet floor last night, just to prove I could, but eventually gave up and found a place to curl up on the bed. I had intended to get a lot hungrier before ordering pizza, but I usually eat more of it when I do.
So you could say I'm not really sure what's going on, but working hard is a consistent part of it. Now I'm trying to decide what to do for a day of rest. Probably not much resting. At the very least I need to restock the closet, move out whatever I can (or at least prep it for moving) and clean up the floor.
The problem is the books really. There are a lot of them and I don't go through them often, but when I want one I expect it immediately. I re-read Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell" recently, and had forgotten what a marvelous piece of work, a historical autopsy of the Jack the Ripper murders. Moore just wanted to write a lengthy book on murder as a fixed event in time and space, and wasn't interested in the Ripper murders. When they did catch his eye, he read a bunch of books and picked the theory that best fit the story he wanted to tell. In correspondence with Cerebus creator Dave Sim, he described telling somebody that his version of the story was made up and had about as much bearing on historical reality as Disney's "Pocahantas".
Moore was interested in telling the story. (from "Dance of the Gull Catchers") "As if there could ever be a solution. Dr. Grape. In the horse-drawn carriage. With the Liston knife. Murder, other than in the most strict forensic sense, is never soluble [though Moore admits the forensic sense is far and away the most important one]. Our detective fictions tell us otherwise: everything's just meat and cold ballistics. Provide a murderer, a motive and a means, you've solved the crime. Using this method, the solution to the Second World War is as follows: Hitler. The German economy. Tanks. Thus, for convenience, we reduce complex elements."
The second appendix is an account of how Ripper theories began, with people who were there adding details or changing details (or both) years afterwards, and these are picked up by others years later and begin dovetailing into each other. Eventually, Moore speculates, someone will start counting up cattle mutilations of the era and come up with a 'space aliens did it' theory.
The quote at the top of this post comes from the prologue to "From Hell", back when it was published in a horror anthology, before Moore had decided to become a magician, before the fall-out of the "1963" series (which remains his only real incursion into Marvel Comics-style storytelling). He admitted (in the first appendix that he has no evidence that Queen Victoria's psychic held any of the views Moore wrote into the character's mouth for that scene. Five-ten years later as he finished the series, he was constantly finding evidence that would have proved his point, and through drug-induced magical experiences, began worshipping a sock-puppet/snake god and went to (as Daeve Sim recounted it in Cerebus #186) "the Big White Room. They were all there, Alan informs me. Hawksmoor, Crowley, Vitruvius, Thomas Hobbes, this one and that one. All the Mages of the Ages. 'They are just who they say they are,' Alan observed. 'The Illuminati. Not Jewish Bankers and Worldwide Conspirators. The Illuminated Ones.' I asked if Alan just, you know, saw them or if he had any kind of exchange with them.
"'You know, Viktor [sic], I looked around and I noticed there weren't any women in the room. And I said to' (I forget which one he said it was: doesn't matter), 'There are no women. Is this some kind of faggy boys' club or something, then?'
"This, according to Alan, generated a good deal of amusement."
Moore and Sim would go on to have a lengthy discussion (printed in issues of Cerebus @ #220 and freely available on the internet) where they go into their respective views much more. All these quotes are almost within arms reach from where I type this, so as I say, books are important.
Republicans are displaying several plans to deal with the debt crisis. The administration has set a deadline of 2 August although the President hasn't offered anything more concrete than a budget that received 0 votes in the Senate a few months ago. Has a President ever offered anything to Congress that received 0 votes in its favor? Democrats are sticking with the "Bush tax cuts" as their main point, like they were doing this time last year, like they were doing five years ago and ten years ago.
The Bush tax cuts meant I went from almost being able to pay my rent once with my refund to being able to pay it twice and have change left over. It's not hard to imagine twenty other people in that situation who were similarly aided, and all we have to do to maintain that is not extort from millionaires? I'm fine with that.
Fiscal cuts are coming to national defense, that's a given. I somehow doubt they'll find the money to begin the repeal of DADT. I mean, they're talking about cutting budgets and there's going to be a lot of worthless bureaucratic clutter. Implementing unpopular new DoD programs is going to be atop the list and that one would do it.
Straight guys prefer as few other wangs as possible in their private lives and, Anthony Weiner-type exceptions duly noted - most guys keep those private wangings (to coin a word) to themselves. That's why marriage works best when one partner has a wang and the other doesn't and both are of an age to know what they're consenting to. If being gay is important enough to someone that they refuse to permit other peoples' sex lives to include homosexuality, then they don't know enough about human relation to get married, much less serve in the military.
For marriage, why not just create a new legal concept and specify that it means the same thing as 'one man, one woman + kids/property to be named later'. Or create a new concept for that and let gays have marriage.
For the military, it's not workable. Gays can serve as long as they keep their wangs to themselves. Otherwise, straight soldiers have every right to bunk together without regard to gender, never mind the consequences. But that would be detrimental to good order and discipline. Should segregating soldiers by race become necessary to maintain good order and discpline, that should be an option as well. It's not, because race is not gender is not sexual preference or age. Rank and regulation play too much of an everyday role that someone's always going to feel screwed over and being into other dudes really doesn't need to ever be brought up.
The gays who can serve and maintain/exceed the standards will always be small in number and have already proven their ability under current circumstances, so why invest in DoD-wide changes that can't improve the chances for mission success? Male soldiers will always do stupid things because of their dicks and the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't need to deal with that in a time of war. Nor do female soldiers, for that matter.
Beyond that, many of the big-government side are going to find a lot of arguments falling away from them as the debt limit argument continues. Ike's argument about the military-industrial complx stemmed - I'm guessing - from seeing a couple of generations worth of businesses that spring from military spending. It's genuine job creation, where people serve and then form a business (or marriage) right off-post. When Jimi Hendrix was a supply clerk in the 101st Airborne in the '60s, he kept getting in trouble for playing in bars right outside post. When Charles Schultz was a machine-gun instructor for units heading to Europe in the '40s, he was praised for his hand-eye coordination that later gave us Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
Then there's the daughters, from jailbait to MILF, which congregate. Five or fifty years later, that money invested in the soldiers, their location and equipment was worth spending more than possibly anything else the goverment can spend it on. It'll have to be cut like everything else, but clever leaders will cut the things that don't impact the military's ability to win wars, especially after they've spent the last decade proving it.
The black beret has been removed from regular usage and is now only for dress uniforms. This is several years after the military made the switch from BDUs (the green uniforms) to ACUs (the light grey-blues). It's not like they haven't already spent endless amounts of money focus-testing and brain-storming how to make changes to standard operating procedure. Now they'll see what happens when soldiers who get to wear berets look "special" (in a good way).
Again, rank and regulation are going to piss everybody off. I once heard a CSM say something to the effect that if smoking crack made him a better soldier, he'd be on the stuff and expect his soldiers to do the same. Likewise a soldier who's got a problem with blacks, women, gays or Jews/Muslims/other should shut the hell up and treat other soldiers (and civilians) with the respect they deserve. This inconvenience should be equally spread, so that soldiers whose identity is so wrapped up in skin color, gender, orientation, religion or other that they make it a priority at every chance will need to shut up about it themselves. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
As far as all the 'job-creating opportunities' liberals promise that government can deliver, the military programs are going to be the most successful of those, even the ones that are utter wastes of money.
Some people won't want to hear that. They put 'gays in the military' in the same place as the 'Bush tax cuts', they won't hear any dissenting viewpoint, even when time and circumstances change. Republicans have put forth multiple plans for trying to fix things and I just saw on the internet that they're finishing up yet another one. Harry Reid just asked why there was a meeting he didn't know about and Obama just called a press conference where he said he couldn't get a phone call returned. Some people find out too late that they're not in the loop.
One of the earlier plans involved a short-term fix and would give the President the power to raise the debt ceiling three times on his own judgement. We're nearing the third anniversary of his election and his judgement hasn't been very good, which is why I thought the plan was a lousy one. But the longer it was out there and even attracting some bipartisan support as well as dismissals, the more it was interesting in itself. Ok, in some ways it's a total 180, let's give someone the right wing hates the authority to make this call, similar to Senator McCain's attempt to retroactively change the War Powers Act to justify whatever the hell Obama was doing in Libya.
"Is doing" I mean. American bombs and authority are still involved in Libya and have the orphans to show for it, but Qaddaffi's getting nothing except older. Assad just found some protestors he didn't want to shoot, and they stormed the US and French embassies. Funny how that worked. The French reported that they used "live ammo". Good thing there wasn't another hostage crisis, huh?
Anyway, so the debt ceiling's still there, an unalterable deadline, and some Republican had the idea of giving Obama the authority to make judgement calls in this matter. Obama rejected it and didn't counter it with any plans of his own. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in 800 days, so far the House is doing all the heavy lifting. Maybe that's why Harry Reid didn't know about any deal. Even Nancy Pelosi didn't tell him. Sarah Palin just put on facebook that Obama is a lame duck. That's the way it goes.
At the end of his second term, GWB said that there was no money left and the cupboards were bare. He also defended the government bailouts of the auto industry, insurance and housing, saying that he was destroying capitalism in order to save it. He invested his re-election capital in privatizing Social Security, for whatever that's worth nearly a decade later.
Done writing this post now. Maybe later. It's Sunday afternoon.
23 July, 2011
16 July, 2011
Can't Get This Stuff No More
I'm still working long hours, plus trying to get this stupid book finished. This weekend I'm housesitting two large slobbery dogs.
Syrian protestors attacked both the US and French embassies recently. The US is contemplating a lawsuit against the Syrian government in response. Apparently Assad - who shoots protestors he doesn't like - didn't go far enough to stop these protestors.
This is just stupid. Why do we even have diplomatic relations with Syria? Why aren't we bombing them like we are Libya?
And how's that going, by the way? It's been months. Qaddaffi's given up very little in that time. This is the sort of paper tiger bin Laden talked about as a reason for war against us to begin with. For our reputation in the Muslim world, this is a disaster. Sure we proved in Iraq and Afghanistan that when people give us problems, we shoot them and move on, but times change, leaders change and now we're at best coasting on those achievements.
[And let's not forget that GWB spent a long time going to Congress and the UN and building up forces for Iraq. The world woke up one morning to discover we were engaged in Libya with a dubious mission and a command structure that was even moreso.]
I'd certainly like to think we're doing the right thing with Libya, but I don't see how. Opening another front in the Muslim world could be a good step, and there's no good reason for Qaddaffi to keep breathing, but this is almost a deliberate show of weakness, especially when you consider how we've ignored Syria. What are we proving other than that our allies in NATO couldn't defeat a hot dog stand without the US and Britain holding their hands?
Europe, Canada and similar nations have been coasting on the benefits of Western Civilization for a long time without having to pay the price for it. At this point, the US, UK, Israel, Australia and Japan are it for the defenders of civilization. And Japan's got their own problems at the moment.
[Which, I've probably said before, they have been handling astoundingly well. There's almost no news coming out of the country, but that's a good sign, that they're handling the influx of massive disasters and picking up the pieces in a manner exactly unlike the weak-willed soft-boned slugs and leeches that whine about every little thing. It's inspiring and even a little scary. Maybe they're the *true* master race?]
The Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape charges have fallen apart, as the accuser seems to have been entirely lying about them. Apparently she's a prostitute, the sex was consensual and she immediately started talking to incarcerated boyfriends about how much money she could take him for. DSK's reputation has definitely suffered, perhaps deservedly given the other accusations women have flung at him, but this is how the system works.
A rich powerful socialist was hauled off a plane because he was charged with a felony. The immigrant accuser had rights which must be respected. When she turns out to have no credibility, the case is dismissed (and kudos to the prosecutors for not milking it for their own career). Nobody comes out any better for it, but considering other recent cases like Roman Polanski or the Duke Lacrosse Team, this is definitely a sign of a working system of justice.
Trying to think of other stuff to write. I feel a bit guilty for neglecting this blog, which is nearing its fifth anniversary. Facebook posts make it so easy to just fire off a one-liner whenever I come up with one, and with all the other stuff going on, I don't have as much incentive to try to come up with a long public monologue about something. Obviously I could write shorter ones, but that just isn't as appealing.
Van Halen is edging towards their first new album since 1998, after several trips through rehab and changes of lead singer for Eddie. It's strange, I was never a huge fan of VH when they were a genuinely functioning band [which pretty much ended with the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album and the zeitgeist-snagging video for "Right Now". I liked that song and a couple of the videos with David Lee Roth, mostly because of the sexy girls and his screen persona, that was about it.
The ill-fated reunion with Roth that blew Sammy Hagar out of the band in '96 caught my attention, and then suddenly a switch flipped in my head and I went out and got Best Of Volume One, with the DLR reunion songs. [This has also happened with Johnny Cash; one day I don't have the slightest interest, the next I must get a sample of their work] I certainly enjoyed both eras represented, with a slight edge to the Sammy Hagar era.
