Why is child support paid by men to women and not the other way around? If women are so capable of procuring riches the old fashioned way, they can pay for their food, clothing, homes, medical care anand children through their own time and effort and stop whining about how hard it is all the time. Duh, men have known that through civilized history. It's hard. It sucks. At one point it was worth providing all that for a woman. And kids if she had any.
Paula Jones came forward with complaints about sexual harrassment and the President of the United States had indeed done what she said he did. Anthony Weiner tweeted his wang to women he had not met and who had not asked for wang tweets from him.
In both cases women who knew nothing whatsoever about what happened behind closed doors were prominent in saying that nothing happened. Women at OWS are being encouraged to not come forward about rape and things like that.
But unspecified women make unspecified accusations in private about Herman Cain and that's good enough for some folks. Kobe Bryant was accused of rape. So were the Duke Lacrosse players.
The OWS movement continues to devolve into proto-leninism, as seen here
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/my_in_tents_night_amid_anarchy_of_ush5s5NscUZincUN0tF0yO
“We cannot take him in by ourselves, the cops have to come!” reiterates the OWS security force member.
They call the NYPD -- and it becomes abundantly clear that the cops down there are sick of the antics.
“Every single night it’s the same thing. I mean, some guy was a victim of rape!” an officer snarls. “There comes a time when it’s over. This is a disaster. It’s all we’re doing, every two seconds, is locking somebody up every time. It’s done.
“It’s done,” he repeats. “Occupy Wall Street is no longer a protest.”
Scenes like this -- and far worse -- have been playing out since the Zuccotti Park “occupation” began on Sept. 17.
The parcel is now a sliver of madness, rife with sex attacks, robberies and vigilante justice.
It’s a leaderless bazaar that’s been divided into state-like camps -- with tents packed together so densely that the only way to add more would be to stack them.
and here
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/131094/
“On Sunday, October 23, a meeting was held at 60 Wall Street. Six leaders discussed what to do with the half-million dollars that had been donated to their organization, since, in their estimation, the organization was incapable of making sound financial decisions. The proposed solution was not to spend the money educating their co-workers or stimulating more active participation by improving the organization’s structures and tactics. Instead, those present discussed how they could commandeer the $500,000 for their new, more exclusive organization.”
Frankly, I'm impressed by their spirit. If they can find people to mooch from and survive the winter, some interesting things might come from the experience. One thing I notice is a bizarre lack of skills at anything. You'd think they'd be trying to put together a few people with guitars and harmony singers and really come up with a "We are the World" anthem for the movement. Arts and crafts displays traded between Occupied land in each city. I understand the Occupy Lincoln, Nebraska movement wisely agreed not to interfere with football Saturdays. Bright kids. They'll go far.
For that matter, I'm flabbergasted that Bono and Roger Waters and all the other prominent leftists aren't flocking to set up a concert there. Isn't this what their songs are all about? Or is it tough to wear an outfit that costs more than a million dollars and stand next to someone ranting that no one should be allowed to have a million dollars at all.
Inability to cope with reality or other people marks the occupiers. I'm definitely curious if they'll be permitted to leave, and couldn't honestly blame the city for penning the crybabies up with each other for six months after they start trying to leave.
The revolutionary leaders are reacting in classic fashion, forming cadre. The General Assembly has long been bogged down by over-democracy. A smaller Congress has been formed, and the most recent developments (over money) reveal a distinct mindset in those leaders. The Lenins, Trotskys and Stalins reveal themselves to each other.
There must be a class of officers who make decisions that even the ablest subordinates don't need to be bothered with knowing about. Being leftists who oppose all sense of class, they need to delude themselves into achieving these results, usually in the sense of loyalty or duty that officers of the gentry, the land, the schools usually have towards their men.
I'm more curious about the source and oversight of the food, but I guess the OWS leaders would ask questions about the money first. That's what they're used to, the serious protestors anyway. The security force is empowered to take away the blankets from sex offenders they can catch. Lovely. They've long since realized, even if they won't admit it, the need for a real police force.
Yesterday I heard a member of the secondary government forming to co-exist with the General Assembly accused another of oppression for announcing that whites were overrepresented in the population according to all the info he could get from the Occupiers themselves. He was forced to submit to awareness classes available in one of the tents being set up.
The drummers are a breed apart. That might be literal, it seems there is a sub-species of humanity designed to beat on things as much as possible, eat and sleep and recreate when they can, and everything else is a distraction.
Forgetting how federalism works, the Occupiers of Oakland revert to destruction and mob rule and assume the revolution will follow them. Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it.
If they can survive the winter, there will be experienced cadre to support revolution across the country. But not if they can't get that far.
Tomorrow is the due date for the printed books to arrive. We'll see how the mail works. I'm floundering somewhere in the editing of drafting the next one. I'm sure I've said that before. The blog is obviously being neglected.
06 November, 2011
16 October, 2011
I have shown him that a man without hope is a man without change...
Wow, Obama's almost doubled the number of nations he's sent US military forces, and he's only in his third year in office. That's what a Nobel Peace Prize will do for you.
Well, I guess we have to do something with the sudden surge of new recruits now that DADT is gone, as well as the straights who *would* have signed up if not for their moral objection to DADT. Kicking Central African ass sounds like a good first step. Why are we doing it again?
The "Fast and Furious" scandal continues to unfold. Emails informing Eric Holder that guns were being given to Mexican criminals without any way of tracking them have surfaced from months before Holder's testimony claimed he heard of the event. And there's footage of Obama from months before that saying when Holder first heard of the event which contradicts Holder as well.
Like John McCain being asked how many houses he owns, Obama and Holder don't have the slightest clue what they heard about or when, much less who's asking or why. Now there's a bunch of dead Mexicans killed by guns given to Mexican criminals by US agents, and other US agents shot by those guns. But there's no *there* there, so don't imagine the media will investigate anything.
The Solyndra scandal unfolds with similar lack of interest from the left. The government shoveled tons of money towards a friend in a 'favored status' industry, Obama and Biden both showed up for events. Warnings from long before were ignored, though they accurately said the company's business plan wasn't financially-sound. At least the right-wingers blow their money on drugs and porn stars up front (and tax-free!)
The Occupy Wall Street movement continues after several weeks. They are subsisting on other people's charity, one person even quoted as saying 'the food shows up, we don't know where it came from but we eat it' and putting the can of Spam back on the table. Obviously plenty of freaks, piercings, tatoos and Jew-hatred can be found, as well as calls for violent socialist revolution from people who don't have the first clue how to organize the revolution. Both the American Nazi Party as well as the American Communist Party have endorsed the movements which are spreading nation-wide.
I think it's the nihilism of the left reaching a critical mass. They are not intrinsically evil people, so they aren't going to outright burn and loot (much) but their most destructive elements are raging full force. If they have a chance for success, it will be based on the charity that provides sustanence they could not possibly get for themselves. If they could be provided with virtual reality all day every day for the rest of their lives, they would choose it without hesitation.
Cynical or optimistic, there are moments when I wonder if the point of society is to let 'those sorts' of people get as far away as they desire. The Tea Parties were full of people who had to show up to work the next day.
If times were normal, they would be clearly on the path to deflation, if not popping like a bubble. I think they are but it isn't yet visible. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. told Obama to disregard the Constitution and treat the nation as in a state of civil war. Why should Palpatine be troubled by the Senate any longer?
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman suggests that the government should act as though aliens were invading because they hate global warming. Then, when aliens turn out not to be invading after all, we'll get the double benefits of whatever leftist boilerplate he had just proposed. Strangely, people still pay attention to him as they do to so many others who have clearly run off the rails.
The CLASS Act, a central pillar of Obamacare, has already been declared a failure. What's amazing is that they aren't going to brazen it out through the election. They already had to drop the 1099 mandate, that would have killed small businesses by requiring a new form every time they buy 600$ or more of anything. Pencils, chairs, filling up the snack machines...
Was it worth it? Was it worth burning up all that political capital to tie up two branches of the administration for two years at 9% unemployment and wars building all over the world? What if they had turned their attention to America's Enemies in Central Africa before "deeming" bills passed? What if they had spent two years flapping their arms to fly like birds? I doubt the unemployment would be any higher, but we'd have a lot less crippling debt. Maybe the Senate would have even passed a budget sometime in the last 900 days like the law requireds.
I'm well into editing the second book. I'm just waiting on word that corrections have been made to the first one and I'll order a bunch of copies. I got my proof copy autographed by many guys in the unit. That's kinda awesome too.
I haven't yet decided how to handle internet 'sales'. Paypal is perfectly workable, but I fear and mistrust technology.
I'm still continuing to think of these books as 'sides', an a-side and a b-side for a collection that's roughly 200 pages. The format makes it work quite well, it looks like a lot of writing even though it really isn't. I'm also trying to decide if I should order the material chronologically or by subject. In a lot of ways it will work better if it's mostly in the order I wrote it, but what about reader convenience? Most people won't care about the stuff about comics, so why not lump it together? Not at the back where it'll be ignored, but up front where it will be skipped.
That way anyone seeing you with it will be amazed that you've read so far into a weighty tome, while skipping for the stuff that people have actually heard of, tv shows and music and movies and stuff. Then I could conveniently bunch up the Star Wars jokes, all for easier accessibility. Either way, I have a great deal of work left to do
Well, I guess we have to do something with the sudden surge of new recruits now that DADT is gone, as well as the straights who *would* have signed up if not for their moral objection to DADT. Kicking Central African ass sounds like a good first step. Why are we doing it again?
The "Fast and Furious" scandal continues to unfold. Emails informing Eric Holder that guns were being given to Mexican criminals without any way of tracking them have surfaced from months before Holder's testimony claimed he heard of the event. And there's footage of Obama from months before that saying when Holder first heard of the event which contradicts Holder as well.
Like John McCain being asked how many houses he owns, Obama and Holder don't have the slightest clue what they heard about or when, much less who's asking or why. Now there's a bunch of dead Mexicans killed by guns given to Mexican criminals by US agents, and other US agents shot by those guns. But there's no *there* there, so don't imagine the media will investigate anything.
The Solyndra scandal unfolds with similar lack of interest from the left. The government shoveled tons of money towards a friend in a 'favored status' industry, Obama and Biden both showed up for events. Warnings from long before were ignored, though they accurately said the company's business plan wasn't financially-sound. At least the right-wingers blow their money on drugs and porn stars up front (and tax-free!)
The Occupy Wall Street movement continues after several weeks. They are subsisting on other people's charity, one person even quoted as saying 'the food shows up, we don't know where it came from but we eat it' and putting the can of Spam back on the table. Obviously plenty of freaks, piercings, tatoos and Jew-hatred can be found, as well as calls for violent socialist revolution from people who don't have the first clue how to organize the revolution. Both the American Nazi Party as well as the American Communist Party have endorsed the movements which are spreading nation-wide.
I think it's the nihilism of the left reaching a critical mass. They are not intrinsically evil people, so they aren't going to outright burn and loot (much) but their most destructive elements are raging full force. If they have a chance for success, it will be based on the charity that provides sustanence they could not possibly get for themselves. If they could be provided with virtual reality all day every day for the rest of their lives, they would choose it without hesitation.
Cynical or optimistic, there are moments when I wonder if the point of society is to let 'those sorts' of people get as far away as they desire. The Tea Parties were full of people who had to show up to work the next day.
If times were normal, they would be clearly on the path to deflation, if not popping like a bubble. I think they are but it isn't yet visible. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. told Obama to disregard the Constitution and treat the nation as in a state of civil war. Why should Palpatine be troubled by the Senate any longer?
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman suggests that the government should act as though aliens were invading because they hate global warming. Then, when aliens turn out not to be invading after all, we'll get the double benefits of whatever leftist boilerplate he had just proposed. Strangely, people still pay attention to him as they do to so many others who have clearly run off the rails.
The CLASS Act, a central pillar of Obamacare, has already been declared a failure. What's amazing is that they aren't going to brazen it out through the election. They already had to drop the 1099 mandate, that would have killed small businesses by requiring a new form every time they buy 600$ or more of anything. Pencils, chairs, filling up the snack machines...
Was it worth it? Was it worth burning up all that political capital to tie up two branches of the administration for two years at 9% unemployment and wars building all over the world? What if they had turned their attention to America's Enemies in Central Africa before "deeming" bills passed? What if they had spent two years flapping their arms to fly like birds? I doubt the unemployment would be any higher, but we'd have a lot less crippling debt. Maybe the Senate would have even passed a budget sometime in the last 900 days like the law requireds.