I freely admit that the Van Hagar era sounded like more of a generic hard rock band than the records with David Lee Roth. Sammy had more experience as a pop songwriter in addition to being a guitarist himself, and I can understand why some people would think the Roth era is somehow purer for its lack of polish.
But what few seem to recognize is that Roth didn't bring much to the table. He did a great job with what he had, but his voice is limited and his lyrics are barely better than Sammy's. [I love Sammy, but his lyrics are competent at best]. Roth was a great dynamic frontman, but as his solo career demonstrates, it's all sizzle. His self-absorption is also a wonder to behold. During the '96 reunion, he went out of his way to steal all the attention from other members of the band. Even when Eddie - the guitar wunderkind without whom none of this would be possible - mentioned he was getting hip replacement surgery, Roth told him "this night's about me, not your hip."
Roth has never been able to get beyond Van Halen because he can't do anything without EVH's guitar to insinuate himself around. Sammy, by contrast, had a well-established career before joining VH and when the band originally signed a record deal, some of the executives even suggested he replace Roth.
In 2002, when Sammy and Roth went out on the "Sans Halen" tour, the set lists demonstrated this point. Sammy played a total of 8 songs from his time with Van Halen, filling out his set with songs from the rest of his career ranging from "Red" (1977, remade a couple years later by Bette Midler) through "Mas Tequila" (his most recent hit from 1999). In comparison, Roth played 8 songs from the first VH album alone, and only one song from outside VH, "Yankee Rose". He played covers done by VH ("Pretty Woman", "Ice Cream Man"), but his only two solo hits are a cover of "California Girls" (most notable for its video entirely focuses on women in bikinis; not even the pre-"Frasier" Jane Leeves who also appears in it, fully clothed) and "Just a Gigolo", a song from 1929 that has been covered by everybody from Louis Armstrong to Betty Boop.
Sammy has said - and I have no reason to doubt him - that besides the novelty of two former Van Halen singers touring together, part of the reason was to jolt the Van Halen brothers into action. This didn't really happen, they would reunite for a tour with Sammy a couple years later, a tour with Roth a couple years after that, and nothing since then. I also think Sammy was just trying to get along with Roth, whom he'd never met before the tour. Maybe they could swap a couple songs or sing a duet, you know, something the fans would really like. He was thinking it might lead to a stadium tour, Sam and Dave and Van Halen and be huge. No such luck. Roth made a lot more money than he'd been making - he insisted on being paid what Sammy got paid, even though it was Sammy's usual fee which he wasn't even close to earning on his own - but refused to have anything to do with Hagar other than that. The Van Halen brothers didn't rise to the bait.
So Sammy had a really good thing going without ever joining Van Halen. Roth didn't, but he does have those VH records to show for it. Now, over a quarter century after he left the band, they're finally recording again.
I don't know what they expect. The music business they knew is totally gone. They might get some airplay, and will probably sell a number of copies on the novelty alone, but this won't go anywhere. There are several reasons for this, but probably none more central than the lodestone of the band, Eddie Van Halen.
A Dutch immigrant with a family tradition of music, the guy's a guitar genius. He doesn't play difficult chords, but plays them so unbelievably fast and with such control that any teenage metalhead (or adult, let's not fool ourselves) will be enraptured. His "Eruption" solo is the first thing on Best Of and when I heard it, it was like 'oh, ok. THIS is why everybody's loved Van Halen for so long. See, I didn't get that before.'
(live from '94)
Eddie also has (to put it mildly) a serious weakness for alcohol. Sammy's autobiography describes the devastation on tour, and ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli (who was so cute on "One Day At A Time") probably describes the same thing at home in her own book. Ok, it's a common rock star failing, but most rock stars aren't responsible for multiple diamond albums (signifying more than 10 million copies sold). EVH was able to indulge himself far beyond the limits of humanity and it's possible there's not much left.
Having proven his guitar hero bonafides, Eddie went on to demonstrate the potential for crossover in different music areas by playing the guitar solo for Michael Jackson's "Beat It", and he applied his considerable musical ability to learning keyboards with the same devotion he displayed on guitar. [Alex Van Halen described going out on Friday nights as a teenager to party while Eddie stayed at home to play, and coming back six or eight hours later to find Eddie hadn't moved, he was still playing.]
People blame Sammy for making Van Halen's music "commercial" (like that's an insult), but "Jump" was keyboard driven and deservedly a classic song from 1984. Three seconds into that song you're hit by the infectious synthesizer riff and it doesn't let up. Sammy was able to write ballads as well as rockers, and had far more range as a singer, but he didn't force EVH to write that sort of music. One can hear the studio wizardry required to make DLR's vocals suitable for the reunion songs on Best Of. He never had to sing in that key before.
[I also think it was a collaboration with Brian May that helped lead EVH in that direction. Queen was taking a break in 1983, and bored in Los Angeles, Brian May called up EVH and asked if he wanted to do some jamming. The resulting mini-album The Starfleet Project is a guitar fan's wet dream and I'm sure the interaction with another guitar god in a huge pop band led Eddie's thoughts to replacing a troublesome lead singer as well as expanding his own musical range.]
Perhaps none of this is clearer than with the way Michael Anthony was forced out of the band. By his own admission, he didn't participate in any of the writing, but neither did Alex Van Halen. Alex, however, was the brother of the guitar hero. The bass player didn't have any such luck. Anthony's role was reduced in the band until he was ejected for reasons no one but Eddie seems to know. He only played bass on a few songs on the album they made with Gary Cherone and Eddie played bass for the reunion songs with Sammy (on the follow up greatest hits album commemorating the reunion tour from 2004; are you keeping all this straight? There will be a test later). Eddie didn't even want him on that reunion tour except that Sammy insisted, and even then Anthony was given much less money.
This makes no sense. Anthony's no more of a drunken fool than anyone else in the band, he's an awesome bassist, and his replacement is none other than Eddie's teenage son, whose birth was commemorated on the FUCK album with the instrumental "316" (his birthday). This sort of misdirected resentment can only be a recipe for disaster - even if it led to a string of multi-platinum albums, the devastation on their lives and souls would be worse. Anthony, fortunately, has found other work with Hagar since then, but even the most die-hard of Roth fans have to be wondering why he was removed in the first place. Even VH's website briefly removed him from all album credits until they realized how stupid that looked.
After firing Sammy and realizing they still couldn't work with Roth, Van Halen hooked up with Extreme lead singer Gary Cherone, destroying that promising young band in the process. [Extreme opened for Roth on one of his first solo tours and he told them they were good enough to take the crown from Van Halen. Anyone who saw their Queen medley at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert knows this wasn't hyperbole.]
[Heh, Gary even opens with "Mustafa", that Muslim call-to-prayer I mentioned a few posts ago]
Extreme were an extremely talented group. I don't think they really clicked with the public because they wore their influences - Queen, Van Halen, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, others - extremely loudly. Beyond their one major hit, the acoustic ballad "More Than Words", they didn't have much of an impact on the rock scene. It's a shame because, again, they were extremely talent, especially guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. Here's my favorite Extreme song, from their third album, "Rest In Peace", whose lyrics sound like a hippy peace anthem unless you actually think about them. "Make love not war sounds so absurd to me/we can't afford to say these words lightly/unless our world will truly rest in peace" Great band, very artistic, everything they need for an awesome song except the actual songwriting.
Cherone didn't overplay his role in the band who just wanted a lead singer. His album wasn't a hit - the only non-hit album Van Halen ever had - and he just didn't fit. I think his youth was a part of it as well, but there's no telling. With most of a second album recorded, he amiably left. When Van Halen was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, he was notably not included and to his credit, said he was only a small part of the history that the fans (himself included) were celebrating by the induction. To Van Halen's credit - well, Sammy and Mike Anthony's, since they were the only two who showed up - they thanked him for his role. Yes, he was only a small part of the band's history, but it was still a part and he deserved the public recognition.
The Hall of Fame induction was symptomatic of the problems surrounding Van Halen since Sammy left (the first time). There were endless discussions on who would show up. According to Hagar, he wasn't included in the original induction list even though he was in the band longer than Roth and with more hits to show for it. He suspected his manager left him off the list just so he could get him added and look good in Sammy's eyes. Whatever, then the question was who else would appear. Eddie refused to have anything to do with Sammy or Mike, and this was on the cusp of the reunion tour with Roth. But at the last minute he had to go to rehab, and Alex stayed away as well to support his brother.
Roth was more than willing to show up. However they were being inducted by Velvet Revolver - made up mostly of ex-Guns'n'Roses members - and he insisted on singing "Jump". Apparently the Hall of Fame has some say in what songs are played by inductees upon their induction (why?) and they didn't want that, but were still willing to accomodate him. However, Velvet Revolver didn't have a keyboard player and weren't about to play with pre-recorded tapes like other bands would (like, you know, Van Halen).
[I respect Slash's desire to not play with pre-recorded tapes, that's totally fine. Queen was the same way, which is why it took them years to figure out how to play "Bohemian Rhapsody" live. But it's the f*cking Hall of Fame, you mean they can't FIND a single person who likes Van Halen and is willing to learn keyboards for "Jump"? Isn't anybody else going to be at that dinner, the keyboard player for, I dunno, Journey or some shit? You'd get to play with him (cool) and celebrate Van Halen (cooler) and play "Jump" (still cooler) with David Lee Roth (awesome) who's the one being celebrated by the Hall of Fame. What am I missing here?]
[Slash, by the way, played lead guitar for "Little White Lie", the first song on Sammy's first post-VH album, which is all about his problems with EVH. Since this was just before Slash left G'n'R, methinks he could relate to the issues of a volatile singer/guitarist relationship.]
In the end, only Sammy and Mike showed up to represent the band they used to belong to. They were as complimentary as possible towards everyone else. Eventually Eddie left rehab and the reunion tour with Roth actually happened. Those fans who'd been waiting 25 years for it got what they were after (I guess).
And now they're finally ready to release the follow up to "1984" and the Best Of reunion songs. Oh. Joy.
Has DLR learned to sing in different keys? If not, there's going to be a problem. Reportedly - as in I've heard it from one or two sources but I have no idea if it's the truth or not - he needed extensive help from the producer to put vocal melodies to Eddie's songs way back when. He does a great job of growling and screaming, but he's not that talented as a singer. One doesn't suppose he'll do much better now that he's been spoiled and pampered for decades and Eddie still knows how to play keyboards.
In some ways it's similar to problems with the Who (a big influence on VH). Roger Daltrey could growl and scream with the best of them (the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again" being the best example) and was an amazing front man, but he did not have a melodious voice. "Behind Blue Eyes" is probably the closest he ever got to a delicate vocal, and that only works because it turns into a hard rocker halfway through. [much like "Bohemian Rhapsody", come to think of it]
Pete Townsend taught himself to play keyboards for the Who's third album and with this skill came a wider range of song possibilities. "Won't Get Fooled Again" wouldn't be possible without the keyboards.
[well, sorta...]
But with the compositional opportunities afforded by keyboard playing, Roger Daltrey had a good reason to feel even more threatened by Pete Townshend's dominance than before. This reached its climax with the Quadrophenia album which was more keyboard than anything, and Townshend's raging alcoholism didn't help. Fists were thrown, Townshend spent some time bleeding and unconscious and Daltrey had a bit higher standing in the band than before. Roth actually has done things such as mountain climbing which have tested him as a man, but he's never had to live a poor downtrodden life where rock music was his only salvation like Roger Daltrey did, or Sammy Hagar.
I'll probably get the new album when it comes out, but more out of curiousity than anything else. Van Halen was part of the zeitgeist for a time, and such things aren't dependent on the chronology of cause-and-effect. It would be easy (and tempting) to say that overall, they were a huge, influential band simply to prepare them for Sammy Hagar's time with them. [For a different example, the Beatles would never have become the Beatles without Pete Best spending a few years as drummer, but he was in no way suitable for what the Beatles did, what they became, or what they've meant to rock music for the last 40 years.] But for whatever reason, Eddie is still walking and talking, his brother is still playing drums and they have a bass player Eddie constructed in his bedroom one drunken night back in 1990. And they have that guy who sang "California Girls" and honestly believes his voice provided the soundtrack for several generations of young people.
I don't know what they're doing, I'm just fascinated by the fact that they're still around.
Amazing, I've written all this about Van Halen (a few hours ago I was trying to think of something to write) and I still haven't tackled Aerosmith, truly the greatest American rock band ever. Someday...
In closing, I'd like to link to the Youtube clip of an early Van Halen singing Montrose's "Make It Last", but the embedding feature has been disabled by Youtube at someone's request. Roth once said that Sammy had to sing his (Roth's) songs every night but he would never sing a Sammy song. "Make It Last" was written by Sammy Hagar, so Roth was probably the one who demanded it.
Here's Sammy taking questions from his career, probably promoting his autobiography with Rolling Stone.
Syrian protestors attacked both the US and French embassies recently. The US is contemplating a lawsuit against the Syrian government in response. Apparently Assad - who shoots protestors he doesn't like - didn't go far enough to stop these protestors.
This is just stupid. Why do we even have diplomatic relations with Syria? Why aren't we bombing them like we are Libya?
And how's that going, by the way? It's been months. Qaddaffi's given up very little in that time. This is the sort of paper tiger bin Laden talked about as a reason for war against us to begin with. For our reputation in the Muslim world, this is a disaster. Sure we proved in Iraq and Afghanistan that when people give us problems, we shoot them and move on, but times change, leaders change and now we're at best coasting on those achievements.
[And let's not forget that GWB spent a long time going to Congress and the UN and building up forces for Iraq. The world woke up one morning to discover we were engaged in Libya with a dubious mission and a command structure that was even moreso.]
I'd certainly like to think we're doing the right thing with Libya, but I don't see how. Opening another front in the Muslim world could be a good step, and there's no good reason for Qaddaffi to keep breathing, but this is almost a deliberate show of weakness, especially when you consider how we've ignored Syria. What are we proving other than that our allies in NATO couldn't defeat a hot dog stand without the US and Britain holding their hands?
Europe, Canada and similar nations have been coasting on the benefits of Western Civilization for a long time without having to pay the price for it. At this point, the US, UK, Israel, Australia and Japan are it for the defenders of civilization. And Japan's got their own problems at the moment.
[Which, I've probably said before, they have been handling astoundingly well. There's almost no news coming out of the country, but that's a good sign, that they're handling the influx of massive disasters and picking up the pieces in a manner exactly unlike the weak-willed soft-boned slugs and leeches that whine about every little thing. It's inspiring and even a little scary. Maybe they're the *true* master race?]
The Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape charges have fallen apart, as the accuser seems to have been entirely lying about them. Apparently she's a prostitute, the sex was consensual and she immediately started talking to incarcerated boyfriends about how much money she could take him for. DSK's reputation has definitely suffered, perhaps deservedly given the other accusations women have flung at him, but this is how the system works.
A rich powerful socialist was hauled off a plane because he was charged with a felony. The immigrant accuser had rights which must be respected. When she turns out to have no credibility, the case is dismissed (and kudos to the prosecutors for not milking it for their own career). Nobody comes out any better for it, but considering other recent cases like Roman Polanski or the Duke Lacrosse Team, this is definitely a sign of a working system of justice.
Trying to think of other stuff to write. I feel a bit guilty for neglecting this blog, which is nearing its fifth anniversary. Facebook posts make it so easy to just fire off a one-liner whenever I come up with one, and with all the other stuff going on, I don't have as much incentive to try to come up with a long public monologue about something. Obviously I could write shorter ones, but that just isn't as appealing.
Van Halen is edging towards their first new album since 1998, after several trips through rehab and changes of lead singer for Eddie. It's strange, I was never a huge fan of VH when they were a genuinely functioning band [which pretty much ended with the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album and the zeitgeist-snagging video for "Right Now". I liked that song and a couple of the videos with David Lee Roth, mostly because of the sexy girls and his screen persona, that was about it.
The ill-fated reunion with Roth that blew Sammy Hagar out of the band in '96 caught my attention, and then suddenly a switch flipped in my head and I went out and got Best Of Volume One, with the DLR reunion songs. [This has also happened with Johnny Cash; one day I don't have the slightest interest, the next I must get a sample of their work] I certainly enjoyed both eras represented, with a slight edge to the Sammy Hagar era.
I freely admit that the Van Hagar era sounded like more of a generic hard rock band than the records with David Lee Roth. Sammy had more experience as a pop songwriter in addition to being a guitarist himself, and I can understand why some people would think the Roth era is somehow purer for its lack of polish.
But what few seem to recognize is that Roth didn't bring much to the table. He did a great job with what he had, but his voice is limited and his lyrics are barely better than Sammy's. [I love Sammy, but his lyrics are competent at best]. Roth was a great dynamic frontman, but as his solo career demonstrates, it's all sizzle. His self-absorption is also a wonder to behold. During the '96 reunion, he went out of his way to steal all the attention from other members of the band. Even when Eddie - the guitar wunderkind without whom none of this would be possible - mentioned he was getting hip replacement surgery, Roth told him "this night's about me, not your hip."
Roth has never been able to get beyond Van Halen because he can't do anything without EVH's guitar to insinuate himself around. Sammy, by contrast, had a well-established career before joining VH and when the band originally signed a record deal, some of the executives even suggested he replace Roth.
In 2002, when Sammy and Roth went out on the "Sans Halen" tour, the set lists demonstrated this point. Sammy played a total of 8 songs from his time with Van Halen, filling out his set with songs from the rest of his career ranging from "Red" (1977, remade a couple years later by Bette Midler) through "Mas Tequila" (his most recent hit from 1999). In comparison, Roth played 8 songs from the first VH album alone, and only one song from outside VH, "Yankee Rose". He played covers done by VH ("Pretty Woman", "Ice Cream Man"), but his only two solo hits are a cover of "California Girls" (most notable for its video entirely focuses on women in bikinis; not even the pre-"Frasier" Jane Leeves who also appears in it, fully clothed) and "Just a Gigolo", a song from 1929 that has been covered by everybody from Louis Armstrong to Betty Boop.
Sammy has said - and I have no reason to doubt him - that besides the novelty of two former Van Halen singers touring together, part of the reason was to jolt the Van Halen brothers into action. This didn't really happen, they would reunite for a tour with Sammy a couple years later, a tour with Roth a couple years after that, and nothing since then. I also think Sammy was just trying to get along with Roth, whom he'd never met before the tour. Maybe they could swap a couple songs or sing a duet, you know, something the fans would really like. He was thinking it might lead to a stadium tour, Sam and Dave and Van Halen and be huge. No such luck. Roth made a lot more money than he'd been making - he insisted on being paid what Sammy got paid, even though it was Sammy's usual fee which he wasn't even close to earning on his own - but refused to have anything to do with Hagar other than that. The Van Halen brothers didn't rise to the bait.
So Sammy had a really good thing going without ever joining Van Halen. Roth didn't, but he does have those VH records to show for it. Now, over a quarter century after he left the band, they're finally recording again.
I don't know what they expect. The music business they knew is totally gone. They might get some airplay, and will probably sell a number of copies on the novelty alone, but this won't go anywhere. There are several reasons for this, but probably none more central than the lodestone of the band, Eddie Van Halen.
A Dutch immigrant with a family tradition of music, the guy's a guitar genius. He doesn't play difficult chords, but plays them so unbelievably fast and with such control that any teenage metalhead (or adult, let's not fool ourselves) will be enraptured. His "Eruption" solo is the first thing on Best Of and when I heard it, it was like 'oh, ok. THIS is why everybody's loved Van Halen for so long. See, I didn't get that before.'
(live from '94)
Eddie also has (to put it mildly) a serious weakness for alcohol. Sammy's autobiography describes the devastation on tour, and ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli (who was so cute on "One Day At A Time") probably describes the same thing at home in her own book. Ok, it's a common rock star failing, but most rock stars aren't responsible for multiple diamond albums (signifying more than 10 million copies sold). EVH was able to indulge himself far beyond the limits of humanity and it's possible there's not much left.
Having proven his guitar hero bonafides, Eddie went on to demonstrate the potential for crossover in different music areas by playing the guitar solo for Michael Jackson's "Beat It", and he applied his considerable musical ability to learning keyboards with the same devotion he displayed on guitar. [Alex Van Halen described going out on Friday nights as a teenager to party while Eddie stayed at home to play, and coming back six or eight hours later to find Eddie hadn't moved, he was still playing.]
People blame Sammy for making Van Halen's music "commercial" (like that's an insult), but "Jump" was keyboard driven and deservedly a classic song from 1984. Three seconds into that song you're hit by the infectious synthesizer riff and it doesn't let up. Sammy was able to write ballads as well as rockers, and had far more range as a singer, but he didn't force EVH to write that sort of music. One can hear the studio wizardry required to make DLR's vocals suitable for the reunion songs on Best Of. He never had to sing in that key before.
[I also think it was a collaboration with Brian May that helped lead EVH in that direction. Queen was taking a break in 1983, and bored in Los Angeles, Brian May called up EVH and asked if he wanted to do some jamming. The resulting mini-album The Starfleet Project is a guitar fan's wet dream and I'm sure the interaction with another guitar god in a huge pop band led Eddie's thoughts to replacing a troublesome lead singer as well as expanding his own musical range.]
Perhaps none of this is clearer than with the way Michael Anthony was forced out of the band. By his own admission, he didn't participate in any of the writing, but neither did Alex Van Halen. Alex, however, was the brother of the guitar hero. The bass player didn't have any such luck. Anthony's role was reduced in the band until he was ejected for reasons no one but Eddie seems to know. He only played bass on a few songs on the album they made with Gary Cherone and Eddie played bass for the reunion songs with Sammy (on the follow up greatest hits album commemorating the reunion tour from 2004; are you keeping all this straight? There will be a test later). Eddie didn't even want him on that reunion tour except that Sammy insisted, and even then Anthony was given much less money.
This makes no sense. Anthony's no more of a drunken fool than anyone else in the band, he's an awesome bassist, and his replacement is none other than Eddie's teenage son, whose birth was commemorated on the FUCK album with the instrumental "316" (his birthday). This sort of misdirected resentment can only be a recipe for disaster - even if it led to a string of multi-platinum albums, the devastation on their lives and souls would be worse. Anthony, fortunately, has found other work with Hagar since then, but even the most die-hard of Roth fans have to be wondering why he was removed in the first place. Even VH's website briefly removed him from all album credits until they realized how stupid that looked.
After firing Sammy and realizing they still couldn't work with Roth, Van Halen hooked up with Extreme lead singer Gary Cherone, destroying that promising young band in the process. [Extreme opened for Roth on one of his first solo tours and he told them they were good enough to take the crown from Van Halen. Anyone who saw their Queen medley at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert knows this wasn't hyperbole.]
[Heh, Gary even opens with "Mustafa", that Muslim call-to-prayer I mentioned a few posts ago]
Extreme were an extremely talented group. I don't think they really clicked with the public because they wore their influences - Queen, Van Halen, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, others - extremely loudly. Beyond their one major hit, the acoustic ballad "More Than Words", they didn't have much of an impact on the rock scene. It's a shame because, again, they were extremely talent, especially guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. Here's my favorite Extreme song, from their third album, "Rest In Peace", whose lyrics sound like a hippy peace anthem unless you actually think about them. "Make love not war sounds so absurd to me/we can't afford to say these words lightly/unless our world will truly rest in peace" Great band, very artistic, everything they need for an awesome song except the actual songwriting.
Cherone didn't overplay his role in the band who just wanted a lead singer. His album wasn't a hit - the only non-hit album Van Halen ever had - and he just didn't fit. I think his youth was a part of it as well, but there's no telling. With most of a second album recorded, he amiably left. When Van Halen was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, he was notably not included and to his credit, said he was only a small part of the history that the fans (himself included) were celebrating by the induction. To Van Halen's credit - well, Sammy and Mike Anthony's, since they were the only two who showed up - they thanked him for his role. Yes, he was only a small part of the band's history, but it was still a part and he deserved the public recognition.
The Hall of Fame induction was symptomatic of the problems surrounding Van Halen since Sammy left (the first time). There were endless discussions on who would show up. According to Hagar, he wasn't included in the original induction list even though he was in the band longer than Roth and with more hits to show for it. He suspected his manager left him off the list just so he could get him added and look good in Sammy's eyes. Whatever, then the question was who else would appear. Eddie refused to have anything to do with Sammy or Mike, and this was on the cusp of the reunion tour with Roth. But at the last minute he had to go to rehab, and Alex stayed away as well to support his brother.
Roth was more than willing to show up. However they were being inducted by Velvet Revolver - made up mostly of ex-Guns'n'Roses members - and he insisted on singing "Jump". Apparently the Hall of Fame has some say in what songs are played by inductees upon their induction (why?) and they didn't want that, but were still willing to accomodate him. However, Velvet Revolver didn't have a keyboard player and weren't about to play with pre-recorded tapes like other bands would (like, you know, Van Halen).
[I respect Slash's desire to not play with pre-recorded tapes, that's totally fine. Queen was the same way, which is why it took them years to figure out how to play "Bohemian Rhapsody" live. But it's the f*cking Hall of Fame, you mean they can't FIND a single person who likes Van Halen and is willing to learn keyboards for "Jump"? Isn't anybody else going to be at that dinner, the keyboard player for, I dunno, Journey or some shit? You'd get to play with him (cool) and celebrate Van Halen (cooler) and play "Jump" (still cooler) with David Lee Roth (awesome) who's the one being celebrated by the Hall of Fame. What am I missing here?]