I'm well into editing the second book. I'm just waiting on word that corrections have been made to the first one and I'll order a bunch of copies. I got my proof copy autographed by many guys in the unit. That's kinda awesome too.
I haven't yet decided how to handle internet 'sales'. Paypal is perfectly workable, but I fear and mistrust technology.
I'm still continuing to think of these books as 'sides', an a-side and a b-side for a collection that's roughly 200 pages. The format makes it work quite well, it looks like a lot of writing even though it really isn't. I'm also trying to decide if I should order the material chronologically or by subject. In a lot of ways it will work better if it's mostly in the order I wrote it, but what about reader convenience? Most people won't care about the stuff about comics, so why not lump it together? Not at the back where it'll be ignored, but up front where it will be skipped.
That way anyone seeing you with it will be amazed that you've read so far into a weighty tome, while skipping for the stuff that people have actually heard of, tv shows and music and movies and stuff. Then I could conveniently bunch up the Star Wars jokes, all for easier accessibility. Either way, I have a great deal of work left to do
10 October, 2011
It's all falling into place...
The Occupy Whatever movement is in full swing. It's supposedly speaking for the rights of the people to whatever they want from government.
Would he like toilet paper with that? To service and protect the public, indeed.
Obviously they have no official list of demands. How could they come up with one? They don't have to be at work any time soon, so they can't relate to anybody who does.
Gays now have that reason to serve they'd all been denied, fraternization and ditching that military commitment.
I can't imagine why the military wasn't looking to snap them up all along. No word on whether or not recruitment has gone up yet.
I have the proof copy autographed by most of the people I work with, who were all impressed. I'm finalizing arrangements for printing now, and have begun the next draft of the next book. This one will be pop culture, and the editing is going much more smoothly. It'll still be a while though.
Would he like toilet paper with that? To service and protect the public, indeed.
Obviously they have no official list of demands. How could they come up with one? They don't have to be at work any time soon, so they can't relate to anybody who does.
Gays now have that reason to serve they'd all been denied, fraternization and ditching that military commitment.
I can't imagine why the military wasn't looking to snap them up all along. No word on whether or not recruitment has gone up yet.
I have the proof copy autographed by most of the people I work with, who were all impressed. I'm finalizing arrangements for printing now, and have begun the next draft of the next book. This one will be pop culture, and the editing is going much more smoothly. It'll still be a while though.
04 October, 2011
16 September, 2011
This song has no title, just words and a tune
Turkey and Egypt prepare to go to war against Israel just as a heavily Jewish district in New York elects a Republican to Congress for the first time since the Harding administration. Unions commit blatant destruction and violence (often against other unions) as the economy flatlines.
In recent days, a surprising number of scandals have opened up. There is the "Fast and Furious" scandal by which the Department of Justice gave weapons to foreign gangs and people died, including government agents whose job is to stop that stuff. All the evidence points to a desire to introduce gun control through backdoor means at some high level, but that is a self-evidently ludicrous accusation for which the evidence is... more than circumstantial. What possible other explanation could there be for not tracking the weapons? Like Anthony Weiner's delusional assumption that lying about his email account being hacked would cover for his wang tweeting complete strangers, weapons are not things you want to lose and there isn't anything else someone could gain from such a scheme.
Then there's Solyndra, where Obama and Biden gave millions of dollars (remember when that used to be a lot?) to a buddy for green energy jobs. They did the paperwork and got things moving smoothly, showed up to public events, put their mouths where our money was. It went bust because a business plan that sounded good to Obama and Biden didn't work so well in reality. It's the closest they've ever been to running a real business.
Y'know, I bet oil companies are among the biggest investors in alternate energy sources, because if and when science discovers superior energy sources and technology to petroleum-based industry, it'll put the oil companies out of business. They might as well get in on the ground floor of the new era. I doubt too many of these innovations will come from the tree-huggers anyway.
Another company came out with similar revelations today, including that the White House influenced an Air Force general to change his testimony.
This is what government corruption and cronyism looks like. Quite possibly it's inevitable regardless of which side is charge, but if that's the case then it benefits the country much more when the people who keep goods cheap and plentiful aren't penalized for being more successful. They don't owe the government nearly as much as big government advocates insist. Rick Perry won applause when he promised to make the government as unobtrusive as possible.
I'm not following the Republican primaries and rarely do more than skim summaries, but I'm impressed at the way they're all going at it with intellectual vigor. They're throwing hard punches at each other and suffering misstatements or contradictions or jarring viewpoints. So do the summaries I skim. "You're wrong because of A, B and C!" "Oh yeah, what about X, Y and Z?" It's intellectual diversity that we haven't seen in a long time on the political stage.
Massachusetts elected a Republican to the Senate for the first time in decades who specifically campaigned on voting against Obamacare. 2010 wiped out Democratic control of the House and now a Republican has been elected to the seat where Anthony Weiner sat. Hopefully it's been cleaned off. The left keeps demanding special elections, as if to give the voters another chance to make the correct decision this time. They waste resources trying to defeat propositions that are the government's only hope for fiscal surival and each loss seems to embolden them further. The longer it takes for them to accept this, the worse they will make things for themselves (and everybody else).
I think what's really surprising the administration of "leading from behind" is that things didn't go to plan. Obama was always expected to be in full campaign mode fourteen months before the election, it was just taken as a given he'd be championing his successes instead of being reduced to "If you love me, you've gotta help me pass this bill" as he said to an audience of several thousand today.
The bill in question is basically all the things Congress refused to do immediately when he took office and languished while they concentrated on the things they did do immediately (Obamacare). It would be like him demanding Congress close Gitmo. Or pass the Free Trade agreements that are still sitting on his desk where they've been for months. Obama's repeating "pass the bill now" because he doesn't know what else to say.
It's not about the bill, it's about "if you love me, you've gotta..." bullshit that no thinking person should fall for and people who do usually deserve what they get. None of Obama's allies in the House rushed on it, so a Republican stole the title ("American Jobs Bill") for a one-line bill, a tax cut. That's funny. The Senate will be moving on it whenever the Senate gets to it. The bipartisan supercommittee will eventually decide how to pay for it.
"If you love me, you've gotta help me pass this bill." So people whose regard for him is only admiration or respect are exempt from helping him pass the bill. Mind you he was speaking to college students, and I'm sure they hear a lot of "if you love me, you've gotta...' Either way, they're not going to be much help passing a bill, regardless of what this "Constitutional scholar" thinks.
Either way, his Presidency's over unless he can stir up the black vote something fierce. It's not a foregone conclusion, but my 'who's going to win' sense is tingling. I can certainly imagine he'd like a real vacation and it's rumored that he may be having issues with depression.
I'm not impressed by critics from the left. They don't make the slightest effort to protest Gitmo or bombing Libya the way they protested GWB so their objections were purely political and renders much of what they say about anything irrelevant. Further, Obama has clearly been giving everything he has to govern from as far to the left as possible. That he hasn't succeeded by the left's standards has less to do with Obama and more to do with those standards. You might as well chastise him for not flapping his arms and flying like a bird. It's not doable. Obama caved and the Democrats have caved in the various debt/budget arguments because they don't have a leg to stand on. They can't explain to their core constituencies that the goal just isn't possible, so they need to surrender to anyone willing to offer terms.
From January '09 through January '11, raising the debt ceiling was a failure of leadership and no one was in charged anyway, so House Republicans were suddenly holding hostages this summer? How does that work? This is an enormous case of willful denial. It will be interesting to see how many Democrats/liberals/leftists have succumbed to this uncritical defense of Obama and how deep that self-deception runs. They want Obama to talk tougher. He's been looking for an ass to kick the whole time. He's Lebron, he's got this. He's a better speechwriter than his speecherwriters. At least he used to be.
Now he's reduced to running to the crowds and chanting "pass this bill", pleading "if you love me..."
In recent days, a surprising number of scandals have opened up. There is the "Fast and Furious" scandal by which the Department of Justice gave weapons to foreign gangs and people died, including government agents whose job is to stop that stuff. All the evidence points to a desire to introduce gun control through backdoor means at some high level, but that is a self-evidently ludicrous accusation for which the evidence is... more than circumstantial. What possible other explanation could there be for not tracking the weapons? Like Anthony Weiner's delusional assumption that lying about his email account being hacked would cover for his wang tweeting complete strangers, weapons are not things you want to lose and there isn't anything else someone could gain from such a scheme.
Then there's Solyndra, where Obama and Biden gave millions of dollars (remember when that used to be a lot?) to a buddy for green energy jobs. They did the paperwork and got things moving smoothly, showed up to public events, put their mouths where our money was. It went bust because a business plan that sounded good to Obama and Biden didn't work so well in reality. It's the closest they've ever been to running a real business.
Y'know, I bet oil companies are among the biggest investors in alternate energy sources, because if and when science discovers superior energy sources and technology to petroleum-based industry, it'll put the oil companies out of business. They might as well get in on the ground floor of the new era. I doubt too many of these innovations will come from the tree-huggers anyway.
Another company came out with similar revelations today, including that the White House influenced an Air Force general to change his testimony.
This is what government corruption and cronyism looks like. Quite possibly it's inevitable regardless of which side is charge, but if that's the case then it benefits the country much more when the people who keep goods cheap and plentiful aren't penalized for being more successful. They don't owe the government nearly as much as big government advocates insist. Rick Perry won applause when he promised to make the government as unobtrusive as possible.
I'm not following the Republican primaries and rarely do more than skim summaries, but I'm impressed at the way they're all going at it with intellectual vigor. They're throwing hard punches at each other and suffering misstatements or contradictions or jarring viewpoints. So do the summaries I skim. "You're wrong because of A, B and C!" "Oh yeah, what about X, Y and Z?" It's intellectual diversity that we haven't seen in a long time on the political stage.
Massachusetts elected a Republican to the Senate for the first time in decades who specifically campaigned on voting against Obamacare. 2010 wiped out Democratic control of the House and now a Republican has been elected to the seat where Anthony Weiner sat. Hopefully it's been cleaned off. The left keeps demanding special elections, as if to give the voters another chance to make the correct decision this time. They waste resources trying to defeat propositions that are the government's only hope for fiscal surival and each loss seems to embolden them further. The longer it takes for them to accept this, the worse they will make things for themselves (and everybody else).
I think what's really surprising the administration of "leading from behind" is that things didn't go to plan. Obama was always expected to be in full campaign mode fourteen months before the election, it was just taken as a given he'd be championing his successes instead of being reduced to "If you love me, you've gotta help me pass this bill" as he said to an audience of several thousand today.
The bill in question is basically all the things Congress refused to do immediately when he took office and languished while they concentrated on the things they did do immediately (Obamacare). It would be like him demanding Congress close Gitmo. Or pass the Free Trade agreements that are still sitting on his desk where they've been for months. Obama's repeating "pass the bill now" because he doesn't know what else to say.
It's not about the bill, it's about "if you love me, you've gotta..." bullshit that no thinking person should fall for and people who do usually deserve what they get. None of Obama's allies in the House rushed on it, so a Republican stole the title ("American Jobs Bill") for a one-line bill, a tax cut. That's funny. The Senate will be moving on it whenever the Senate gets to it. The bipartisan supercommittee will eventually decide how to pay for it.
"If you love me, you've gotta help me pass this bill." So people whose regard for him is only admiration or respect are exempt from helping him pass the bill. Mind you he was speaking to college students, and I'm sure they hear a lot of "if you love me, you've gotta...' Either way, they're not going to be much help passing a bill, regardless of what this "Constitutional scholar" thinks.
Either way, his Presidency's over unless he can stir up the black vote something fierce. It's not a foregone conclusion, but my 'who's going to win' sense is tingling. I can certainly imagine he'd like a real vacation and it's rumored that he may be having issues with depression.
I'm not impressed by critics from the left. They don't make the slightest effort to protest Gitmo or bombing Libya the way they protested GWB so their objections were purely political and renders much of what they say about anything irrelevant. Further, Obama has clearly been giving everything he has to govern from as far to the left as possible. That he hasn't succeeded by the left's standards has less to do with Obama and more to do with those standards. You might as well chastise him for not flapping his arms and flying like a bird. It's not doable. Obama caved and the Democrats have caved in the various debt/budget arguments because they don't have a leg to stand on. They can't explain to their core constituencies that the goal just isn't possible, so they need to surrender to anyone willing to offer terms.