[Slash, by the way, played lead guitar for "Little White Lie", the first song on Sammy's first post-VH album, which is all about his problems with EVH. Since this was just before Slash left G'n'R, methinks he could relate to the issues of a volatile singer/guitarist relationship.]
In the end, only Sammy and Mike showed up to represent the band they used to belong to. They were as complimentary as possible towards everyone else. Eventually Eddie left rehab and the reunion tour with Roth actually happened. Those fans who'd been waiting 25 years for it got what they were after (I guess).
And now they're finally ready to release the follow up to "1984" and the Best Of reunion songs. Oh. Joy.
Has DLR learned to sing in different keys? If not, there's going to be a problem. Reportedly - as in I've heard it from one or two sources but I have no idea if it's the truth or not - he needed extensive help from the producer to put vocal melodies to Eddie's songs way back when. He does a great job of growling and screaming, but he's not that talented as a singer. One doesn't suppose he'll do much better now that he's been spoiled and pampered for decades and Eddie still knows how to play keyboards.
In some ways it's similar to problems with the Who (a big influence on VH). Roger Daltrey could growl and scream with the best of them (the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again" being the best example) and was an amazing front man, but he did not have a melodious voice. "Behind Blue Eyes" is probably the closest he ever got to a delicate vocal, and that only works because it turns into a hard rocker halfway through. [much like "Bohemian Rhapsody", come to think of it]
Pete Townsend taught himself to play keyboards for the Who's third album and with this skill came a wider range of song possibilities. "Won't Get Fooled Again" wouldn't be possible without the keyboards.
[well, sorta...]
But with the compositional opportunities afforded by keyboard playing, Roger Daltrey had a good reason to feel even more threatened by Pete Townshend's dominance than before. This reached its climax with the Quadrophenia album which was more keyboard than anything, and Townshend's raging alcoholism didn't help. Fists were thrown, Townshend spent some time bleeding and unconscious and Daltrey had a bit higher standing in the band than before. Roth actually has done things such as mountain climbing which have tested him as a man, but he's never had to live a poor downtrodden life where rock music was his only salvation like Roger Daltrey did, or Sammy Hagar.
I'll probably get the new album when it comes out, but more out of curiousity than anything else. Van Halen was part of the zeitgeist for a time, and such things aren't dependent on the chronology of cause-and-effect. It would be easy (and tempting) to say that overall, they were a huge, influential band simply to prepare them for Sammy Hagar's time with them. [For a different example, the Beatles would never have become the Beatles without Pete Best spending a few years as drummer, but he was in no way suitable for what the Beatles did, what they became, or what they've meant to rock music for the last 40 years.] But for whatever reason, Eddie is still walking and talking, his brother is still playing drums and they have a bass player Eddie constructed in his bedroom one drunken night back in 1990. And they have that guy who sang "California Girls" and honestly believes his voice provided the soundtrack for several generations of young people.
I don't know what they're doing, I'm just fascinated by the fact that they're still around.
Amazing, I've written all this about Van Halen (a few hours ago I was trying to think of something to write) and I still haven't tackled Aerosmith, truly the greatest American rock band ever. Someday...
In closing, I'd like to link to the Youtube clip of an early Van Halen singing Montrose's "Make It Last", but the embedding feature has been disabled by Youtube at someone's request. Roth once said that Sammy had to sing his (Roth's) songs every night but he would never sing a Sammy song. "Make It Last" was written by Sammy Hagar, so Roth was probably the one who demanded it.
Here's Sammy taking questions from his career, probably promoting his autobiography with Rolling Stone.
03 July, 2011
Here are more...
Well, sleep is obviously the enemy. This does leave me less time for whining about politics or the state of society.
24 June, 2011
Who is Seth DeSignor?
Long days at work. Things have gotten so rough, I've been putting in late nights as a stripper. Don't believe me?
I don't know what this all means or where it's going, but these were fun to make and I have ideas for more. I just can't let it take over finishing the book. I'm still not halfway through the fourth draft, and it's over three months since I had intended to have a finished product. Work's also been going well.
I could say more, but I obviously haven't gotten a lot of sleep lately, so I should catch up on some of that.
But my goodness, these were fun to make.
Here's a larger version of "Great Wall of China" by Gerhard.
19 June, 2011
And so this is Father's Day, and what have we done?
And now the Republican slate of candidates includes two women, the one everybody hates because she might run and the one who's actually winning.
What would "Gilligan's Island" be without Maryanne and Ginger? Even Peter Parker had Gwen and Mary Jane. The shadow of Diane Chambers followed Sam Malone's life [and now I'm picturing a Van Halen analogy where Rebecca is Sammy Hagar so let me try to get back on the original subject]
Michelle Bachman won a lot of fans with her appearance at the recent debate. It's certainly amusing that so much of the hatred went to Palin that she was able to advance this far without anybody noticing. About all I know of Bachman is that she was accused of being a witch in her last election, and not by the intolerant religious right either.
I'm still sexist, I don't want a woman President. But if we must have one, at least the latest candidates are going through the same motions every other candidate does. Except they're not, because contrary to what feminists have said, the personal is *not* the political. Palin wrote emails to her unborn child and so far as we know, her husband isn't texting pictures of his wang to college students and porn stars. Palin's emails were considered public property and legions of volunteers rushed to read them.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the rush to announce Palin-hatred reminded me of nothing so much as a woman who incessantly talks about how awful a certain man is, bringing him up at every opportunity, and it's clear to everyone else that she needs to change her panties. She's as awful as any other Presidential candidate (successful or not), ok, that's a given. She's not even a candidate, so why worry about it? Howard Dean, Al Gore and John Edwards (to pick three names at random) don't arouse such loathing from their opponents.
The White House's current occupant has showed us how difficult the Chief Executive position is for anybody and the concepts of leadership, authority and responsibility aren't easy to communicate to anybody who's never consciously experienced them. Having a family - one man, one woman, a given number of kids - is how most people experience that, consciously or not. Running a business, getting a promotion, holding elected office, owning property, these are all ways people can choose a more difficult - more *conscious* - manner of experiencing leadership, authority, responsibility.
A new scandal - which may or may not go anywhere - has Obama spokespeople rejecting some form he signed in the mid-90's about his stance on gay marriage. It makes a funny joke, he won't acknowledge his own signature, and I've given it little notice. I don't know what his position on the form was, or who he's sent out to give an unconvincing explanation, or who was asking in the first place. Whatever his answer was, gay groups and Democrats were apparently happy with it in the mid-90s up until just recently. The spokesman (or Obama's defenders on the internet; as I say I'm not following the details) say that some staffer shoved the form under his face and it wasn't a literal promise, just a rough statement of principles that all candidates get.
Which they do, but the guy who signed it is still responsible for upholding it. Maybe he was lying, maybe he genuinely believed whatever it took to get elected, but the buck still stops with him whether he was a city-councilman, mayor or candidate for Veep. And that goes whether he's responsible for property or a family or a business or an elected post. And if he'll lie about his legal stance on dudes who are into other dudes, what else will he lie about?
[Chicks who are into chicks are a different story because, you know, that's kinda hot.]
Ok, after John Edwards, Al Gore, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner, what will he lie about? None of them are noted for their ability to say 'ok, you caught me, I'll accept the punishment without complaint.' [Although to be fair, Al Gore has responded admirably, as one would expect of a gentleman and a southerner. He's become ungodly rich selling snake-oil or similar. One doesn't have to disagree with current global warming theories to see that. But the people currently trying anything to rebrand the latest climate change theories have proven, time and again, that they are allied with people who use bombs and bullets to enforce their will. Grant Morrison gave PETA a free ad directly on the pages of "Animal Man", and look what they've done since.
[Remember "Animal Man"? That DC comic from the late 80's about a guy with the powers of any animal? He had a very few appearances in the DCU Universe since his creation but only comic geeks would know that. Grant Morrison was such a comics geek, he started off with a miniseries that had a few neat ideas. I'd never heard of the character, there was nothing in Brian Bolland's promo art that appealed to me. I can take or leave stories about animals, had never heard of the character and had no idea people actually sat down and made the damned things. Made comic books, that is, not animals which are natural beings worthy of respect for what they are. They have their own ways and settle them with the plants among themselves and that's fine. If they can write and draw a cool DC comic, that's fine, just as it would have been in 1961 or 1941.
The ad must have drawn me to the comic, because I looked at the first issue and it appealed to me enough. They were doing superhero stuff I liked but in a different way. A very well-done sitcom family mixed in with villainous silhouettes and scenes that show someone put thought into the nature of a superhero world, television appearances and putting on a jacket because a skintight outfit is embarassing. The first issue ends with this inexperienced but very likeable superhero confronting a smashed laboratory and a merged pile of monkeys. It was familiar, yet different. The straightforward honesty of Morrison's storytelling and the clean, natural art by Chas Truog and Doug Hazlewood were appealing. The second issue built extremely multiple storylines quite well. Not for kids, if you consider a drawing of someone's brutally-severed arm unsuitable for children, or a drawing of a dead deer, both of which happened in the second issue.
Obviously when the DC editors saw this, they knew they'd hit a bossible source of wealth. Morrison's career has demonstrated that they were right - in bad ways too, I find it almost depressing to look at the collected volumes and see a lot of what I see in modern comics, except without the clean storytelling. The coloring alone is much more interesting than the computer crap. But I digress.
It was in the first issue he had to write after being asked to do more than a 4-issue miniseries that really sealed the deal. My Dad was talking about how amazing "The Coyote Gospel" was. The passion play starring Wile E. Coyote in which the hero plays an irrelevant role, leading to a twenty issue storyline that combined metafictional theorizing with the decades of DC comics characters and the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" itself. You know, the one where they killed Supergirl and Barry Allen and changed everything forever.
Anyway, the stories continue. They're something charmingly British about the Mirror Master appearance, in which a villain invades the hero's home and beats him every step of the way. The hero's wife comes in with her arms full of groceries, asks the villain what he's doing there and kicks him in the nuts. Isn't there a little "Jiggs and Maggie" in all of them? Or Al and Peg Bundy? Or their cute 'cousins'?
But it's there for us, just like for our fathers and for theirs. The rest is just what we have to do to get through life.
18 June, 2011
"Excuse me while I whip this out."
We've made it through another sex scandal in an increasingly-weird series of them.
New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was texting a young woman an unsolicited picture of his wang, but accidentally made it public instead of private. He took the picture down, but evidently there are people who pay attention to his tweets and were able to copy the pic before he did so. The Congressman was asked 'wtf' and responded that his account had been hacked but he wasn't going to call the police or anything and anybody who made any other claims were liars.
Cyberspace is not private, so more information started dribbling out. Weiner became belligerent in defending himself, as did his close friends and all went out for a spree of tv appearances and interviews that no way did he do anything inappropriate and those girls were all over age and only an evil right-wing conspiracy would say otherwise. Prudes.
The multiple times he turned out to send pictures of his wang was bad enough. He didn't send it to the underage girl he was texting with. He admitted that it had all been lies, which pissed off the friends who had been defending him (and it doesn't seem like he had that many friends to begin with). He wasn't going to resign though, and somewhere there was even a statement that he couldn't afford to quit because he needed the money too badly.
[It's an insoluble problem that Congresspeople and other legislators don't get paid very much. The arguments are that the positions are therefore only open to people who have enough money that they can afford to sit out a year or four, and that the low pay leaves them much more open to bribery. On the other hand, they work for the public and who wants to be overcharged for lousy service like this? I don't think there's a good solution.]
In the aftermath, it has come out that Weiner, by his own admission, doesn't hold any marketable skills except campaigning and holding public office. He's not going to get 200 grand a year changing tires or plumbing. Larry Flynt has offered him a job at a similar salary, but it sounds dubious unless you're really desperate.
By the time the porn star was holding a press conference about his unwanted tweets, his former defenders had turned against him, as had his party leaders, including the President. Former President Clinton was also not happy, nor was his wife, the Secretary of State. Mrs. Clinton is Mrs. Weiner's boss and Mr. Clinton officiated at their wedding. Mrs. Weiner started her career as a White House intern in 1996 and 15 years later she's extremely attractive so back then she must tave been scorching.
Interestingly, Mr. Weiner is Jewish and Mrs. Weiner is Muslim. Far be it from me to suggest any behavior on her part, even in jest, at any time inappropriate for a proper Muslim woman. That said, given the level of devotion their friends and followers had, they may well have been an up-and-coming Washington power couple to rival John and Elizabeth Edwards, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton, or Al and Tipper Gore. The Weiners had to have *something* going for them to get so far and it doesn't appear that the husband had a lot going for him other than the ability to show off his wang to women he doesn't know and not get arrested.
Which isn't entirely worthless, considering how many men would *love* the opportunity to do stuff like that and get away with it. But it's where sociopathy meets the democratic process. If you practice enough predatory behavior, on the mass of voters or individual women, sooner or later you'll get something. In a democracy, the sociopath has many opportunities and many more if women are part of the group and have an equal say. Gender equality being something of a given in Western civilization, women can be equal sociopaths. Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Clinton all got gigantic mansions out of their marriage - as did Mr.s Dominique Strauss-Kahn - and one wonders how many other wives could put up with a little wang-tweeting/masseusse-molesting/cigar puffing in their husbands if their lifestyle improved similarly. "You mean I get a dream house, endless clothes and servants, and he won't even bother me for sex? What's the catch?"
Mr. Weiner was obviously fine with the deal. He was so fine, he'd go on talk shows and blatantly lie about who he was tweeting his wang to and attack anyone who even questions him. He's a Congressman who deals with sensitive information, if he says his account has been hacked, he needs to go to the police immediately. If he's not doing that, why not? He may not think it's important and the people defending him may not think it's important, but a hacked account and suspicious behavior would leave him a target for blackmail, so that option needs to be ruled out in order to protect the secret information that a six-term Congressman would have access to.
Mr. Weiner's friends were obviously fine with the sort of person he was. Kristen Powers wrote a rage-filled article denouncing him after she found out she had lied for him. In addition to their dating briefly years ago, she admitted that a couple years back (before he was married) the two spent a lovely afternoon together in the immediate aftermath of a painful break-up she had. *That's* full disclosure. I like that. Her anger finds outlet in calling him a misogynist and denouncing a culture that creates such harm for women.
Coming from a woman who's first on-the-rebound response is to call up Mr. Weiner, that's really saying something.
Mr. Weiner's online defenders were the scary ones. They were so avid to defend him because he was a great progressive. Never mind that he didn't have any legislative achievements to point to, in six terms in Congress or prior elected offices he'd held. Never mind that he hasn't achieved anything, he's a great fighter for progressive causes. Does that get anywhere? No, but he's got a great house and a hot wife and a lot of chicks to tweet his wang to. He was out there fighting for the Obamacare bill and then he was out there fighting to get the entire state of New York a waiver from the Obamacare bill.
Amusingly, a couple of days after he resigned, the administration announced that no more waivers to Obamacare would be granted. After September, that is. That's how the chief executive has to look at it, Weiner's a typical party member, depressing as that is, and he's only distinguished by his support of the administration and this. That's how party members become liabilities inside the Washington bubble, he's a typical party member who got caught in an otherwise unexceptional sex scandal.
Weiner's defenders were the acolytes that put him over the top and reinforced his fetish? arrogance? ego? far beyond the point where it was defensible. They lashed out with conspiracy theories against Republican sex scandals and Justice Thomas' wife. At no point did anyone say 'this is kinda fucked up, maybe you should just take your lumps.'
That's groupthink as we see it in operation on the left. It functions the same way on the right, but the right is glad to make use of material wealth and property rights and family values to do it. The left says none of that stuff is important, in fact it's oppressive upon anybody who doesn't share it. These are the basic paradigms that appear in pretty much everything we see.
The right says marriage should be between one man and one woman until death do they part. The left says marriage is patriarchal oppression except for Hillary and Tipper - who both used their husband's wangs to get them high-level government committees trying to fundamentally re-write the contract between the people and the government. And they did so *for the children* even though both support any abortion at any time. Tipper buys a Prince album for her daughter and is horrified that one song is about a girl masturbating with a magazine in a hotel lobby, so she wants to impose rules about what can be labelled and how it can be sold and to whom. [Why couldn't Prince be more like Michael Jackson?]
The right says people should keep the money they earn which goes to create jobs and goods. The left says they shouldn't. Then when they realize they can't implement a single policy upon millions of Americans without the help of a corporate entity, they give all the perks to the ones they like, re-writing laws, seizing assets and never mind the cost in jobs, property rights, contract rights, working conditions or tax revenue.
The right says religion is important and should be respected as an institution and a source of morality. The left says that's not true and proceeds to treat religion as evil, as racist, as oppressive, as an excuse for property and opiate of the people, as something that blinds to reality. The left proclaims it will die for their beliefs. For proof, they point to global warming (minus inconvenient facts) taxpayer funding for experiments on aborted fetuses, "Piss Christ", and there's no sign of them filling the streets like citizens of Cairo, Damascus or Teheran are doing. Even if the President is, you know, dropping bombs in an oil-rich Muslim country that never threatened us.
Sure, the right is just as evil and hypocritical, but their values are what permit Damascus to exist for thousands of years, that permit women to survive childbirth in the first place, that let well-fed people give Michael Moore an award for criticizing his leader in a way Libyans have never known. It's been over thirty years since Jimmy Carter had any elected power, and none of his successors have ever seen him as a threat. Nor did Carter see any of his living predecessors as a threat and deal with them the way powerful leaders do everywhere else in the world. If that's rich religious corporate propaganda, it's still a giant improvement. A disgraced Democrat could have been a snake-oil selling, masseusse-abusing aristocrat in any time or any place. He might have grown up to be Che Guevara and killed as many people as possible in the name of the revolution. Ardent Stalinists don't text their wangs to many people, but they wouldn't live long in a society where that was possible.
I could probably write more, but I could probably have written less. So, in tribute to the former Congressman...
I'd never actually heard the song before, but I love Chuck's diversions into monologues and shout-outs to freedom. "There's the future Parliament there!"
"Those of you who will not sing / must be playing with your..." The great Chuck Berry, ladies and gentlemen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UM9GjnTFIM
New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was texting a young woman an unsolicited picture of his wang, but accidentally made it public instead of private. He took the picture down, but evidently there are people who pay attention to his tweets and were able to copy the pic before he did so. The Congressman was asked 'wtf' and responded that his account had been hacked but he wasn't going to call the police or anything and anybody who made any other claims were liars.
Cyberspace is not private, so more information started dribbling out. Weiner became belligerent in defending himself, as did his close friends and all went out for a spree of tv appearances and interviews that no way did he do anything inappropriate and those girls were all over age and only an evil right-wing conspiracy would say otherwise. Prudes.
The multiple times he turned out to send pictures of his wang was bad enough. He didn't send it to the underage girl he was texting with. He admitted that it had all been lies, which pissed off the friends who had been defending him (and it doesn't seem like he had that many friends to begin with). He wasn't going to resign though, and somewhere there was even a statement that he couldn't afford to quit because he needed the money too badly.
[It's an insoluble problem that Congresspeople and other legislators don't get paid very much. The arguments are that the positions are therefore only open to people who have enough money that they can afford to sit out a year or four, and that the low pay leaves them much more open to bribery. On the other hand, they work for the public and who wants to be overcharged for lousy service like this? I don't think there's a good solution.]
In the aftermath, it has come out that Weiner, by his own admission, doesn't hold any marketable skills except campaigning and holding public office. He's not going to get 200 grand a year changing tires or plumbing. Larry Flynt has offered him a job at a similar salary, but it sounds dubious unless you're really desperate.
By the time the porn star was holding a press conference about his unwanted tweets, his former defenders had turned against him, as had his party leaders, including the President. Former President Clinton was also not happy, nor was his wife, the Secretary of State. Mrs. Clinton is Mrs. Weiner's boss and Mr. Clinton officiated at their wedding. Mrs. Weiner started her career as a White House intern in 1996 and 15 years later she's extremely attractive so back then she must tave been scorching.
Interestingly, Mr. Weiner is Jewish and Mrs. Weiner is Muslim. Far be it from me to suggest any behavior on her part, even in jest, at any time inappropriate for a proper Muslim woman. That said, given the level of devotion their friends and followers had, they may well have been an up-and-coming Washington power couple to rival John and Elizabeth Edwards, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton, or Al and Tipper Gore. The Weiners had to have *something* going for them to get so far and it doesn't appear that the husband had a lot going for him other than the ability to show off his wang to women he doesn't know and not get arrested.
Which isn't entirely worthless, considering how many men would *love* the opportunity to do stuff like that and get away with it. But it's where sociopathy meets the democratic process. If you practice enough predatory behavior, on the mass of voters or individual women, sooner or later you'll get something. In a democracy, the sociopath has many opportunities and many more if women are part of the group and have an equal say. Gender equality being something of a given in Western civilization, women can be equal sociopaths. Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Clinton all got gigantic mansions out of their marriage - as did Mr.s Dominique Strauss-Kahn - and one wonders how many other wives could put up with a little wang-tweeting/masseusse-molesting/cigar puffing in their husbands if their lifestyle improved similarly. "You mean I get a dream house, endless clothes and servants, and he won't even bother me for sex? What's the catch?"
Mr. Weiner was obviously fine with the deal. He was so fine, he'd go on talk shows and blatantly lie about who he was tweeting his wang to and attack anyone who even questions him. He's a Congressman who deals with sensitive information, if he says his account has been hacked, he needs to go to the police immediately. If he's not doing that, why not? He may not think it's important and the people defending him may not think it's important, but a hacked account and suspicious behavior would leave him a target for blackmail, so that option needs to be ruled out in order to protect the secret information that a six-term Congressman would have access to.
Mr. Weiner's friends were obviously fine with the sort of person he was. Kristen Powers wrote a rage-filled article denouncing him after she found out she had lied for him. In addition to their dating briefly years ago, she admitted that a couple years back (before he was married) the two spent a lovely afternoon together in the immediate aftermath of a painful break-up she had. *That's* full disclosure. I like that. Her anger finds outlet in calling him a misogynist and denouncing a culture that creates such harm for women.
Coming from a woman who's first on-the-rebound response is to call up Mr. Weiner, that's really saying something.
Mr. Weiner's online defenders were the scary ones. They were so avid to defend him because he was a great progressive. Never mind that he didn't have any legislative achievements to point to, in six terms in Congress or prior elected offices he'd held. Never mind that he hasn't achieved anything, he's a great fighter for progressive causes. Does that get anywhere? No, but he's got a great house and a hot wife and a lot of chicks to tweet his wang to. He was out there fighting for the Obamacare bill and then he was out there fighting to get the entire state of New York a waiver from the Obamacare bill.
Amusingly, a couple of days after he resigned, the administration announced that no more waivers to Obamacare would be granted. After September, that is. That's how the chief executive has to look at it, Weiner's a typical party member, depressing as that is, and he's only distinguished by his support of the administration and this. That's how party members become liabilities inside the Washington bubble, he's a typical party member who got caught in an otherwise unexceptional sex scandal.
Weiner's defenders were the acolytes that put him over the top and reinforced his fetish? arrogance? ego? far beyond the point where it was defensible. They lashed out with conspiracy theories against Republican sex scandals and Justice Thomas' wife. At no point did anyone say 'this is kinda fucked up, maybe you should just take your lumps.'
That's groupthink as we see it in operation on the left. It functions the same way on the right, but the right is glad to make use of material wealth and property rights and family values to do it. The left says none of that stuff is important, in fact it's oppressive upon anybody who doesn't share it. These are the basic paradigms that appear in pretty much everything we see.
The right says marriage should be between one man and one woman until death do they part. The left says marriage is patriarchal oppression except for Hillary and Tipper - who both used their husband's wangs to get them high-level government committees trying to fundamentally re-write the contract between the people and the government. And they did so *for the children* even though both support any abortion at any time. Tipper buys a Prince album for her daughter and is horrified that one song is about a girl masturbating with a magazine in a hotel lobby, so she wants to impose rules about what can be labelled and how it can be sold and to whom. [Why couldn't Prince be more like Michael Jackson?]
The right says people should keep the money they earn which goes to create jobs and goods. The left says they shouldn't. Then when they realize they can't implement a single policy upon millions of Americans without the help of a corporate entity, they give all the perks to the ones they like, re-writing laws, seizing assets and never mind the cost in jobs, property rights, contract rights, working conditions or tax revenue.
The right says religion is important and should be respected as an institution and a source of morality. The left says that's not true and proceeds to treat religion as evil, as racist, as oppressive, as an excuse for property and opiate of the people, as something that blinds to reality. The left proclaims it will die for their beliefs. For proof, they point to global warming (minus inconvenient facts) taxpayer funding for experiments on aborted fetuses, "Piss Christ", and there's no sign of them filling the streets like citizens of Cairo, Damascus or Teheran are doing. Even if the President is, you know, dropping bombs in an oil-rich Muslim country that never threatened us.
Sure, the right is just as evil and hypocritical, but their values are what permit Damascus to exist for thousands of years, that permit women to survive childbirth in the first place, that let well-fed people give Michael Moore an award for criticizing his leader in a way Libyans have never known. It's been over thirty years since Jimmy Carter had any elected power, and none of his successors have ever seen him as a threat. Nor did Carter see any of his living predecessors as a threat and deal with them the way powerful leaders do everywhere else in the world. If that's rich religious corporate propaganda, it's still a giant improvement. A disgraced Democrat could have been a snake-oil selling, masseusse-abusing aristocrat in any time or any place. He might have grown up to be Che Guevara and killed as many people as possible in the name of the revolution. Ardent Stalinists don't text their wangs to many people, but they wouldn't live long in a society where that was possible.