From January '09 through January '11, raising the debt ceiling was a failure of leadership and no one was in charged anyway, so House Republicans were suddenly holding hostages this summer? How does that work? This is an enormous case of willful denial. It will be interesting to see how many Democrats/liberals/leftists have succumbed to this uncritical defense of Obama and how deep that self-deception runs. They want Obama to talk tougher. He's been looking for an ass to kick the whole time. He's Lebron, he's got this. He's a better speechwriter than his speecherwriters. At least he used to be.
Now he's reduced to running to the crowds and chanting "pass this bill", pleading "if you love me..."
14 September, 2011
Response to Steve Bissette
Swamp Thing artist and Tyrant creator Steve Bissette writes "Draw My Graphic Novel! Storyboard My Movie!" at http://srbissette.com/?p=13107&cpage=1#comment-7257
For (1), I think there needs to be an agree-on definition for "graphic novel", and I don't pretend to have one. Some sort of page count/time equivalence would apply I think. Some of Marvel's "Essential Volumes" contain more 'one long story that builds to a strong climax' than the more-acclaimed comic books. If we're talking a lifetime devoted to telling one story, Garry Trudeau is possibly the greatest graphic novelist alive. A month's worth of productivity creates X number of pages.
I'll get back to (2) as it dovetails with what what I have to say below.
(3) Legal distinctions could be made specifying the Writer and the Artist. The Artist is responsible for the finished page, and is roughly as important to the process as ten acres of prime soil is to running a farm. Extending the metaphor, every row must be hoed from dawn until dusk every day for months before you see anything and years before you really have things growing.
(a) I'm basing most of my arguments on the assumption of human nature that once an answer or two has been found, everybody will stampede in that direction like... like lemmings would stampede if lemmings were the sort of creatures that could stampede.
As far as where the money to do this will come from, I'd have to say I think it'll wind up being some Max Gaines/Major Malcom Wheeler-Nicholson type, or Larry Flynt (I honestly think if Lindsey Lohan or one of the other burned-out sex bombs of recent memory sponsored an R-rated comic/magazine, it would take off).
Once people who know what they're doing start building something, people who want to invest will show up. I don't know how many dozens of artists churning out pages for nothing it will take to build a profitable company that will pay them what they're worth.
One thing that would help is if there were studio systems competing. Will Eisner and Jerry Iger were pioneers in this, as were Simon and Kirby. That punk kid Jules Feiffer could write a "Spirit" script a lot faster than the artists would draw it, but it kept them all employed.
(b) As I said earlier, my definition of the Artist is the one responsible for the Finished Page. As far as I'm concerned, after expenses are paid it should be a 50/50 split between Writer and Artist. As far as any sort of studio system, either a group of people contract as the ones to do the art (Eastman and Laird farming out the work on TMNT) or similar to what Marvel/DC editors do, matching people on a title. Either way, I would suggest starting at a 50/50 split and going on a sliding scale to include tone, lettering, coloring as part of that system creating a Finished Page. If it takes three or six people to make that Finished Page, those three people or six who act as The Artist need to be paid enough as a group that among themselves they are satisfied.
Most Finished Pages that were created usually had fewer than six or seven primary creators, unless they're a general mish-mash of stuff anyway. If a dozen different people contributed to a page, unless it was a jam piece you could put on ebay, I think more time would be wasted delineating creator's rights in that direction.
I think the principles of creators ownership in comics have been established firmly enough into the soil that stories like Bill Finger will thankfully not need to be told. If you contribute that much to someone else's character, they owe you big time.
That said, I think the Artist should be the least concerned with ownership as far as control of the property. The idea of using agents is a good one. Either the Writer acts as the Agent ("I keep you happy, you keep drawing") or people are hired to negotiate individual books. The former would probably be most likely for the time being, the latter would evolve as a business system once twenty or thirty successes have come along.
A variation of work-for-hire perhaps, where the Artist does not surrender 50% of the proceeds once expenses are paid, but isn't encouraged to interfere in the day-to-day business. The Artist's Time is ninety-something percent of the expense, because the Artist is responsible for creating the Finished Page. Without that, there is nothing.
Which is the opposite of the Writer whose Time is the least valuable. I have written scripts in less than a half-hour which would take a good artist a week to make look good. In some cases, I stayed up late, drew the scripts then and there and I kinda like having the finished comics to show for it.
The Writer is responsible for everything that isn't the Finished Page, basically. The one who looks at the Finished Page and didn't do anything on it, but told those who did this Finished Page what to do. The Writer's time is worth the least.
There should be a sliding scale, or a series of them in the long-term or short-term. At the end of that scale the Writer should reach the 50% part of the profits.
By "profits", this could also be done as a package by editors at Marvel or DC. If the Fables crew will keep producing issues, keep them doing it and budget the company's money wisely to keep them. The ones who make the Finished Page are the jobs to create. If the Writer has given them something to do, his work is done.
The Writer gets the Intellectual part and splits the Property with The Artist.
(c) The exception to the previous sentence. I don't pretend to have a good answer but it's clearly work that goes on the Finished Page. The only thing I could suggest is a distinction between books where The Artist doesn't change and books where people replace others (letterers, guest-artists) I don't have any suggestions for bridging the divide in ownership between Writer and Artist on that one. I still think the Artist should have proprietary rights while the Writer (agent, editor, whoever's footing the bill) steers the overall ship. If making t-shirts of some cool images will bring in money, the t-shirts are going to get made. Unless the artist is paying to make the shirts, I don't think a creator's veto is necessary. The visual look of the characters as intellectual property will only matter when other artists join in or there's a tv/movie option. For that, I don't have any suggestions.
(d) The point is to pay for the Artist's Time. Since I'm hypothesizing out of thin air, I'll assume that the page rates will be large, depending on the competition. Once the Page is Finished, the time it took to create it is gone forever, how much will it take to compensate for that? That's the point where the sliding scale begins to move in the Writer's direction, eventually to resolve in the 50/50 split. If further collaborators (tone, colors, letters, replacement artists) are involved, the overall division shifts more equitably.
Since royalties are nothing to count on, the upfront page rate for the Artist's Time needs to be big enough to accomodate multiple people making the Finished Page. Obviously it's in an artist's self-interest to be able to do all the work his or herself, either because it's more 'jobs' and a larger pay-rate or because it means there's fewer expenses to recoup before the last guy in line, the Writer, gets paid.
I've been picking up John Byrne's Next Men, including the collection. I have only a vague memory of what came before, or who the characters are or what they're doing now, which doesn't make them much different from the superheroes, come to think of it. But I've realized the art is worth it. Byrne draws prehistoric scenes and modern cityscapes and future cityscapes and the pre-Civil War South and various imaginative landscapes and it all looks really good. It's great that he was able to do it, and so quickly.
The problem is that there isn't any incentive for the hungry artist. Not the starving artist who's usually just posing, but the hungry one. The ones who can turn out many Finished Pages in a short period of time. That's a quality that comics have lost and not for the better. The comic book medium wasn't made in its early decades by people who felt entitled to work slowly.
Going along with your (2) I think this is a (probably-unresolvable) conflict in basic working conditions. The Writer wants an art robot and The Artist is not a robot. The Artist's time is the most important but buying out his investment needs to be made as cheap as possible. It's safe to say Matt Groening was paid for that hour he spent drawing new characters so he could keep rights to "Life In Hell".
Sequential entertainment is our strength and our weakness. Daily strips, weekly strips, monthly pamphlets and larger tpb's look like our best bet. We need finished work to get somewhere, and I don't see an immediate outlet for that.
I mean, Take the Lindsey Lohan idea from earlier. I'm becoming a big advocate of a return to the ideas of pulp magazines. A few photographs of LL, dishy fantasy text pieces, ads and 50 or 60 pages of LL stories, as a pirate or astronaut or drug-riddled washed-up sex bomb in her mid-20s, whatever. A lot of people would probably pay 5 bucks for that, or thinly-veiled fictionalized versions of the celebrity scene. The latest Conan movie has already passed, but Slam Bradley still has a future.
[I actually worked out a plot for a 12-part Hawkman/Green Arrow miniseries, where they're arguing politics every issue and on page 2 a building explodes like a Lethal Weapon movie. One guy uses a bow and arrow, the other has wings and uses a mace. They kill people and make smart-ass quips as they fight the social issue du jour. In several issues, they meet non-powered DC characters. Slam Bradley is in a violent racist brawl, the Human Target, James Corrigan, the Question and others all make appearances, illustrating philosophical conflicts that (I like to think) would appeal to readers who have no interest in superheroes. I'm not even sure how often Hawkman would put on the wings, except for when Muslim terrorists take over planes]
[On a similar note, from what little I see of DC's recent publishings, you can't tell me this is all they can think of. Zatanna's failed series features a splash page of her getting slashed in the throat with an arrow. Is that the only thing they can think of? She's a busty chick in fishnets whose gimmick is magically talking backwards. The first issue should have a flaming demon tying her to an altar and then she picks up a sword and hacks him to bits. In later issues, she's a single girl living in the city, dark powers inhabiting nearby buildings. She fights other demons and magicians and evil people, gets tied up every issue or two. Bring me a few dozen pages of that every month, I'll write up dialogue and captions for it. The comic book writer's time is almost worthless. Text pieces could be generated for an overall package.]
The biggest obstacle is that an art robot is just as qualified as an artist brimming with enthusiasm for his or her own ideas. More qualified arguably because of the simplicity of the Time=Finished Pages arrangement. Gil Kane once complained that he suggested to Marv Wolfman that they take (whatever book they were doing) and structure it like a novel so that plots would slowly build over many issues, basically what a lot of people have done since. Wolfman wasn't interested, saying he'd rather just pick up his paycheck, but just think of what Kane could have contributed to if he'd had any modern writers to take him up on the offer.
If an artist loves the book he's hired to do, or if it's designed for what he wants to draw, great. If not, I have to say his feelings would have to be outvoted. The letterer and colorists, tones, they don't work if the artist doesn't produce pages and are probably less picky about whatever's ticking the artist off. The Writer needs to be the last one in line to share in the successful completion, and the Artist needs to be encouraged to Finish the Page and Move On To The Next Page.
I guess I'm saying both sides need to get over some large pretentions about themselves. These are the pages the Artist is being paid to finish, that needs to happen as quickly as possible. EC not only pioneered crediting the artists, but Bill Gaines would stop whatever he was doing - including eating! - to write a check whenever they brought in finished work.
If the artist has work he or she would rather be doing, I don't know what to say. It's the Artist's Time for sale. At what point does a job get created?
I also don't know how it should be handled when the artists contribute story ideas. Creative partnerships are rarely frictionless.
So basically the idea is that someone to be determined makes a large investment in paying a few people for a few years to draw a ton of pages. Here are the thumbnails for my 800-page Mucous Man graphic novel and a new car.
With Gaiman and Vess, or other partnerships you cite, it's obviously in the writer's interest to cultivate good relationships with an artist.
In this age of photoshop, it might be worthwhile to see if an artist could find ways to market his or her style. Writers who can use their own computer enough to manipulate images might provide character descriptions and money in exchange for twenty poses they can use.
In the long term, I think comics are becoming prevalent enough that an Agent system will help provide more work, as well as a return of the studio system.
The writer needs to move to the back of the line and the artist needs to be encouraged to crank out as much material as possible. The Time will be gone forever, so it's in everybody's interests (including the fans) that there as many Finished Pages as possible to show for it.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening without a radical reorganization of the publishing industry - allowing thousands of people with money to spend to see these wonderful comics and buy them - or a surplus of artists who would be churning out drawings for free because it's what they do.
I wonder if the writers could be employed to design a franchise. Hire artists who really like, say, space opera, and get a writer to generate a few hundred pages of material for them. DC has tried to build franchises from Neil Gaiman's work thanks to Sandman, Preacher didn't lend itself to any spin-offs and came to The End without a hitch. Fables is lending itself to spin-offs, with the 50-issue Jack of Fables (which I think will intersect the main Fables title again, two Cinderella miniseries [which don't interest me], the upcoming Fairest series which I won't read beyond Bill Willingham's initial arc, but maybe others will, regular guest-artist stories which are packaged along with main artist Mark Buckingham's issues.
As I keep saying, I think we should take another look back at the Depression-era pulp characters and scenes. I get the feeling there's a market for stories like that again.
For (1), I think there needs to be an agree-on definition for "graphic novel", and I don't pretend to have one. Some sort of page count/time equivalence would apply I think. Some of Marvel's "Essential Volumes" contain more 'one long story that builds to a strong climax' than the more-acclaimed comic books. If we're talking a lifetime devoted to telling one story, Garry Trudeau is possibly the greatest graphic novelist alive. A month's worth of productivity creates X number of pages.
I'll get back to (2) as it dovetails with what what I have to say below.
(3) Legal distinctions could be made specifying the Writer and the Artist. The Artist is responsible for the finished page, and is roughly as important to the process as ten acres of prime soil is to running a farm. Extending the metaphor, every row must be hoed from dawn until dusk every day for months before you see anything and years before you really have things growing.
(a) I'm basing most of my arguments on the assumption of human nature that once an answer or two has been found, everybody will stampede in that direction like... like lemmings would stampede if lemmings were the sort of creatures that could stampede.
As far as where the money to do this will come from, I'd have to say I think it'll wind up being some Max Gaines/Major Malcom Wheeler-Nicholson type, or Larry Flynt (I honestly think if Lindsey Lohan or one of the other burned-out sex bombs of recent memory sponsored an R-rated comic/magazine, it would take off).
Once people who know what they're doing start building something, people who want to invest will show up. I don't know how many dozens of artists churning out pages for nothing it will take to build a profitable company that will pay them what they're worth.
One thing that would help is if there were studio systems competing. Will Eisner and Jerry Iger were pioneers in this, as were Simon and Kirby. That punk kid Jules Feiffer could write a "Spirit" script a lot faster than the artists would draw it, but it kept them all employed.
(b) As I said earlier, my definition of the Artist is the one responsible for the Finished Page. As far as I'm concerned, after expenses are paid it should be a 50/50 split between Writer and Artist. As far as any sort of studio system, either a group of people contract as the ones to do the art (Eastman and Laird farming out the work on TMNT) or similar to what Marvel/DC editors do, matching people on a title. Either way, I would suggest starting at a 50/50 split and going on a sliding scale to include tone, lettering, coloring as part of that system creating a Finished Page. If it takes three or six people to make that Finished Page, those three people or six who act as The Artist need to be paid enough as a group that among themselves they are satisfied.
Most Finished Pages that were created usually had fewer than six or seven primary creators, unless they're a general mish-mash of stuff anyway. If a dozen different people contributed to a page, unless it was a jam piece you could put on ebay, I think more time would be wasted delineating creator's rights in that direction.
I think the principles of creators ownership in comics have been established firmly enough into the soil that stories like Bill Finger will thankfully not need to be told. If you contribute that much to someone else's character, they owe you big time.
That said, I think the Artist should be the least concerned with ownership as far as control of the property. The idea of using agents is a good one. Either the Writer acts as the Agent ("I keep you happy, you keep drawing") or people are hired to negotiate individual books. The former would probably be most likely for the time being, the latter would evolve as a business system once twenty or thirty successes have come along.
A variation of work-for-hire perhaps, where the Artist does not surrender 50% of the proceeds once expenses are paid, but isn't encouraged to interfere in the day-to-day business. The Artist's Time is ninety-something percent of the expense, because the Artist is responsible for creating the Finished Page. Without that, there is nothing.
Which is the opposite of the Writer whose Time is the least valuable. I have written scripts in less than a half-hour which would take a good artist a week to make look good. In some cases, I stayed up late, drew the scripts then and there and I kinda like having the finished comics to show for it.
The Writer is responsible for everything that isn't the Finished Page, basically. The one who looks at the Finished Page and didn't do anything on it, but told those who did this Finished Page what to do. The Writer's time is worth the least.
There should be a sliding scale, or a series of them in the long-term or short-term. At the end of that scale the Writer should reach the 50% part of the profits.
By "profits", this could also be done as a package by editors at Marvel or DC. If the Fables crew will keep producing issues, keep them doing it and budget the company's money wisely to keep them. The ones who make the Finished Page are the jobs to create. If the Writer has given them something to do, his work is done.
The Writer gets the Intellectual part and splits the Property with The Artist.
(c) The exception to the previous sentence. I don't pretend to have a good answer but it's clearly work that goes on the Finished Page. The only thing I could suggest is a distinction between books where The Artist doesn't change and books where people replace others (letterers, guest-artists) I don't have any suggestions for bridging the divide in ownership between Writer and Artist on that one. I still think the Artist should have proprietary rights while the Writer (agent, editor, whoever's footing the bill) steers the overall ship. If making t-shirts of some cool images will bring in money, the t-shirts are going to get made. Unless the artist is paying to make the shirts, I don't think a creator's veto is necessary. The visual look of the characters as intellectual property will only matter when other artists join in or there's a tv/movie option. For that, I don't have any suggestions.
(d) The point is to pay for the Artist's Time. Since I'm hypothesizing out of thin air, I'll assume that the page rates will be large, depending on the competition. Once the Page is Finished, the time it took to create it is gone forever, how much will it take to compensate for that? That's the point where the sliding scale begins to move in the Writer's direction, eventually to resolve in the 50/50 split. If further collaborators (tone, colors, letters, replacement artists) are involved, the overall division shifts more equitably.
Since royalties are nothing to count on, the upfront page rate for the Artist's Time needs to be big enough to accomodate multiple people making the Finished Page. Obviously it's in an artist's self-interest to be able to do all the work his or herself, either because it's more 'jobs' and a larger pay-rate or because it means there's fewer expenses to recoup before the last guy in line, the Writer, gets paid.
I've been picking up John Byrne's Next Men, including the collection. I have only a vague memory of what came before, or who the characters are or what they're doing now, which doesn't make them much different from the superheroes, come to think of it. But I've realized the art is worth it. Byrne draws prehistoric scenes and modern cityscapes and future cityscapes and the pre-Civil War South and various imaginative landscapes and it all looks really good. It's great that he was able to do it, and so quickly.
The problem is that there isn't any incentive for the hungry artist. Not the starving artist who's usually just posing, but the hungry one. The ones who can turn out many Finished Pages in a short period of time. That's a quality that comics have lost and not for the better. The comic book medium wasn't made in its early decades by people who felt entitled to work slowly.
Going along with your (2) I think this is a (probably-unresolvable) conflict in basic working conditions. The Writer wants an art robot and The Artist is not a robot. The Artist's time is the most important but buying out his investment needs to be made as cheap as possible. It's safe to say Matt Groening was paid for that hour he spent drawing new characters so he could keep rights to "Life In Hell".
Sequential entertainment is our strength and our weakness. Daily strips, weekly strips, monthly pamphlets and larger tpb's look like our best bet. We need finished work to get somewhere, and I don't see an immediate outlet for that.
I mean, Take the Lindsey Lohan idea from earlier. I'm becoming a big advocate of a return to the ideas of pulp magazines. A few photographs of LL, dishy fantasy text pieces, ads and 50 or 60 pages of LL stories, as a pirate or astronaut or drug-riddled washed-up sex bomb in her mid-20s, whatever. A lot of people would probably pay 5 bucks for that, or thinly-veiled fictionalized versions of the celebrity scene. The latest Conan movie has already passed, but Slam Bradley still has a future.
[I actually worked out a plot for a 12-part Hawkman/Green Arrow miniseries, where they're arguing politics every issue and on page 2 a building explodes like a Lethal Weapon movie. One guy uses a bow and arrow, the other has wings and uses a mace. They kill people and make smart-ass quips as they fight the social issue du jour. In several issues, they meet non-powered DC characters. Slam Bradley is in a violent racist brawl, the Human Target, James Corrigan, the Question and others all make appearances, illustrating philosophical conflicts that (I like to think) would appeal to readers who have no interest in superheroes. I'm not even sure how often Hawkman would put on the wings, except for when Muslim terrorists take over planes]
[On a similar note, from what little I see of DC's recent publishings, you can't tell me this is all they can think of. Zatanna's failed series features a splash page of her getting slashed in the throat with an arrow. Is that the only thing they can think of? She's a busty chick in fishnets whose gimmick is magically talking backwards. The first issue should have a flaming demon tying her to an altar and then she picks up a sword and hacks him to bits. In later issues, she's a single girl living in the city, dark powers inhabiting nearby buildings. She fights other demons and magicians and evil people, gets tied up every issue or two. Bring me a few dozen pages of that every month, I'll write up dialogue and captions for it. The comic book writer's time is almost worthless. Text pieces could be generated for an overall package.]
The biggest obstacle is that an art robot is just as qualified as an artist brimming with enthusiasm for his or her own ideas. More qualified arguably because of the simplicity of the Time=Finished Pages arrangement. Gil Kane once complained that he suggested to Marv Wolfman that they take (whatever book they were doing) and structure it like a novel so that plots would slowly build over many issues, basically what a lot of people have done since. Wolfman wasn't interested, saying he'd rather just pick up his paycheck, but just think of what Kane could have contributed to if he'd had any modern writers to take him up on the offer.
If an artist loves the book he's hired to do, or if it's designed for what he wants to draw, great. If not, I have to say his feelings would have to be outvoted. The letterer and colorists, tones, they don't work if the artist doesn't produce pages and are probably less picky about whatever's ticking the artist off. The Writer needs to be the last one in line to share in the successful completion, and the Artist needs to be encouraged to Finish the Page and Move On To The Next Page.
I guess I'm saying both sides need to get over some large pretentions about themselves. These are the pages the Artist is being paid to finish, that needs to happen as quickly as possible. EC not only pioneered crediting the artists, but Bill Gaines would stop whatever he was doing - including eating! - to write a check whenever they brought in finished work.
If the artist has work he or she would rather be doing, I don't know what to say. It's the Artist's Time for sale. At what point does a job get created?
I also don't know how it should be handled when the artists contribute story ideas. Creative partnerships are rarely frictionless.
So basically the idea is that someone to be determined makes a large investment in paying a few people for a few years to draw a ton of pages. Here are the thumbnails for my 800-page Mucous Man graphic novel and a new car.
With Gaiman and Vess, or other partnerships you cite, it's obviously in the writer's interest to cultivate good relationships with an artist.
In this age of photoshop, it might be worthwhile to see if an artist could find ways to market his or her style. Writers who can use their own computer enough to manipulate images might provide character descriptions and money in exchange for twenty poses they can use.
In the long term, I think comics are becoming prevalent enough that an Agent system will help provide more work, as well as a return of the studio system.
The writer needs to move to the back of the line and the artist needs to be encouraged to crank out as much material as possible. The Time will be gone forever, so it's in everybody's interests (including the fans) that there as many Finished Pages as possible to show for it.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening without a radical reorganization of the publishing industry - allowing thousands of people with money to spend to see these wonderful comics and buy them - or a surplus of artists who would be churning out drawings for free because it's what they do.
I wonder if the writers could be employed to design a franchise. Hire artists who really like, say, space opera, and get a writer to generate a few hundred pages of material for them. DC has tried to build franchises from Neil Gaiman's work thanks to Sandman, Preacher didn't lend itself to any spin-offs and came to The End without a hitch. Fables is lending itself to spin-offs, with the 50-issue Jack of Fables (which I think will intersect the main Fables title again, two Cinderella miniseries [which don't interest me], the upcoming Fairest series which I won't read beyond Bill Willingham's initial arc, but maybe others will, regular guest-artist stories which are packaged along with main artist Mark Buckingham's issues.
As I keep saying, I think we should take another look back at the Depression-era pulp characters and scenes. I get the feeling there's a market for stories like that again.
11 September, 2011
11 Sep 11
I had to go into work on this long weekend, but otherwise I've spent the weekend getting a lot of the second draft edited for the next book. The first book is still at the printers. I've given my approval to the initial proof and the cover. They should have the full proof ready in a day or two. I'll send back whatever corrections I see and they'll make the physical proof copy. Then I'll order a hundred made, which might last my lifetime. Just in case, I'll number them for those generations who hunt down 'first printings'.
Then I was outside noticing what a lovely day it was and remembered what day it was.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, it hit. Three thousand died and the Twin Towers collapsed. Another strike hit the Pentagon and a fourth simultaneous attack lost all the civilian passengers.
An attack of such magnitude that cannot be treated as any other than a declaration of war. No, this is our home, our land, our nation. The Americas and Europe are lands under our protection. Our alliances across oceans improve the lives of billions.
The terrorists who attacked us that Tuesday morning ten years ago are the infidel, not the West. They are the ones who torture and butcher their own people as easily as they pay for terror to cross border lines. The Jews are the ones who must die, or anyone who opposes Qaddaffi, Assad, Assad Sr. or the Iranian mullahs. Or the House of Saud who has physical control over the holiest sites in Islam, towards which all Muslims bow in prayer five times daily.
They are the infidel. They permit piracy, slavery, female genital mutilation and book burning, but they do not choose to permit Muslims to stop being Muslims. They don't accept that land ruled by Muslims could ever stop being ruled by Muslims. They choose destruction, as Marxists and cult figures choose it. When they incite violence or support unity in the violent acts of others, they must be met with violence.