I could probably write more, but I could probably have written less. So, in tribute to the former Congressman...
I'd never actually heard the song before, but I love Chuck's diversions into monologues and shout-outs to freedom. "There's the future Parliament there!"
"Those of you who will not sing / must be playing with your..." The great Chuck Berry, ladies and gentlemen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UM9GjnTFIM
04 June, 2011
Oops, she did it again
Another female journalist has been assaulted in Egypt. It was one of the first things I found when I checked the news this morning, so I don't have any details. I've noticed I tend to wait a few days for things like this. It's easy to go into attack mode without knowing the facts.
Such as with another female assaulted by journalism. Like most people who care about this sort of thing, I'd heard last night - I don't always wait a few days - that Sarah Palin had said something stupid about Paul Revere, warning the British, ringing bells, and all the things that good well-informed American citizens know never ever happened so she is unquestionably stupid for saying otherwise.
The fact that she's taking a family trip through American historical sites completely escapes her critics. For someone who might enjoy pranking those who irk her (you know, the way any normal human being does) there's probably a dozen things learned at each stop that makes her go "Ohhhhh" in an ascending feminine voice, turning to whoever's next to her and going "I didn't know that", like any woman on a public tour of [insert historical stop here] would do and then turn back to the guide. 'I always thought Paul Revere rode through and yelled that the British were coming. How fascinating!'
But she's a politician who may or may not run for President. This sort of prank is pretty mild as far as those people go. And it's funny. It's a shame John Hughes is dead, he could probably get some great mileage out of the Palin family bus trip across America, minus Christie Brinkley speeding by in a Ferrarri. In the meantime, we'll have to sit through all those people who consider themselves informed about America [slavery, racism, sexism, genocide] calling someone else stupid. Why else would the press be giving her such coverage?
Last week at Westminster Abbey, Barack Obama was signing the guest book, turned to ask someone what the date was, and then put May 24, 2008.
You see, she's stupid. He's thoughtful and competent. That's why he asked somebody first before getting today's date wrong by three years, and that's why it doesn't get remotely the play that Palin's gaffe-that-wasn't gets. Because Obama's opponents are so hateful and condescending.
I've been thinking about national identities recently. Whether deliberate or not, I've wondered if Palin's family trip (and recent career choices) has been a (reference? invocation? affirmation?) of Americana. Some time ago, she told Tea Partiers to party like it was 1773, and got this same accusation of being stupid, ignorant, ill-informed. Of course the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, so she actually knew what she was talking about, and the people criticizing her didn't.
[These same people rushed to accuse her of murder in the Giffords shooting. You'd almost think they didn't like her, that they didn't think she should be treated the way they'd like to be treated in a similar situation, you know, as an equal.]
It's a little unnerving that she's going straight to references from the American Revolution for these references. In a time of crisis like this - I hear the rapture was scheduled for a couple weeks ago - it makes sense to retrace our steps from the Founding Fathers, but it's a bit worrisome that she has to. This reminds us where we came from. It's what our national identities are. Americans play baseball and bake pies and go to work and watch tv and raise their kids to be Americans, and we're already sick of hearing about the election scheduled in seventeen months, the same thing Americans were doing a hundred years ago, or two hundred.
When Obama wrote the wrong date, it occured to me that it was a case of national identities bumping against each other. Even on vacation, I'm sure the President has to sign and date any number of papers every day, so the likelihood of him forgetting what year it is seems pretty nil, even if he's being absent-minded or having an off-day.
To quote the Reverend Jesse Custer, "This is kinda difficult to put into words an' not sound a little shy in the hat size." I wonder if it was the location itself, and a judgement served by the building itself, or at least whatever historical forces run through it.
Founded by Benedictine monks in the 960s-70s, the actual abbey was built by Edward the Confessor, right before the Norman Conquest. It was spared the wrath of Henry VIII when he took over the English churches. When the abbey was founded, the Magna Carta, one of the basic building blocks of Western Civilization, was still over two and a half centuries in the future. It's been less time than that since Americans signed the Declaration of Independence. Geoffrey Chaucer was even more centuries ahead when he lived there on a royal pension and founded English Literature. Just down the road, the Beatles recorded a few popular tunes. Let's just say it's seen a lot of history in its time.
Since people don't live longer than a century, we don't think in those terms, but if there are any... presences? apparitions? ghosts? they probably do think of a hundred years as being a short span of time. They would probably associate with the places and things that have lasted as long. Their presence may have contributed to the buildings and institutions themselves lasting for so long. Or maybe it's because the places last that "ghosts" come to exist and inhabit them.
I am speculating that these "ghosts" are conscious themselves, while they may just be natural forces akin to gravity or entropy. We record the effects as history but can't do more than speculate the causes.
So when the current historical blip occupying the White House - burned by the English in 1812 - visits Westminster Abbey, the collective judgement of England represented by the building guides his hand to inscribe a date before his election. I don't know why, I don't know what it means, not a clue why he would otherwise choose 2008. Hell, Occam's Razor says that it was purely his own screw-up (because he's so thoughtful and competent, not like GWB or Sarah Palin.)
I'm certainly glad that so many people are paying attention to this or that historical moment (like the story of Paul Revere, who probably hasn't gotten this much attention in ages). But it's a bit depressing to think we have to instead of watching movies or whatever else we'd rather fill up our lives with. But at this crucial time in history, it is important to affirm how we got to where we are and what makes us Americans (or British, or English, or Westerners, or civilized.)
I was hoping to get back to musings on rock music in this post, specifically Aerosmith, but it doesn't look like it'll happen now. Much like a new Aerosmith album...
Instead, here's their early 90's live performance of "Dream On", a song Steven Tyler wrote when he was about 17, long before Aerosmith was formed, before the song briefly appeared as the first single from the first album, before it became a hit when it was rereleased after the 'Smith found commercial success. That's Michael Kamen leading the orchestra, as he's done everywhere from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" to Metallica's "S&M" and G'n'R's "November Rain".
And here's the video for Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever". Kamen's not in it, but he did arrange the orchestra, so his work's there anyway. I once played this song for my grandmother, and even she liked it. Roger's kind of out of place though. Freddie's in a suit, John's in a jacket, Brian's in respectable dark clothes and Roger's in a denim jacket.
And what the hell, here's "November Rain". Kamen's conducting the orchestra, but strangely he didn't do anything on the song, that was all Axl playing on synthesizers. Kamen was basically the go-to guy for a couple decades when rock stars wanted to use classical orchestration. He's dead now. He also did the scores for all four Lethal Weapon movies, in collaboration with Eric Clapton. and a lot more besides.]
Amusingly if you don't know who these people are, G'n'R is indistinguishable from Aerosmith in the earlier video, down to the tall blond bass player. [G'n'R would be flattered, they certainly patterned themselves after the 'Smith. As with "Dream On", Axl was even working on this song long before the band was formed.]
We never did find out why the guy jumped through the wedding cake at the end. I think it was because the rain had already ruined the cake and the reception, so why not? When else was he ever going to have a chance to do that. Wouldn't you?
Such as with another female assaulted by journalism. Like most people who care about this sort of thing, I'd heard last night - I don't always wait a few days - that Sarah Palin had said something stupid about Paul Revere, warning the British, ringing bells, and all the things that good well-informed American citizens know never ever happened so she is unquestionably stupid for saying otherwise.
The fact that she's taking a family trip through American historical sites completely escapes her critics. For someone who might enjoy pranking those who irk her (you know, the way any normal human being does) there's probably a dozen things learned at each stop that makes her go "Ohhhhh" in an ascending feminine voice, turning to whoever's next to her and going "I didn't know that", like any woman on a public tour of [insert historical stop here] would do and then turn back to the guide. 'I always thought Paul Revere rode through and yelled that the British were coming. How fascinating!'
But she's a politician who may or may not run for President. This sort of prank is pretty mild as far as those people go. And it's funny. It's a shame John Hughes is dead, he could probably get some great mileage out of the Palin family bus trip across America, minus Christie Brinkley speeding by in a Ferrarri. In the meantime, we'll have to sit through all those people who consider themselves informed about America [slavery, racism, sexism, genocide] calling someone else stupid. Why else would the press be giving her such coverage?
Last week at Westminster Abbey, Barack Obama was signing the guest book, turned to ask someone what the date was, and then put May 24, 2008.
You see, she's stupid. He's thoughtful and competent. That's why he asked somebody first before getting today's date wrong by three years, and that's why it doesn't get remotely the play that Palin's gaffe-that-wasn't gets. Because Obama's opponents are so hateful and condescending.
I've been thinking about national identities recently. Whether deliberate or not, I've wondered if Palin's family trip (and recent career choices) has been a (reference? invocation? affirmation?) of Americana. Some time ago, she told Tea Partiers to party like it was 1773, and got this same accusation of being stupid, ignorant, ill-informed. Of course the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, so she actually knew what she was talking about, and the people criticizing her didn't.
[These same people rushed to accuse her of murder in the Giffords shooting. You'd almost think they didn't like her, that they didn't think she should be treated the way they'd like to be treated in a similar situation, you know, as an equal.]
It's a little unnerving that she's going straight to references from the American Revolution for these references. In a time of crisis like this - I hear the rapture was scheduled for a couple weeks ago - it makes sense to retrace our steps from the Founding Fathers, but it's a bit worrisome that she has to. This reminds us where we came from. It's what our national identities are. Americans play baseball and bake pies and go to work and watch tv and raise their kids to be Americans, and we're already sick of hearing about the election scheduled in seventeen months, the same thing Americans were doing a hundred years ago, or two hundred.
When Obama wrote the wrong date, it occured to me that it was a case of national identities bumping against each other. Even on vacation, I'm sure the President has to sign and date any number of papers every day, so the likelihood of him forgetting what year it is seems pretty nil, even if he's being absent-minded or having an off-day.
To quote the Reverend Jesse Custer, "This is kinda difficult to put into words an' not sound a little shy in the hat size." I wonder if it was the location itself, and a judgement served by the building itself, or at least whatever historical forces run through it.
Founded by Benedictine monks in the 960s-70s, the actual abbey was built by Edward the Confessor, right before the Norman Conquest. It was spared the wrath of Henry VIII when he took over the English churches. When the abbey was founded, the Magna Carta, one of the basic building blocks of Western Civilization, was still over two and a half centuries in the future. It's been less time than that since Americans signed the Declaration of Independence. Geoffrey Chaucer was even more centuries ahead when he lived there on a royal pension and founded English Literature. Just down the road, the Beatles recorded a few popular tunes. Let's just say it's seen a lot of history in its time.
Since people don't live longer than a century, we don't think in those terms, but if there are any... presences? apparitions? ghosts? they probably do think of a hundred years as being a short span of time. They would probably associate with the places and things that have lasted as long. Their presence may have contributed to the buildings and institutions themselves lasting for so long. Or maybe it's because the places last that "ghosts" come to exist and inhabit them.
I am speculating that these "ghosts" are conscious themselves, while they may just be natural forces akin to gravity or entropy. We record the effects as history but can't do more than speculate the causes.
So when the current historical blip occupying the White House - burned by the English in 1812 - visits Westminster Abbey, the collective judgement of England represented by the building guides his hand to inscribe a date before his election. I don't know why, I don't know what it means, not a clue why he would otherwise choose 2008. Hell, Occam's Razor says that it was purely his own screw-up (because he's so thoughtful and competent, not like GWB or Sarah Palin.)
I'm certainly glad that so many people are paying attention to this or that historical moment (like the story of Paul Revere, who probably hasn't gotten this much attention in ages). But it's a bit depressing to think we have to instead of watching movies or whatever else we'd rather fill up our lives with. But at this crucial time in history, it is important to affirm how we got to where we are and what makes us Americans (or British, or English, or Westerners, or civilized.)
I was hoping to get back to musings on rock music in this post, specifically Aerosmith, but it doesn't look like it'll happen now. Much like a new Aerosmith album...
Instead, here's their early 90's live performance of "Dream On", a song Steven Tyler wrote when he was about 17, long before Aerosmith was formed, before the song briefly appeared as the first single from the first album, before it became a hit when it was rereleased after the 'Smith found commercial success. That's Michael Kamen leading the orchestra, as he's done everywhere from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" to Metallica's "S&M" and G'n'R's "November Rain".
And here's the video for Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever". Kamen's not in it, but he did arrange the orchestra, so his work's there anyway. I once played this song for my grandmother, and even she liked it. Roger's kind of out of place though. Freddie's in a suit, John's in a jacket, Brian's in respectable dark clothes and Roger's in a denim jacket.