Western Civilization permits homosexuals to exist and allows women to dress like whores (who do you think makes the outfits?) We allowed this ten years ago and a hundred years ago, while the Muslim world was rife with the same murderous scum we see today, that we saw ten years ago, a hundred years ago. We bring art and medicine, air-conditioning, the internet and an almost self-destructive tolerance for other people's ideas.
They permit an illiterate rag-tag band of nomads to sponsor spoiled rich Saudis as they hijack planes and destroy civilian buildings. No John Lennon among them to imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.
I'm sure that was a great comfort to the guy who went to work a couple hours ago and ended his life jumping out of a window to escape the burning wreckage of a 100+ story skyscraper. It didn't matter how many possessions he had in those few seconds of free-fall, not too far from where Lennon spent the last years of his life on heroin.
No one would stand up to Assad or Yasser Arafat [now there's a name we haven't heard in a while] and chant "All we are saying is give peace a chance". No, you have to go to Greenwich Village to hear things like that. Or across a continent, with a century's worth of electronic improvements. Those are the fruits of freedom, and they hate freedom.
Fighting them *over there* makes it so we don't have to fight them *over here*. Our families and businesses and unions can continue without the threat of violence, among like-minded or differently-minded. Afghanistan provides a specific target, like the monolith appeared to those apes in "2001: A SPACE Odyssey". They cannot destroy it, and much time needs to pass before people who do not seek to destroy can evolve.
We have our homes and communities to defend, the way the responders of 9/11 threw off any thoughts of personal safety to rescue other Americans under attack. Pension plans are for people who don't live with this sort of destruction. Because President Bush took actions to keep America safe, and because President Obama has continued those policies with or without a Democratic Congress, we have not known that level of attack since. Because the American military, and that of our allies, retains its superiority and supremacy on the battlefield, we have triumphed over there. Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq can hold communities to their word over time. They may be pure and true Muslims, but we can shoot them if they act up, and they know it.
Libya was singled out for American military involvement (trying to push France into a foreign venture while Germany holds the domestic side together?) while Syria was not despite the vast butchery. In Libya, the impending victors are singling out Black Muslims and putting them in camps apart from the Arab Muslims because they are politically incorrect. Egypt and Turkey are making warlike motions against Israel as the Palestinians beg for statehood despite having two different governments in two different territories who can't keep their people safe from internal reprisals and have long passed their constitutionally-mandated terms in office.
They only care about Jerusalem because someone else cares! It happens to be the Jews so they hate the Jews, but it's the very affront of people who aren't Muslims ruling territory that Muslims used to rule which drives them to murderous rage. The Jews are convenient to hate. Many decades ago, the Muslim Brotherhood were personal friends of Adolph Hitler and published "Jihad" ("Mein Kampf" in Arabic) throughout the Muslim world. It's been a popular seller ever since, second only to the Koran I understand. German political theory of the 1920's, go figure.
When Israel was formed, the US only gave formal recognition and no military assistance. It was the USSR under Stalin who gave the Jews weapons to survive those first crucial wars. Harry Truman agreed under duress from an old Jewish friend who convinced him to give in and recognize Israel in athrown-together ceremony. The UN had already ruled. The British had already offered the land to whatever groups could organize and make a claim. At the ceremony, the old rabbi representing Israel told Truman that it was the will of God that put him in his mother's womb that decades later he would allow Israel's recreation after thousands of years.
And the same will of God who let Stalin arm Israel in his last years, before paranoia about the Jews reasserted itself with him. And who permitted a score of wealthy educated terrorists to overpower four planes with box-cutters and attack our own homeland on a fall morning.
They can't win, all they can do is damage others. We still haven't replaced the Twin Towers. They are still a gaping wound on one of our oldest cities. General George Washington led his army through one Christmas night, miraculously surviving to fight another day. Paul Revere and other first responders did what they had to do for the good of the nation and their fellow men. They didn't even ask anybody to commit suicide as a specific part of the task at hand. The result is generations of Americans who would die if need be for their cause. Our military has fought them in the Middle East so that they could not bring their organizations to our homeland. Enough Arab or Black Muslims have attempted enough acts of terror under this administration that they would be quite justified in singling them out when they try to fly an airplane. So would the previous administration.
It's common sense. If the blue fruit is poisonous and the green fruit is not poisonous, don't eat the blue fruit. Whatever the virtues of Muslim culture, they become the enemy when depending on totalitarians and their terrorist allies. One reason for the disbanding of the Iraqi Army right after the US victory (this is my personal guess) was that there was no NCO corps. There were people in charge and there were people who didn't do anything. Now they have years of experience with the qualities needed.
Ten years ago, I was at work, washing racks and had a guitar riff going through my mind which I was singing a lyric for to help me remember. I was recording my first album at the time. I was reading Anna Karenina at work on breaktimes and had just bought an 8-track mixer, still the same workaholic I am today. The song didn't get finished for a few weeks but is one of the few high points in my earliest recordings.
All that could be taken away by a lunatic with a plane and a culture that supports his cause.
A couple of months later, I was sitting in the chair one Sunday morning with nothing to do and came up with a guitar riff. Fortunately my acoustic guitar was in arm's reach and I spent a few minutes rehearsing it, a few more minutes playing it with a drum machine and finding ways to mess with it. Then I pushed record and eight minutes later was ready for playback. Within a few hours, I had overdubbed another guitar and vocals that I'm still impressed with today. The song was called "Sunday Morning" and dedicated to George Harrison who had died shortly before.
I spent this Sunday morning like I've spent the last few days, working on the next book. It could still all be taken away, but by the will of God, human progress can't be stopped by the true infidels. It can only be destroyed, and we have to fight to keep them from winning.
I can't say I haven't contributed to the fight. Nebraska doesn't have a lot of contributions to the country except the massive amount of food we provide, but this Nebraska recognized the events of 9/11 for the call that it was. I didn't respond immediately, but I've scored several notches on the 'what did you do in the war' meter. My seventh album was recorded on my first deployment and features some of my best writing and playing, and last night I typed up the second draft of a post I wrote here about the recording process.
Now chaos is falling across the worldwide Muslim community. They have no achievements as a civilization to show for the last decade. We have the rise and fall of Lindsey Lohan as a hot young starlet. And solid military victories. We could destroy Mecca and Medina in an hour, render it irrevocably an irradiated wasteland that no Muslim could ever make the hajj again. We don't do that because it would be wrong. Israel doesn't do that because it would be wrong, and they've lived with the daily threat of extinction for how long?
I don't know what to believe about the death of bin Laden. For all I know, he was capped years ago and the footage was withheld for the 10th anniversary. I do believe we've implemented attacks on the Muslim world that go far beyond bin Laden, such as the recent simultanous domestic atrocities the rulers have perpetrated on their own subjects. Obama doesn't deserve any more credit for shooting him than for presiding over the "Arab Spring".
Bin Laden spent his final years (under the official narrative) living a decrepit life until the SEALs tracked him down and blew his head off. The official narrative has changed on whether or not his wife or any other woman or human shield was shot. Bin Laden wasn't the villain. The cause of Wahabite jihad he fought for is the villain. What was Obama going to say, 'if the intelligence is wrong and he's not there, don't kill him'? What would any other President have said in that place?
Muslims take their history very seriously. They remember dates and battles. So do we who use the solar year, and it's in the realm of possibility that President Bush and his administration set a target date for 10 years later for results of this nature. President Jefferson set similar targets for his operations against the Muslim pirates around Tripoli when he sent the Marines without Congress' approval. He won that battle, and domestically set precedents both for his successors in office and for legal definitions of slavery and its reasons for abolition. The Barbary pirates, you'll remember, were taking Americans prisoner and selling them as slaves.
September 11 was also the anniversary of the failed seige at Vienna, the Eastern European line of demarcation against the military advances of the Ottoman Turks in the seventeenth century. Both sides had gunpowder and the Europeans outfought the Turk who went into a long decline from which it is only recovering in the last couple of years.
In the centuries that followed, Vienna attempted to increase its influence in the south, where Russia was inspired to appeal to fellow Slavs. Christian kingdoms were formed and in the remaining Balkans, ethnic and religious tensions built up. They would be put on hiatus during communist rule, exploding in the Serbian genocide afterwards.
To the west, France was arguably formed as a nation when Charles Martel beat the Muslim invaders from Spain, defining Europe from the Atlantic side. To the far east, Muslim inability to co-exist with Hindu led to the creation of two massive nations, one which has lifted millions of people from degrading poverty thanks to its peaceful alliances with the UK and USA, and Pakistan, where bin Laden was found hiding.
In his latest speech to improve everything, President Barack Hussein Obama cited the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln, founder of the Republican Party and named for the prophet of the God of Jerusalem. His last name was given to my home town in Nebraska, where political dirty tricksters assumed that nobody would want a capitol city named for that Republican. Turned out a lot of Democrats were patriotic after the Civil War too, so I've lived most of my life in the shadow of the state capitol building. Also Memorial Stadium, the third largest city in the state on home football games. Although I don't really do anything when I'm at home, there's always a welcoming sense of homecoming when I arrive. I miss Lincoln when I'm gone for too long. Fidelity counts for something. Who is faithful and who is not?
Being forced to be faithful to anything destroys the whole point of faith. Those are the false choices they make. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy, in any mortal man's philosophy. Marxists reduce everything that exists to their founder's writings while Lutherans find numerous divisions and reasons to peacably co-exist. Aristotle and Isaac Newton and Ben Franklin still have relevance to our daily lives, Shi'ite and Sunni saints and martyrs not so much.
Jews and Japanese both know a thing or two about self-sacrifice, yet they find common ground in the American marketplaces, in California and Hollywood or New York City. The heartlands feed the vast country that wouldn't have existed except for brave men dying on the fields of Valley Forge or Bunker Hill or Gettysburg or Iwo Jima or Baghdad.
You don't find men like these rioting in the flash mobs which have begun looting in London and now seem to be spreading to American cities. They feel entitled to new cell phones so they break store windows and steal, that won't feed them this winter. It's difficult to say there's no racial component to it either. I don't know how much is Union-directed (in the US or UK) and how much is racial or religious, Muslim organizations trying to agitate.
It was heartening to see Londoners of all races stand up against the looters regardless of color. These are their homes and stores and the mob's fury will not be allowed to rule. Queen Bodeica burned a strip of blackness into the city's bedrock thousands of years ago in a losing attempt to defeat the Roman invaders.
Less cheerful are the related riots in Greece by civil servants who don't want to give up their perks. The wastes of thousands of years accumulate here, where the Mediterranean opens into Russia and Asia Minor and Egypt. The dogmas of an Orthodox Church and Communist rulers set in, as does a brief conquest by the West back in the Crusades.
Eastern Christendom was falling to the Turk and called for help from the West who responded as they did. Europe's southern border was delineated from Spain and the straits of Gibraltar (through which Ulysses sailed), across France and the remnants of the Romans, below the Poles and the Russians and Muscovites.
Ten years later, people have grown up conscious of what can be taken away. They know who stands on watch for terrorists, and they know who blithely ignores the threat. The enemy isn't entirely extremist Islam, but they are a definite enemy.
The enemy unites because individually they can be broken but like sticks in a bundle they are strong. That works from Mussolini to the rash of violent organized labor actions that have followed the Union Boss Trumka's recent call to violence. The good people unite because they seek to minimize the enemy's existence in everyone's life.
I have worried before his inauguration that President Obama might be at risk for suicide because he had never run anything before becoming the most powerful man on earth. We'd be better off if Muslim terrorists didn't try to commit suicide either, and he's nowhere near as big of an enemy to the USA.
President Bush grabbed a bullhorn and shouted to the first responders that he could hear them, all America could hear them, and soon the enemy would hear as well.
The enemy has heard, and seen firsthand what we can do. They called us the infidel and they were looking in a mirror. There is more despicable poverty across the Muslim world than anywhere else. They all rank at the bottom of international lists of living standards and individual freedom. Dictator-for-life is the most secure job position there is whether you happen to rule where there's oil or not. President Obama will only have his current job for five more years at most. President Bush will never have it again. Israel changes Prime Ministers. Iraq and Karzai-controlled territory are watched by American soldiers. Europe squabbles and realizes integration is no longer such a brilliant idea when there's economic troubles and large parts of their own community ruled by immigrants who don't assimilate.
Ten years ago today, we lost thousands of live in an act by evil-doers. They only need to be lucky once, and they were. But we have kept the faith of our forefathers who brought forth a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men had been endowed by their Creator with certain rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Can you picture a Muslim woman saying, as Jane Fonda did recently, that her biggest regret is that she didn't fuck mass-murder and big fan of Stalin Che Guevara? Years ago she was complaining about some of Ted Turner's sexual preferences, but the divorce was fresher then. And she was lucky to be married to Ted Turner and not someone else.
The post Y2K era has been unfamiliar to those of us who remember the term "Y2K". Everything operates according to rules we didn't expect, except those who have old rules to follow. Bush Sr. was right to call it a "New World Order". Time has moved on, but we remember.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
03 September, 2011
"Listen nitwit, the last thing we need is a trigger-happy lunatic in charge! No, Mr. President, I wasn't talking to you."
There must be someone in Martha's Vinyard that can afford a video camera. It would make Obama look capable and leader-like if he just recorded his plan now and gets back to work instead of trying to schedule an appearance before Congress and all the rigmarole that entails.
If he really wants to go up against the Republican primaries, why not do that literally? Show up at the primary (or with teleconference) and take questions from the candidates. What's the worst that can happen, they ask about green jobs or his promise to be at 7% unemployment by now or "Fast and Furious" or Solyndra? He's a former community organizer who got elected President, surely he can take questions from a half-dozen American citizens.
Either way, he’d better have some damned brilliant ideas for reducing unemployment in his speech, ideas that were worth saving until the final third of his term in office. Last month jobs growth was the same as Bluto Blutarsky’s grade point average. [According to the documentary of Faber College available on the Double Secret Probation Edition of Animal House, Senator Blutarsky did reach the White House, so maybe it’s not such a coincidence.]
Obama's Secretary of Labor says she believes "we're going the right direction on jobs" so you know this is the administration that believes in smart power.
For months after returning from deployment, I made CDs for the car stereo in lieu of listening to the radio. At first they were Jim Steinman but after another deployment, I grew weary of Steinman and wished to spice things up with songs I’d acquired since enlisting. Songs that, to my mind, I’d never heard previously in a serious way. I didn’t have much access to amazon.com before and now I could enlarge the music collection tremendously.
Call it an appreciation for the album as an aesthetic creation or the compact disc as a technological innovation, but I’ve a fondness for picking favorite playlists.
Anyway, to my mind I’ve heard the songs properly and have been jumbling them up into jukebox-like CDs for a while now. The only rules were that no Jim Steinman would be permitted unless I hadn’t heard it before (which wasn’t a rule, just a general decision that enough was enough; I play him at work and on the computer) and they had to qualify as song I didn’t completely own pre-enlistment. “Mix tapes” didn’t count, so if I taped it off the radio pre-enlistment, I could hear an internet copy burned to disc and repeated in my car. Keep in mind, it didn’t matter how many times I’d heard the song, even pre-enlistment, only this new listening qualified for serious music appreciation.
Recently I burned a new set of discs and a lot of old favorites left the playlist. Let’s see what remains.
The first CD is the first two albums by Rush. I listened to the entire Rush collection when I bought it on amazon, but now I want to give their body of work a chance to seep in through repetitions in a six-disc player. I haven’t bothered up-grading to an ipod player because that’s just the way I am.
A song from their forthcoming album is included on disc 2, a new addition along with Roger Waters’ “Each Small Candle” and Billy Joel’s “Invention in C Minor” Eddie Van Halen sings and plays keyboards with Gary Cherone’s lyrics and backing vocals for “How Many Say I”, so far the final track on the final Van Halen album. All three are effectively among the last embers of each men’s recording careers. The other new addition after previous material’s purging is Sammy Hagar’s live version of “Give To Live” because the original is awesome but I heard it pre-enlistment.
His last album with VH provides “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” and “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)”, and HSAS album just before he joined VH gave us a cover of “Whiter Shade of Pale” that has been among my favorite tracks. I just listened to it a couple of hours ago before I ever thought of writing this.
“Christmas Canon Rock” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra works all year around, with its anthemic rock orchestra sound and gorgeous female lead vocals. I couldn’t tell you which classical composer’s work they appropriated, but I like the result the way I like Queen and Jim Steinman’s work, and power ballads and much classic rock. The Damn Yankees mixed Ted Nugent and Styx singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw for a similar one-hit wonder called “High Enough” which I’ve been enjoying for well over a year and the copy comes from the ‘best of the 80’s compilation on sale at the PX or Wal-Mart. Gene Chandler sings the gorgeous “Duke of Earl”, Phil Spector brings us “He’s A Rebel” which has inspired musical interludes. Like these two, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” is another long-time pop favorite I had never appreciated before.
I’d always like Linda Perry’s 4 Non Blondes album, and “Life in a Bottle” comes from her solo album a few years ago. “Hey Girl” is a cover song by Billy Joel to fill out his third Greatest Hits album (the first two are a double-disc set that is one of the biggest selling records of all time). He dabbled in classical music after the River of Dreams but (according to regular tour co-star Elton John) has nothing else to say in music. I’ve played “Hey Girl” before. It was one of the songs I tired of early but didn’t erase from the “Make More CDs” file.
“Making Love Out of Nothing at All” is a Jim Steinman demo of his hit with Air Supply, and the vocals are in a tolerable register. The production is enjoyably raw while suggesting the heights that it reached with Air Supply’s recording budget, and it’s technically *new* Steinman which is always good.
“I’m a Boinger” was one of the two tracks released on flex-disc with the relevant Bloom County collection which I listened to when it came out. The other one is also on these discs, but “I’m a Boinger” has such an awesome lead vocal and hilarious lyrics that it’s my favorite. Remember when records were used to promote things like this?
On disc 3, Sammy Hagar is well-represented with his original version of Rick Springfield’s early-80’s hit “I’ve Done Everything For You” and Sammy’s own last big hit to date, 1999’s “Mas Tequila”. Chickenfoot is represented with the gorgeous ballad “Learning To Fall”. Also his cover of “Free Money” from his late-70’s solo album is the song where I truly realized how awesome Sammy was (except as a lyricist but even he’ll admit that). His early-21st century advertisement for his tequila-bar empire involves a cover of Kenny Chesney’s “I Love This Bar”.
I’d always liked Paul McCartney’s first ‘failed debut single’, “My Brave Face” from 1989, Bill Medley’s “Most Of All You” ballad that played at the end of the first Major Leagues movie, Petula Clark’s “Downtown", Tom Petty’s songwriting partnership with Bob Dylan “You’re Jammin’ Me”, Enya’s “Epona” and “Exile” (as heard in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story) and the Proclaimer’s weird-scottsmen-with-irrestistibly-catchy-melody “I’m Gonna Be (500) Miles)” doing what Dexy’s Midnight Runners did a decade before. All of these I have enjoyed for many months, since I first forsake old Steinman, and heard only in incomplete form before enlistement.
Post-enlistment first-hears, “Beautiful Dangerous” featuring Fergie continues to be a standout track from Slash’s self-titled debut album, and “Catcher in the Rye” retains its enjoyability and quality from Axl’s rival album. “Fall To Pieces” is an enjoyable song Slash co-wrote between G’n’R and what he’s doing now, and about the only listenable Scott Weiland singing I’ve ever heard. Linda Perry’s album gives us two more songs, “Fruitloop Daydream” and “Knock Me Out”.
I’ve recently become a big fan of guitarist Jeff Beck, who first came to prominence replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds and hired Jimmy Page to replace him in turn. Beck and Page were and are longtime friends, and “Beck’s Bolero” is one of the fruits of that friendship. The two guitarists booked studio time to record something. They wanted the Who’s rhythm section of John Entwistle and Keith Moon, but could only get Moon so Page turned to session player John Paul Jones for bass duties. They even talked about forming a band, which Moon said would go down like a lead balloon, or zeppelin or something. Page formed his band, and Beck had an erratic career starting with the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart as the lead singer who went solo. “Beck’s Bolero” is still outstanding.
In the re-release of their catalogue, little looks promising in the way of unheard material from Queen. The a capella opera section from “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a stand-out that continues to amaze, but not much else of worth has been released so far. Steven Tyler’s debut single as a solo artist is a gorgeous ballad called “Love Lives” that justifies him as a singer and (almost) the years of silence we’ve heard since Aerosmith’s last album. He wants to do pop music, as his appearances on American Idol demonstrate and his power ballad stylings during the 80’s were no exception. He’s also the guy who wrote “Mama Kin”, so cut him some slack.
More of the final Van Hagar album gives us “Amsterdam” and “The Seventh Seal”, the latter of which is an awesomely atmospheric hurricane of sound. Eddie the keyboard player and guitar player and producer fights to overcome Sammy. (I think it’s a draw, but I’m not sure who called it). These are fairly new additions as is Sammy’s hilarious “Sam I Am” accounting of his career to date. “Up For Breakfast”, “It’s About Time” and “Learning to See” are the three completed tracks from a few short years later when they reunited with Hagar.
The b-side of Rush’s earlier single “BU2B” is new, as is “Waltz #1 (Nunley’s Carousel)” by Billy Joel, John Phillips Sousa’s “Semper Fidelis” and “Suicide is Painless” from the original M*A*S*H movie. Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s new inclusion is “Wish Liszt”, where they play the musical piece,. Best known today from the scene where Daffy and Donald battle it out in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, “Hungarian Rhapsody” by Liszt was favored in old Disney and Warners cartoons and although the TSO does a great job, it falls flat in places (nyuck nyuck). There are places where I think they would have done better to sound like, I dunno, “Christmas Canon”.
A remixed Elvis song became a big hit in England, “A Little Less Conversation” and helped promote 30 #1s in 30 years, Elvis’ anniversary celebrations. I bought the album in AIT and still enjoy “Conversation”. Axl Rose gives us the official “Street of Dreams”, which I’d heard prior to enlistment as “The Blues”. Still one of my favorites of his though. “Ghost” has Slash’s reunion with Izzy Stradlin and is awesome. SSG Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” has featured exactly the sort of build-up I like in my popular music, and I have a personal connection to the unit it was written for. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” is a powerful bass voice of resentment and lament. Ellen Foley maneuvered her vocals on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and girlfriendship to the Clash’s guitarist that she recorded a few solo albums with some quality material. “In the Killing Hour” is the one I haven’t grown tired of yet, a powerful bolero performance.
Oddly, I’d heard Roxette’s “Crash Boom Bang” pre-enlistment, but I’d never liked it before, so I qualify it as new. An awesome power ballad with a gorgeous vocal and atmospheric keyboards, it’s just a great pop song.
“The Night Chicago Died” is a quirky one-hit wonder, a retelling of a battle between the police and Al Capone with a great call-and-response vocal.
Queen’s rereleases also include the backing track from “You’re My Best Friend”, a standout hit in that it was written by their bass-player and the follow-up A-side to “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I had always thought it a pleasant pop tune, but quite low on my list of favorite Queen songs. Now, hearing it without Freddie’s lead vocals reveals what an extremely talented band Queen were. It’s an outstanding performance and eventually I’ll get around to listening to Freddie’s vocal again. Probably not soon though.
Disc 5 has the two Red Hot Chili Peppers songs I’ve enjoyed since discovering they had a career before “Under the Bridge” (all pre-enlistment). “By the Way” and “Californication” demonstrate the singer’s ability as a lyricist to manage complicated rhymes. There aren’t a whole lot of tools available to the lyric writer, but ability to form coherent polysyllabic thoughts is one of them. I’d heard the songs when they were new, but now I could buy my own copies.
Elvis had “If I Can Dream” for his comeback, Sammy had “Silver Lights” for his start and “Returning of the Wish” from the same album as “Mas Tequila”, Queen also sold the instrumental tracks of “Seven Seas of Rhye” which I love for the same reason as “You’re My Best Friend”, and “Tie Your Mother Down” which is a brand-new addition to this series of discs that I haven’t yet heard properly. G’n’R has “There Was A Time”, Heart had “Stranded”, longtime favorites, there’s this awesome punk cover of “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” that still makes me sing “10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more, the bloody Red Baron was rolling the score” every time it comes on as it has for months as well.
Two more Sammy songs, one of which I’ve listened to for a couple months is his acoustic rendition of “Dreams” post-VH, and a new one from the same album, “When It’s Love”. His HSAS album also gives us “Missing You” and “Top of the Rock”
Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” continues to be my favorite song of their since I was in high school. Years later, I hated what they did to it with “Unforgiven II”. Now that I can buy stuff legally, I might as well drop a buck on “Unforgiven III” from their latest album which has in common with its predecessors the chord sequences and the general Metallica sound which is worth a buck in my opinion. The Eagles give us “Live in the Fast Lane” which is one of the few songs from the band I really really like.