And what the hell, here's "November Rain". Kamen's conducting the orchestra, but strangely he didn't do anything on the song, that was all Axl playing on synthesizers. Kamen was basically the go-to guy for a couple decades when rock stars wanted to use classical orchestration. He's dead now. He also did the scores for all four Lethal Weapon movies, in collaboration with Eric Clapton. and a lot more besides.]
Amusingly if you don't know who these people are, G'n'R is indistinguishable from Aerosmith in the earlier video, down to the tall blond bass player. [G'n'R would be flattered, they certainly patterned themselves after the 'Smith. As with "Dream On", Axl was even working on this song long before the band was formed.]
We never did find out why the guy jumped through the wedding cake at the end. I think it was because the rain had already ruined the cake and the reception, so why not? When else was he ever going to have a chance to do that. Wouldn't you?
30 May, 2011
2012: Whatever it is, we're against it!
Another Memorial Day is upon us. This blog definitely isn't high on my list of priorities. Facebook compensates for most of the desires to immediately write something, an insight or one-liner. A blog works for more extended pieces though. I have often been tempted to take some of my multi-part Facebook posts and flesh them out here. But that seems like work.
I finished the 3rd draft of the book this weekend. Went to Kinko's printed it out and started the 4th draft the next day. 65 corrections on each of the first two pages, and subsequent pages average just as many. When I finished the first chapter, I compared the 1st draft with the 4th. The differences were striking and showed a vast improvement, but when am I going to get finished with this?
The weird thing is I'm not as horribly depressed as I thought I'd be. It's probably just trauma from an IED (Infinite Editing Disorder) or something. Maybe it's the long weekend giving me time to work. I've burned through the first three chapters and already typed up the corrections for the first two. Probably by next week I'll be horrified at how much left there is to be done. I honestly thought the 2nd draft would be where the main effort would go. Boy was I so young and naive three months ago!
The 2nd draft turned out to be filling in the missing holes, looking for coherence and otherwise wrapping my mind around the story between the first and last pages. I think I've said this before, but when I started I didn't know what I would be writing and when I finished I didn't know what I had written. I averaged at least fifty corrections a page, and checked the continuity as well as I could mainly with the advantage of knowing the ending. The 2nd draft was for filling in that gap and correcting the most egregious or obvious errors, but at the time I was hoping that the 3rd draft would be quick and easy, just correcting a few typos and things that slipped through.
[By the way, that's not fun either. If there's more than a dozen corrections in a paragraph, unless it's a big paragraph, it's usually easier to retype the whole thing rather than fix each correction one by one, but that has a high rate of creating new typos. I don't have any evidence, just a suspicion that you're more likely to make mistakes when retyping the old ones, and psychologically you'll be more resistant to checking for errors. "I already fixed that paragraph, it's good, moving on."]
Once I realized that the 3rd draft would be long and difficult to complete - somewhere around Chapter 1 page 1 paragraph 2 - it was a serious downer. And deservedly so, I'm pushing a month of editing for every week of writing. I took notes on the characters and continuity and referred to them often, flipping ahead to make more comments. Surely, I told myself, this draft would be it, with all the intensive thinking on every word or phrase, weighting them to make sure they fit with everything that came before and would come after, as well has had the proper cadence, rhythm and spelling. Yes, the 3rd draft is where the book is brought to a pristine shine and after that it's just a few minor corrections.
Nope. Not a bit of it.
The strange thing is that, with as many corrections as I'm making on the 4th draft, they're much more slash-and-burn. 'That word/phrase/sentence doesn't work, throw it out and replace it with...' The first two chapters are half a page shorter now with all that's been cut out. Maybe it's just the long weekend, but this seems to be going much faster. There isn't much thinking going on, it's just seeing where something is wrong and fixing it, even if the result is a complete re-write. Maybe (hopefully) I've internalized what is in the story at any given point, so I can instantly discern how near or far the words are from that given point and fix the problem on the spot. There's a lot of problems, but the work is more like putting shingles and wall paper on the new house than doing drywall.
Oddly enough I had a premonition about this as I was finishing the 3rd draft, where literally on the last few pages, the language suddenly felt like it had achieved the tone I was striving for. This worried me, because it so clearly hadn't done so on all the previous pages. The intuition turned out to be correct - that's why the concept of intuition exists, because it's correct even given false, misleading or absent information and it isn't merely a good guess - so here I am, going through the pages yet again.
I'd like to say this draft will go much faster. That obviously depends on how hard I'm willing to work, but there's room for cautious optimism at present. Unfortunately I can't say this will be the last draft. I am totally not someone who insists that everything be absolutely perfect in a work of art, but to prove that I have to stop fixing things at some point.
Unemployment still high (but GWB ruined the economy) gas prices still high (but GWB was in the oil company's pocket) Obama's wiped his ass with the War Powers Act (but GWB's wars are the evil ones, even if Obama continues them), the Patriot Act was renewed (but GWB is evil for inflicting it on the country) and there's word that the administration has begun considering "regime change" in Libya (but GWB was wrong for "regime change" and anyway, America doesn't get to decide who's in other countries). About the only thing they've got going for them is their complete hostility towards Israel which the whole world can agree on (except extremist warmongers).
I've honestly been trying to think of something else to write, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Not even for Memorial Day.
I'm still edging around some insight about rock stars of [a generation or two before] my era, how they've had to work over a lifetime, but nothing's cohering yet. Different bands work different ways and since most of their business is private, one can only speculate on the processes at work.
Take the Eagles, whom I've never been a big fan of, but are definitely one of the biggest rock bands ever. Their group dynamics devolved into a two-man leadership, Glen Frey and Don Henley, who unilaterally and retroactively demanded most of the money and control over the group, firing Don Felder and deciding who was or wasn't involved in other projects. They can do it because they wrote virtually all the songs, and Henley was the front man (as well as having a much more successful solo career than all the others put together). Personality undoubtedly has much to do with it, but since I'll never meet any of them (and neither will you) it's complete speculation. As rock stars, they live quite detached from reality most of the time - Joe Walsh's solo hit "Life's Been Good" is possibly the best description ever of this experience ("I bought a mansion, forget the price/ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice") - and there's very little one can relate to outside the music itself.
The Eagles have been touring consistently since their last album, the only one they've recorded since 1980 that wasn't live or remakes of their old hits. Their ticket prices have been stratospheric, and one assumes there's a reason for that (beyond being aging wealthy leftists). This lines up with my suspicions about Axl Rose, Roger Waters and others that their constant performing isn't because of a love of playing live. It's quite possible that it's because they need the money.
This isn't remotely unheard of. Michael Jackson was deeply in debt when he died, the only thing that got him to agree to ten concerts at the O2, which was then upgraded to fifty. Elvis before him had an increasing desperate need for cash which was why he toured so much, and everybody could explain away his spending by pointing out that he earned millions of dollars every time he went on stage, so how could he ever go bust?
This work rate probably increased Elvis' drug dependency and other issues. The threat of having to work was probably the final straw for Jackson. In his autobiography, Sammy Hagar says the Van Halen brothers desperately needed money which was why they jumped for the 2004 reunion and were so quick to tour with David Lee Roth soon after that ended.
The business side of things does play a large part. Elvis had to sell most of his music publishing (where the *real* money is in the music business) at the end of his life, so he would have a lot less coming in no matter what. Michael Jackson made tons of money in publishing (like owning the Beatles catalogue) but had heavily leveraged that to Sony. According to Sammy, when he was joining VH and discussing the publishing, Eddie asked what a publishing company was, and said maybe he should get one of them. Given everything else in Sammy's book, that becomes very believable, and reinforces the idea of most rock stars as arrested adolescents who've never had to deal with the consequences of their actions until it's too late.
[For those who don't know, music publishing is the literal ownership of a song, dividing up who created it and what percentage of the royalties they get from all forms of reproduction, from use in movies to cover versions, live performances and printing the sheet music (the literal origin of the term "publishing"; before technology, the only way you could hear a song by Beethoven was if the sheet music was sitting on the piano). These royalties are collected and distributed by companies like ASCAP and BMI. Most rock stars own their own publishing companies, unless shenanigans or incompetence leads them to sell. Paul McCartney wrote [insert Beatles tune here] as a contracted writer for Northern Songs, which managerial failures led to being purchsed by ATV, the company Michael Jackson bought, so when he sings [Beatles tune], he has to pay that company. If Paul doesn't die a billionaire, his family will, but there's no amount of money he or they could offer that would compensate Sony for what the Beatles catalogue can be expected to bring in. Poorer rock stars have even fewer options.]
The Eagles became a two-man dictatorship, common in many bands. Most of these are song-writing partnerships [Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Tyler/Perry, Page/Plant, even Brian Wilson and Mike Love] with a few exceptions [Pete Townshend wrote the Who's songs, but Roger Daltrey was the face of the band.] Roger Waters wrote most of Pink Floyd's songs but Dave Gilmour's sound seems to be what really kept the fans. Gilmour has done almost nothing for decades, while Waters is getting ready for his second year touring "The Wall" (released in 1979), after spending three years touring "Dark Side of the Moon" (released in 1973), after spending three years touring "In the Flesh" (named for the first song on "The Wall", where he played 7 of "Dark Side"s 10 songs and every other Pink Floyd song you hear on radio, but virtually nothing from his post-Floyd career. Queen became a two-man dictatorship by default, since their front man died and the bass player retired, and they'd never had any but the original four members.
This is where the speculation becomes difficult, as detached from reality as the rock stars themselves. There's no way to know how the two dominant forces in a band interact amidst the other members, or why they do what they do. Wives and girlfriends are easy to blame, as are drugs or other self-destructive acts. But how much of Eddie Van Halen or Brian May's actions in the last thirty years reflected their relationship with their fathers? It doesn't mean anything to the fans, all we hear is the music and their publicity stunts, but it means something to them. Relationship with a grandparent, or a high school bully, these could be driving forces decades later as the rock star writes and records songs that make the kids dance, in collaboration with someone else who has their own issues.
I do think that the unconventional nature (to put it mildly) of rock stardom makes them good subjects for speculation about the human condition. They're at least as good for the topic as superheroes, looking for universal concepts of law, contract, collaboration, consequence. This is how we notice things running parrallel to each other, or perpendicular or anything else.
Ages ago, I was at someone's house and the tv was turned to a VH1 rockumentary about Styx already in progress, after "Lady" and their early hits. Except for the specific details of the break-up and aftermath, they were indistinguishable from Pink Floyd: art-rockers who spent years honing their craft and it paid off when they hit megastardom. Several monstrously successful albums followed until the lead singer-songwriter became so egotistical and dominant that he squeezed out everybody else's contributions, up to and including the concept-double album involving themes of tyranny, dehumanization, rock and roll which led to the band taking a bath making a tour and movie out of it ["The Wall" and "Kilroy Was Here"]. An album or so later, dominating leader left, expecting the band to collapse without him.
So there's reason to think that Roger Waters, Eddie Van Halen, Axl Rose and more fall into similar parallel lines. But again, it's all speculative. Bob Dylan's been doing a "Never-Ending Tour" for decades now. Does he need the money? Does he just like to play? He seems to have avoided self-destruction much better than almost everybody else, but he's a solo artist and doesn't have to answer to anybody. Maybe he's cultivated an audience that will pay for his simple stage show repeatedly like the Grateful Dead had. The Rolling Stones don't have a simple show, but they don't need the money. Roger Waters doesn't have a simple show, but he's out doing it night after night and he's pushing 70 years old.
"Hope I die before I get old" has long been a rock credo. Jim and Jimi and Janis attained it and have been much less problematic than the stars who didn't die. The era of the stadium concert is probably over for the older rock stars and the audience is too diversified for most of the newer ones to ever fill up that many seats. Package deals can probably do it, but I'm hardly in touch with what's popular these days so I don't know. The Stones may do a concert or tv special, but I doubt they'll ever tour again. Neither will Aerosmith. Whether or not they record any more music is anyone's guess.
It's fun to wonder what Freddie Mercury would be doing if he was still alive. One would hope he'd remain productive, but he himself admitted he couldn't continue the touring because he'd look ridiculous going on stage as a middle-aged man in tights. ["It looked ridiculous then, but it worked. (to the interviewer) What were you wearing ten years ago?"] He'd long said he didn't want to get old, and it seemed he meant it more than the more nihilistic rock stars. He didn't get old and he didn't die young. His productivity and influence were higher, and life was much better than it's turned out for most of his peers.
[although a Zoroastrian who was mostly non-practicing between his childhood and funeral, he turned the Muslim call to prayer into a kick-ass rock song, "Mustafa" which opens up the Jazz album, the track before Brian May's "Fat-Bottomed Girls". Tell all your friends.]