Billy Joel’s demo “The Prime Of Your Life” is extremely enjoyable. He doesn’t have the lyrics finished yet, although they’re surprisingly developed. It’s light years away from what was eventually released as the vocal-heavy “The Longest Time” with an entirely-different vocal melody and musical approach.
Disc 6 is mostly songs that have come into and dropped out of my listening habits lately. Linda Perry’s “Uninvited” and Sammy’s live “Right Now” are brand-new, as is Jeff Beck’s “Diamond Dust” instrumental (with George Martin’s production).
Def Leppard’s “Two Steps Behind” (about the only song post-Adrenalize I really liked), Queen+Paul Rodgers “We Believe” (my other favorite from the album, so far Brian May’s final Queen composition as far as I’m concerned. He can produce stuff for others, or play with Roger, but all of his other new songs are variations on the “Butterfly” chord sequence, as was the final song Queen recorded with John (for which I travelled to England for a copy), and make up a large part of bootleg Queen songs since “Save Me”. He may have written all the keyboard ballads there were in him.
The release from Roy Orbison’s album at the time he died was “I Drove All Night”, that’s brand new. “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” by Prince was absent for a number of discs before re-appearing (its video was directed by Spike Lee in exchange for funding the Malcom X movie, and probably Prince’s conflicts with Warner Bros’ demands for a single.
Slash’s “Starlight” and Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” have been fixtures since I first started burning these discs, as has the 80’s sounding remake of “Ballad of the Green Beret”. “Stray Cat Strut” was briefly included but not yet erased and appears again. Sammy’s iconic song “Red” is included, as is 1999’s “Red Voodoo”. 1989 brought us Brian May, Roger Taylor, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi and others for a guitar hero’s remake of “Smoke on the Water”, and I’ve enjoyed it for a couple months now, along with a previously-unreleased Steinman demo or a previously-unreleased Steinman song, “Train of Love” sounds like a Motown song. Weird Al’s new album has the Un-Steinman “Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me” which I’ve enjoyed since its release date. John Phillips Sousa was also paid to write something by the Washington Post, hence the name of the march.
That’s what I’m listening to these days. When I’ve burned out on a number of these tracks, I’ve made 2 more Rush CDs taking up more of their early career. By the time I get tired of these, I’ll have winnowed them down to a few favorite songs and making further compilations of their body of work will be manageable.
I have more live Sammy Hagar, but enough is enough on him as well in many ways. I also have a couple of songs by AC-DC that I’ve never liked, but they were big hits and it’s important to have them. There’s the first couple albums by Big Star, another one of those bands nobody’s ever heard of but became influential, they forged the ‘power pop’ sound prominent post-grunge and briefly flirted with being somebodies. They didn’t bear up to repeated listening and it’s only inertia that has kept me from erasing them.
I like to think my email to Jim@JimSteinman.com had something to do with the release of unheard demos, and I have a number of them yet unburned to disc. (including "Train of Love" with Steinman singing) I don’t even have all of Sammy’s albums, or VH’s and I’m running out of interest in burning what’s left. I’ve listened to it, and HSAS/Van Hagar will probably filter in to the disc sooner-or-later. Chickenfoot has a new album coming out and Joe Satriani’s first album will probably come back into my rotation as well. Most of the parodies on Weird Al’s album I wouldn’t recognize as parodies if I didn’t know it was Al. The original songs are certainly worth paying for. I had a yen to own much of John Phillips Sousa’s work and only a few tracks have been represented.
There are Sammy songs I like and will probably return to favor, stuff with Montrose or live versions of VH songs. Some of his covers are more annoying than others. There’s still more of Linda Perry’s solo album, and she’s since gone on to write for other chick singers. A few other Queen demos from their debut album which have great merit but I got tired of them. I got tired of Brian May’s young female singer more quickly, as I tired of Ellen Foley’s best songs (including a 3-song EP which I gather is quite recent). A few Bette Midler songs are charming, most of them written by Sammy. The original cast album tracks from Jesus Christ, Superstar remain as enjoyable now as when I was a kid.
Males using female vocalists are represented in work I’ve recently removed from the discs, tracks like Ike and Tina’s long-playing “Proud Mary” and “River Deep, Mountain High”. Ike’s own “Rocket 88” was removed early on, as were the Shangri-La’s “Remember (Walking In the Sand) - later remade awesomely by Aerosmith - , the Spanish version of “Crash Boom Bang” (Roxette is Swedish! It’s same instrumental tracks! Awesome!) and “Soy Una Mujer” (which topped the pop charts as “Fading Like A Flower” in my younger days). Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” may one day reappear, as might Linda Rondstadt and whoever’s “You’re No Good”. Phil Spector and whoever’s “And Then He Kissed Me” may return sooner. “Sowing the Seeds of Love” was a hit by Tears For Fears in the late 80’s that was on tapes I dubbed from the radio first, and maintained another impressive run rarely equaled in this collection of songs. There’s something so distinctly 1980’s and British about trying to be 1960s and American and inspired by 1960s English stars… But I enjoyed the song for all my misbegotten youth and for the last year as well. Dennis Wilson’s “Friday Night” gives a stark other side to the Beach Boy’s life and I like it very much, as does the other Enya track from L.A. Story that didn’t make the cut for this round of CD burnings. The rest are similar novelty tracks, show tunes, covers or mashes, funny or surprising.
I wish I could have included the tv theme songs but Windows seems to have some aversion to certain wmv files being burnt to CD. The long-version of the “Sanford and Son” theme is outstanding.
If he really wants to go up against the Republican primaries, why not do that literally? Show up at the primary (or with teleconference) and take questions from the candidates. What's the worst that can happen, they ask about green jobs or his promise to be at 7% unemployment by now or "Fast and Furious" or Solyndra? He's a former community organizer who got elected President, surely he can take questions from a half-dozen American citizens.
Either way, he’d better have some damned brilliant ideas for reducing unemployment in his speech, ideas that were worth saving until the final third of his term in office. Last month jobs growth was the same as Bluto Blutarsky’s grade point average. [According to the documentary of Faber College available on the Double Secret Probation Edition of Animal House, Senator Blutarsky did reach the White House, so maybe it’s not such a coincidence.]
Obama's Secretary of Labor says she believes "we're going the right direction on jobs" so you know this is the administration that believes in smart power.
For months after returning from deployment, I made CDs for the car stereo in lieu of listening to the radio. At first they were Jim Steinman but after another deployment, I grew weary of Steinman and wished to spice things up with songs I’d acquired since enlisting. Songs that, to my mind, I’d never heard previously in a serious way. I didn’t have much access to amazon.com before and now I could enlarge the music collection tremendously.
Call it an appreciation for the album as an aesthetic creation or the compact disc as a technological innovation, but I’ve a fondness for picking favorite playlists.
Anyway, to my mind I’ve heard the songs properly and have been jumbling them up into jukebox-like CDs for a while now. The only rules were that no Jim Steinman would be permitted unless I hadn’t heard it before (which wasn’t a rule, just a general decision that enough was enough; I play him at work and on the computer) and they had to qualify as song I didn’t completely own pre-enlistment. “Mix tapes” didn’t count, so if I taped it off the radio pre-enlistment, I could hear an internet copy burned to disc and repeated in my car. Keep in mind, it didn’t matter how many times I’d heard the song, even pre-enlistment, only this new listening qualified for serious music appreciation.
Recently I burned a new set of discs and a lot of old favorites left the playlist. Let’s see what remains.
The first CD is the first two albums by Rush. I listened to the entire Rush collection when I bought it on amazon, but now I want to give their body of work a chance to seep in through repetitions in a six-disc player. I haven’t bothered up-grading to an ipod player because that’s just the way I am.
A song from their forthcoming album is included on disc 2, a new addition along with Roger Waters’ “Each Small Candle” and Billy Joel’s “Invention in C Minor” Eddie Van Halen sings and plays keyboards with Gary Cherone’s lyrics and backing vocals for “How Many Say I”, so far the final track on the final Van Halen album. All three are effectively among the last embers of each men’s recording careers. The other new addition after previous material’s purging is Sammy Hagar’s live version of “Give To Live” because the original is awesome but I heard it pre-enlistment.
His last album with VH provides “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” and “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)”, and HSAS album just before he joined VH gave us a cover of “Whiter Shade of Pale” that has been among my favorite tracks. I just listened to it a couple of hours ago before I ever thought of writing this.
“Christmas Canon Rock” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra works all year around, with its anthemic rock orchestra sound and gorgeous female lead vocals. I couldn’t tell you which classical composer’s work they appropriated, but I like the result the way I like Queen and Jim Steinman’s work, and power ballads and much classic rock. The Damn Yankees mixed Ted Nugent and Styx singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw for a similar one-hit wonder called “High Enough” which I’ve been enjoying for well over a year and the copy comes from the ‘best of the 80’s compilation on sale at the PX or Wal-Mart. Gene Chandler sings the gorgeous “Duke of Earl”, Phil Spector brings us “He’s A Rebel” which has inspired musical interludes. Like these two, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” is another long-time pop favorite I had never appreciated before.
I’d always like Linda Perry’s 4 Non Blondes album, and “Life in a Bottle” comes from her solo album a few years ago. “Hey Girl” is a cover song by Billy Joel to fill out his third Greatest Hits album (the first two are a double-disc set that is one of the biggest selling records of all time). He dabbled in classical music after the River of Dreams but (according to regular tour co-star Elton John) has nothing else to say in music. I’ve played “Hey Girl” before. It was one of the songs I tired of early but didn’t erase from the “Make More CDs” file.
“Making Love Out of Nothing at All” is a Jim Steinman demo of his hit with Air Supply, and the vocals are in a tolerable register. The production is enjoyably raw while suggesting the heights that it reached with Air Supply’s recording budget, and it’s technically *new* Steinman which is always good.
“I’m a Boinger” was one of the two tracks released on flex-disc with the relevant Bloom County collection which I listened to when it came out. The other one is also on these discs, but “I’m a Boinger” has such an awesome lead vocal and hilarious lyrics that it’s my favorite. Remember when records were used to promote things like this?
On disc 3, Sammy Hagar is well-represented with his original version of Rick Springfield’s early-80’s hit “I’ve Done Everything For You” and Sammy’s own last big hit to date, 1999’s “Mas Tequila”. Chickenfoot is represented with the gorgeous ballad “Learning To Fall”. Also his cover of “Free Money” from his late-70’s solo album is the song where I truly realized how awesome Sammy was (except as a lyricist but even he’ll admit that). His early-21st century advertisement for his tequila-bar empire involves a cover of Kenny Chesney’s “I Love This Bar”.
I’d always liked Paul McCartney’s first ‘failed debut single’, “My Brave Face” from 1989, Bill Medley’s “Most Of All You” ballad that played at the end of the first Major Leagues movie, Petula Clark’s “Downtown", Tom Petty’s songwriting partnership with Bob Dylan “You’re Jammin’ Me”, Enya’s “Epona” and “Exile” (as heard in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story) and the Proclaimer’s weird-scottsmen-with-irrestistibly-catchy-melody “I’m Gonna Be (500) Miles)” doing what Dexy’s Midnight Runners did a decade before. All of these I have enjoyed for many months, since I first forsake old Steinman, and heard only in incomplete form before enlistement.
Post-enlistment first-hears, “Beautiful Dangerous” featuring Fergie continues to be a standout track from Slash’s self-titled debut album, and “Catcher in the Rye” retains its enjoyability and quality from Axl’s rival album. “Fall To Pieces” is an enjoyable song Slash co-wrote between G’n’R and what he’s doing now, and about the only listenable Scott Weiland singing I’ve ever heard. Linda Perry’s album gives us two more songs, “Fruitloop Daydream” and “Knock Me Out”.
I’ve recently become a big fan of guitarist Jeff Beck, who first came to prominence replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds and hired Jimmy Page to replace him in turn. Beck and Page were and are longtime friends, and “Beck’s Bolero” is one of the fruits of that friendship. The two guitarists booked studio time to record something. They wanted the Who’s rhythm section of John Entwistle and Keith Moon, but could only get Moon so Page turned to session player John Paul Jones for bass duties. They even talked about forming a band, which Moon said would go down like a lead balloon, or zeppelin or something. Page formed his band, and Beck had an erratic career starting with the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart as the lead singer who went solo. “Beck’s Bolero” is still outstanding.