18 May, 2011
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Guzzler's Gin
The other shoe has dropped on the assault of Lara Logan. You remember, the infidel woman dressed like a whore who naively thought that Cairo during a revolution was a safe place to be.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, a white socialist with diplomatic credentials who had a good chance of being France's next Prime Minister, was taken off his plane just before departure because he was accused of raping an African immigrant working as a maid in the $3,000/night hotel he was staying at.
Apparently she's a Muslim too. Even though America ostensibly hates Muslims, and we're oh so racist - I'm guessing the maid isn't white, although it's only been said that she's African which doesn't mean a thing regarding skin color - her accusations are given enough credibility that the alleged rapist was hauled off by the police. Since he's considered a flight risk - thanks to the example set by Roman Polanski - the police are holding him, and reportedly he's on suicide watch now.
False accusations of rape do an enormous amount of damage to the accused. I am coming to think that those who make false accusations of rape should be punished as severely as actual rapists. Since rapists are scum and I have no intrinsic objection to summary execution (so long as the crime is confirmed beyond 'he said/she said') I think that would cut down on false accusations, probably more effectively than punishing rape cuts down on that crime.
Get it? Even a poor immigrant woman has rights in America, rights that are "endowed by [her] Creator", and no one deserves to be treated that way. The American legal system, for all its flaws, will help her find redress to the extent possible. The socialist who didn't give a damn about anything but his own urges - he's been accused several times before - will have his legal rights respected. Sure, fine, no problem, innocent until proven guilty. If he's innocent, I hope the accuser suffers for the harm she caused. If the law isn't sufficient, I have faith in karma.
If he's not innocent, the same thing applies. You don't treat an infidel woman dressed like a whore that way, you don't treat a Muslim woman that way, you don't treat anybody that way. It doesn't matter if you're French, Wrong Is Wrong!
If the reports are true and he's on suicide watch, I suspect it's because he's never remotely been faced with the consequences of his actions and, as a good politically-connected socialist who stays in fancy hotels, he never expected to. To suddenly be called to account for one's (alleged) actions, a lot of people would be driven to attempt suicide in those circumstances.
But it's not America's "puritanical" attitude towards sex that's at fault. It's the motherfucker who forces sex on a member of the servant class (or drugs a 13-year old because she keeps saying "no", as in the Polanski case) who's at fault.
It's tempting to suggest this falls on Dominique (really? A girl's name?) because he's foreign. But so is the accuser. So is Arnold Schwartzenegger, who suddenly admitted to his own infidelities and unlike his catchphrase, won't be back. I won't shed a tear for the Terminator, but at least he was democratically elected, and people knew who he was. Same with Newt Gingrich. Kahhhnnnnnnn! [as James Tiberius Kirk would say] is an unelected bureaucrat in the sort of shadowy offices that such rich depraved socialists favor, with the power to tell taxpayers of the world - who pay their salary - what to do with their money.
As I say, the other shoe has dropped in the Lara Logan assault.
Gingrich (what sort of parents would name their child "Newton"?) has just become the latest Republican Presidential candidate to self-destruct after Donald Trump. He isn't out of the race yet - it's only been about a week since he entered it - but he's already shown that he's not ready for Prime Time. His latest gaffe [I think, I haven't paid a great deal of attention to him] was that anybody who quoted what he said last week was a lying liar who was telling a lie. That's the sort of thing Obama will have to fight against now that he actually has a record, the opposition doesn't need to make the incumbent's job easier.
As a politician, Newt is fine. He has experience, can stick to his guns or compromise as the case may be, and is flashy enough that a large amount of the public could get behind him even if they disagree. But fairly or not, he's seen as a firebrand which is alienating in itself, with a penchant for going out on a limb when there's really no sensible reason to do so, as he's proven in the last week or so. He earned this reputation in the Clinton years - which he ended by having his own party tell him to resign - and attempting a comeback just isn't going to happen. Donald Trump had similar problems, a record of achievement that he got by telling (whoever) what they wanted to hear enough times that he could get what he wanted, which happened to be money and fame.
I think this is the effect Sarah Palin has had on American politics, left, right and center. Simply by being a potential candidate - she hasn't come close to declaring yet - she skews the discussion so far over to one side that no one else has a chance. If Hillary had chosen to run in 2000, it would have had a similar effect on the Democrats, just by being a woman with a credible chance to win.
Let's say Sarah Palin is everything her most devoted supporters say she is, that's still not good enough in my book (even though I would probably support her if she chooses to run; certainly against Obama - if the bar is already that low, why worry about who else can clear it?). A large portion of right-wingers and centrists like her, another portion of left-wingers despise her, and a lot of people don't think she's deserved the abuse she's received. If gender were removed from the equation, she'd coast to an easy victory 18 months from now. But it's not, and it can't be.
Since Palin is a Republican, no other Republican has a chance until she makes a decision. Unlike what Kaaaaaaahhhhhhn is used to, in America women actually have a say in what goes on. Even after she makes the decision, the men will still have to curry favor and win her approval, even on things that don't concern her. [This is why I've stayed single, nyuk nyuk]
Any Republican politican, qualified or otherwise, will have to deal with that fact and win her approval. My guess is she knows she doesn't want the Presidency bad enough to try and has already made that choice, but as a human being [women are sort of human, I guess] of course she wants as much influence on politics as she can get. She wouldn't have become a governor without that desire. Hell, she only got involved in politics because she disagreed with how the school board was doing things in her childrens' classes, and events snowballed from there until she became the Vice-Presidential candidate two years ago.
What, John Edwards was so much more experienced and morally upstanding? He was a serious candidate for the top slot, in two consecutive elections no less, and didn't have his private life revealed until after he'd withdrawn in '08. Even though he lived the sort of life that Dominique enjoyed, unbelievably rich and with no sense of consequences. When his mistress gets pregnant, he tells the world that the baby isn't his, it's his close personal assistant's, and the assistant goes along with it. Briefly, but that's how things usually work out. Yet one of the two major parties still saw him as a credible candidate.
I am not a Republican (political parties are stupid; it's their defining trait) but ideologically, I'd prefer to be on the side where such people are revealed as the self-destructive lunatics they are and fade quickly from power once that happens. At least we got the Contract With America and a bunch of movies from Gingrich and the Kindergarten Cop before they crapped out. Dominatrix Levi-Strauss could have been the next Prime Minister of France, and they'd known for a long time what sort of person he was: A Socialist.
Karl Marx, founder of international socialism, got his lifelong household servant pregnant and blamed his close personal friend Frederich Engels. Draw your own conclusions.
I screwed up on the last post's Youtube links, let's hope this works better. Red Skelton dissects The Pledge Of Allegiance.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, a white socialist with diplomatic credentials who had a good chance of being France's next Prime Minister, was taken off his plane just before departure because he was accused of raping an African immigrant working as a maid in the $3,000/night hotel he was staying at.
Apparently she's a Muslim too. Even though America ostensibly hates Muslims, and we're oh so racist - I'm guessing the maid isn't white, although it's only been said that she's African which doesn't mean a thing regarding skin color - her accusations are given enough credibility that the alleged rapist was hauled off by the police. Since he's considered a flight risk - thanks to the example set by Roman Polanski - the police are holding him, and reportedly he's on suicide watch now.
False accusations of rape do an enormous amount of damage to the accused. I am coming to think that those who make false accusations of rape should be punished as severely as actual rapists. Since rapists are scum and I have no intrinsic objection to summary execution (so long as the crime is confirmed beyond 'he said/she said') I think that would cut down on false accusations, probably more effectively than punishing rape cuts down on that crime.
Get it? Even a poor immigrant woman has rights in America, rights that are "endowed by [her] Creator", and no one deserves to be treated that way. The American legal system, for all its flaws, will help her find redress to the extent possible. The socialist who didn't give a damn about anything but his own urges - he's been accused several times before - will have his legal rights respected. Sure, fine, no problem, innocent until proven guilty. If he's innocent, I hope the accuser suffers for the harm she caused. If the law isn't sufficient, I have faith in karma.
If he's not innocent, the same thing applies. You don't treat an infidel woman dressed like a whore that way, you don't treat a Muslim woman that way, you don't treat anybody that way. It doesn't matter if you're French, Wrong Is Wrong!
If the reports are true and he's on suicide watch, I suspect it's because he's never remotely been faced with the consequences of his actions and, as a good politically-connected socialist who stays in fancy hotels, he never expected to. To suddenly be called to account for one's (alleged) actions, a lot of people would be driven to attempt suicide in those circumstances.
But it's not America's "puritanical" attitude towards sex that's at fault. It's the motherfucker who forces sex on a member of the servant class (or drugs a 13-year old because she keeps saying "no", as in the Polanski case) who's at fault.
It's tempting to suggest this falls on Dominique (really? A girl's name?) because he's foreign. But so is the accuser. So is Arnold Schwartzenegger, who suddenly admitted to his own infidelities and unlike his catchphrase, won't be back. I won't shed a tear for the Terminator, but at least he was democratically elected, and people knew who he was. Same with Newt Gingrich. Kahhhnnnnnnn! [as James Tiberius Kirk would say] is an unelected bureaucrat in the sort of shadowy offices that such rich depraved socialists favor, with the power to tell taxpayers of the world - who pay their salary - what to do with their money.
As I say, the other shoe has dropped in the Lara Logan assault.
Gingrich (what sort of parents would name their child "Newton"?) has just become the latest Republican Presidential candidate to self-destruct after Donald Trump. He isn't out of the race yet - it's only been about a week since he entered it - but he's already shown that he's not ready for Prime Time. His latest gaffe [I think, I haven't paid a great deal of attention to him] was that anybody who quoted what he said last week was a lying liar who was telling a lie. That's the sort of thing Obama will have to fight against now that he actually has a record, the opposition doesn't need to make the incumbent's job easier.
As a politician, Newt is fine. He has experience, can stick to his guns or compromise as the case may be, and is flashy enough that a large amount of the public could get behind him even if they disagree. But fairly or not, he's seen as a firebrand which is alienating in itself, with a penchant for going out on a limb when there's really no sensible reason to do so, as he's proven in the last week or so. He earned this reputation in the Clinton years - which he ended by having his own party tell him to resign - and attempting a comeback just isn't going to happen. Donald Trump had similar problems, a record of achievement that he got by telling (whoever) what they wanted to hear enough times that he could get what he wanted, which happened to be money and fame.
I think this is the effect Sarah Palin has had on American politics, left, right and center. Simply by being a potential candidate - she hasn't come close to declaring yet - she skews the discussion so far over to one side that no one else has a chance. If Hillary had chosen to run in 2000, it would have had a similar effect on the Democrats, just by being a woman with a credible chance to win.
Let's say Sarah Palin is everything her most devoted supporters say she is, that's still not good enough in my book (even though I would probably support her if she chooses to run; certainly against Obama - if the bar is already that low, why worry about who else can clear it?). A large portion of right-wingers and centrists like her, another portion of left-wingers despise her, and a lot of people don't think she's deserved the abuse she's received. If gender were removed from the equation, she'd coast to an easy victory 18 months from now. But it's not, and it can't be.
Since Palin is a Republican, no other Republican has a chance until she makes a decision. Unlike what Kaaaaaaahhhhhhn is used to, in America women actually have a say in what goes on. Even after she makes the decision, the men will still have to curry favor and win her approval, even on things that don't concern her. [This is why I've stayed single, nyuk nyuk]
Any Republican politican, qualified or otherwise, will have to deal with that fact and win her approval. My guess is she knows she doesn't want the Presidency bad enough to try and has already made that choice, but as a human being [women are sort of human, I guess] of course she wants as much influence on politics as she can get. She wouldn't have become a governor without that desire. Hell, she only got involved in politics because she disagreed with how the school board was doing things in her childrens' classes, and events snowballed from there until she became the Vice-Presidential candidate two years ago.
What, John Edwards was so much more experienced and morally upstanding? He was a serious candidate for the top slot, in two consecutive elections no less, and didn't have his private life revealed until after he'd withdrawn in '08. Even though he lived the sort of life that Dominique enjoyed, unbelievably rich and with no sense of consequences. When his mistress gets pregnant, he tells the world that the baby isn't his, it's his close personal assistant's, and the assistant goes along with it. Briefly, but that's how things usually work out. Yet one of the two major parties still saw him as a credible candidate.
I am not a Republican (political parties are stupid; it's their defining trait) but ideologically, I'd prefer to be on the side where such people are revealed as the self-destructive lunatics they are and fade quickly from power once that happens. At least we got the Contract With America and a bunch of movies from Gingrich and the Kindergarten Cop before they crapped out. Dominatrix Levi-Strauss could have been the next Prime Minister of France, and they'd known for a long time what sort of person he was: A Socialist.
Karl Marx, founder of international socialism, got his lifelong household servant pregnant and blamed his close personal friend Frederich Engels. Draw your own conclusions.
I screwed up on the last post's Youtube links, let's hope this works better. Red Skelton dissects The Pledge Of Allegiance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