In the re-release of their catalogue, little looks promising in the way of unheard material from Queen. The a capella opera section from “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a stand-out that continues to amaze, but not much else of worth has been released so far. Steven Tyler’s debut single as a solo artist is a gorgeous ballad called “Love Lives” that justifies him as a singer and (almost) the years of silence we’ve heard since Aerosmith’s last album. He wants to do pop music, as his appearances on American Idol demonstrate and his power ballad stylings during the 80’s were no exception. He’s also the guy who wrote “Mama Kin”, so cut him some slack.
More of the final Van Hagar album gives us “Amsterdam” and “The Seventh Seal”, the latter of which is an awesomely atmospheric hurricane of sound. Eddie the keyboard player and guitar player and producer fights to overcome Sammy. (I think it’s a draw, but I’m not sure who called it). These are fairly new additions as is Sammy’s hilarious “Sam I Am” accounting of his career to date. “Up For Breakfast”, “It’s About Time” and “Learning to See” are the three completed tracks from a few short years later when they reunited with Hagar.
The b-side of Rush’s earlier single “BU2B” is new, as is “Waltz #1 (Nunley’s Carousel)” by Billy Joel, John Phillips Sousa’s “Semper Fidelis” and “Suicide is Painless” from the original M*A*S*H movie. Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s new inclusion is “Wish Liszt”, where they play the musical piece,. Best known today from the scene where Daffy and Donald battle it out in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, “Hungarian Rhapsody” by Liszt was favored in old Disney and Warners cartoons and although the TSO does a great job, it falls flat in places (nyuck nyuck). There are places where I think they would have done better to sound like, I dunno, “Christmas Canon”.
A remixed Elvis song became a big hit in England, “A Little Less Conversation” and helped promote 30 #1s in 30 years, Elvis’ anniversary celebrations. I bought the album in AIT and still enjoy “Conversation”. Axl Rose gives us the official “Street of Dreams”, which I’d heard prior to enlistment as “The Blues”. Still one of my favorites of his though. “Ghost” has Slash’s reunion with Izzy Stradlin and is awesome. SSG Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” has featured exactly the sort of build-up I like in my popular music, and I have a personal connection to the unit it was written for. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” is a powerful bass voice of resentment and lament. Ellen Foley maneuvered her vocals on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and girlfriendship to the Clash’s guitarist that she recorded a few solo albums with some quality material. “In the Killing Hour” is the one I haven’t grown tired of yet, a powerful bolero performance.
Oddly, I’d heard Roxette’s “Crash Boom Bang” pre-enlistment, but I’d never liked it before, so I qualify it as new. An awesome power ballad with a gorgeous vocal and atmospheric keyboards, it’s just a great pop song.
“The Night Chicago Died” is a quirky one-hit wonder, a retelling of a battle between the police and Al Capone with a great call-and-response vocal.
Queen’s rereleases also include the backing track from “You’re My Best Friend”, a standout hit in that it was written by their bass-player and the follow-up A-side to “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I had always thought it a pleasant pop tune, but quite low on my list of favorite Queen songs. Now, hearing it without Freddie’s lead vocals reveals what an extremely talented band Queen were. It’s an outstanding performance and eventually I’ll get around to listening to Freddie’s vocal again. Probably not soon though.
Disc 5 has the two Red Hot Chili Peppers songs I’ve enjoyed since discovering they had a career before “Under the Bridge” (all pre-enlistment). “By the Way” and “Californication” demonstrate the singer’s ability as a lyricist to manage complicated rhymes. There aren’t a whole lot of tools available to the lyric writer, but ability to form coherent polysyllabic thoughts is one of them. I’d heard the songs when they were new, but now I could buy my own copies.
Elvis had “If I Can Dream” for his comeback, Sammy had “Silver Lights” for his start and “Returning of the Wish” from the same album as “Mas Tequila”, Queen also sold the instrumental tracks of “Seven Seas of Rhye” which I love for the same reason as “You’re My Best Friend”, and “Tie Your Mother Down” which is a brand-new addition to this series of discs that I haven’t yet heard properly. G’n’R has “There Was A Time”, Heart had “Stranded”, longtime favorites, there’s this awesome punk cover of “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” that still makes me sing “10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more, the bloody Red Baron was rolling the score” every time it comes on as it has for months as well.
Two more Sammy songs, one of which I’ve listened to for a couple months is his acoustic rendition of “Dreams” post-VH, and a new one from the same album, “When It’s Love”. His HSAS album also gives us “Missing You” and “Top of the Rock”
Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” continues to be my favorite song of their since I was in high school. Years later, I hated what they did to it with “Unforgiven II”. Now that I can buy stuff legally, I might as well drop a buck on “Unforgiven III” from their latest album which has in common with its predecessors the chord sequences and the general Metallica sound which is worth a buck in my opinion. The Eagles give us “Live in the Fast Lane” which is one of the few songs from the band I really really like.
Billy Joel’s demo “The Prime Of Your Life” is extremely enjoyable. He doesn’t have the lyrics finished yet, although they’re surprisingly developed. It’s light years away from what was eventually released as the vocal-heavy “The Longest Time” with an entirely-different vocal melody and musical approach.
Disc 6 is mostly songs that have come into and dropped out of my listening habits lately. Linda Perry’s “Uninvited” and Sammy’s live “Right Now” are brand-new, as is Jeff Beck’s “Diamond Dust” instrumental (with George Martin’s production).
Def Leppard’s “Two Steps Behind” (about the only song post-Adrenalize I really liked), Queen+Paul Rodgers “We Believe” (my other favorite from the album, so far Brian May’s final Queen composition as far as I’m concerned. He can produce stuff for others, or play with Roger, but all of his other new songs are variations on the “Butterfly” chord sequence, as was the final song Queen recorded with John (for which I travelled to England for a copy), and make up a large part of bootleg Queen songs since “Save Me”. He may have written all the keyboard ballads there were in him.
The release from Roy Orbison’s album at the time he died was “I Drove All Night”, that’s brand new. “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” by Prince was absent for a number of discs before re-appearing (its video was directed by Spike Lee in exchange for funding the Malcom X movie, and probably Prince’s conflicts with Warner Bros’ demands for a single.
Slash’s “Starlight” and Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” have been fixtures since I first started burning these discs, as has the 80’s sounding remake of “Ballad of the Green Beret”. “Stray Cat Strut” was briefly included but not yet erased and appears again. Sammy’s iconic song “Red” is included, as is 1999’s “Red Voodoo”. 1989 brought us Brian May, Roger Taylor, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi and others for a guitar hero’s remake of “Smoke on the Water”, and I’ve enjoyed it for a couple months now, along with a previously-unreleased Steinman demo or a previously-unreleased Steinman song, “Train of Love” sounds like a Motown song. Weird Al’s new album has the Un-Steinman “Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me” which I’ve enjoyed since its release date. John Phillips Sousa was also paid to write something by the Washington Post, hence the name of the march.
That’s what I’m listening to these days. When I’ve burned out on a number of these tracks, I’ve made 2 more Rush CDs taking up more of their early career. By the time I get tired of these, I’ll have winnowed them down to a few favorite songs and making further compilations of their body of work will be manageable.
I have more live Sammy Hagar, but enough is enough on him as well in many ways. I also have a couple of songs by AC-DC that I’ve never liked, but they were big hits and it’s important to have them. There’s the first couple albums by Big Star, another one of those bands nobody’s ever heard of but became influential, they forged the ‘power pop’ sound prominent post-grunge and briefly flirted with being somebodies. They didn’t bear up to repeated listening and it’s only inertia that has kept me from erasing them.
I like to think my email to Jim@JimSteinman.com had something to do with the release of unheard demos, and I have a number of them yet unburned to disc. (including "Train of Love" with Steinman singing) I don’t even have all of Sammy’s albums, or VH’s and I’m running out of interest in burning what’s left. I’ve listened to it, and HSAS/Van Hagar will probably filter in to the disc sooner-or-later. Chickenfoot has a new album coming out and Joe Satriani’s first album will probably come back into my rotation as well. Most of the parodies on Weird Al’s album I wouldn’t recognize as parodies if I didn’t know it was Al. The original songs are certainly worth paying for. I had a yen to own much of John Phillips Sousa’s work and only a few tracks have been represented.
There are Sammy songs I like and will probably return to favor, stuff with Montrose or live versions of VH songs. Some of his covers are more annoying than others. There’s still more of Linda Perry’s solo album, and she’s since gone on to write for other chick singers. A few other Queen demos from their debut album which have great merit but I got tired of them. I got tired of Brian May’s young female singer more quickly, as I tired of Ellen Foley’s best songs (including a 3-song EP which I gather is quite recent). A few Bette Midler songs are charming, most of them written by Sammy. The original cast album tracks from Jesus Christ, Superstar remain as enjoyable now as when I was a kid.
Males using female vocalists are represented in work I’ve recently removed from the discs, tracks like Ike and Tina’s long-playing “Proud Mary” and “River Deep, Mountain High”. Ike’s own “Rocket 88” was removed early on, as were the Shangri-La’s “Remember (Walking In the Sand) - later remade awesomely by Aerosmith - , the Spanish version of “Crash Boom Bang” (Roxette is Swedish! It’s same instrumental tracks! Awesome!) and “Soy Una Mujer” (which topped the pop charts as “Fading Like A Flower” in my younger days). Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” may one day reappear, as might Linda Rondstadt and whoever’s “You’re No Good”. Phil Spector and whoever’s “And Then He Kissed Me” may return sooner. “Sowing the Seeds of Love” was a hit by Tears For Fears in the late 80’s that was on tapes I dubbed from the radio first, and maintained another impressive run rarely equaled in this collection of songs. There’s something so distinctly 1980’s and British about trying to be 1960s and American and inspired by 1960s English stars… But I enjoyed the song for all my misbegotten youth and for the last year as well. Dennis Wilson’s “Friday Night” gives a stark other side to the Beach Boy’s life and I like it very much, as does the other Enya track from L.A. Story that didn’t make the cut for this round of CD burnings. The rest are similar novelty tracks, show tunes, covers or mashes, funny or surprising.
I wish I could have included the tv theme songs but Windows seems to have some aversion to certain wmv files being burnt to CD. The long-version of the “Sanford and Son” theme is outstanding.
21 August, 2011
A Night at the Osprey
The Osprey was a minor character in a minor issue of Fantastic Four by the Lee and Kirby imitators at Marvel in the early 70's. The FF's arch-enemies had long since banded together as the Frightful Four. In this issue, they had taken over the FF's headquarters and was holding the foursome prisoner despite (or because of?) the villains numbering only three. To protect their branding, the Wizard, the Sandman and the Trapster advertised in the Daily Bugle for a fourth member.
Most of them were cameos to set up for future issues (the Impossible Man) or for reasons of continuity. [I still remember the Texas Twister departing with an editorial note where he would next appear]. Then there was the Osprey.
He had a costume with wings on it, but he couldn't fly, not really. Not at all actually. In fact, if one of the FF (the bad ones) could do something about that, he'd really appreciate it. The Wizard slapped an anti-gravity disc on him and the last we saw of the Osprey, he was sailing out into the wild blue yonder screaming 'heeeeeeeellllpppppp!' Even Wikipedia doesn't have a page on him. They've got one on the Texas Twister!
But the Osprey had his two or three minutes on stage. He gave it a shot.
Last night my Dad and I went to see the Grand Ole Opry. Neither of us are country music fans - I'm certainly not anyway - but he had come to visit and we needed a tourist trap in Nashville. He got tickets for a night nobody I'd heard of was playing (although Vince Gill turned out to be the final host for the night, so I must have missed his name earlier).
I have to say there was something intrinsically Southern about the experience. It seemed like a normal public gathering in a high school auditorium in seats that resembled church pews. Most ages were represented, although I didn't see too many kids who wouldn't have preferred a baby-sitter and video games. Just little ones, and a few on stage.
Notable Virginians aside, the South did not produce the people who founded our nation, they were the people who first moved on, and applied to their new land what the founding Americans had created. Tennessee was one of the first new states to join the US and Nashville as a long history (I assume).
The Opry says it made country music popular, and there's probably a good case for that. They certainly gave it a national forum in 1925 when the weekly radio broadcast went national. Sponsors changed, locations changed, they added a television broadcast. One week Elvis Presley stood at the back of the room along with all the other hopefuls for his chance. They told him he had no future in country music and the following Monday he was back at work as a truck driver.
This was when the modern nationwide media truly came into its own. An illiterate southern redneck like Hank Wiliams could sell records across the country instead of the regional markets as he'd been doing. With the glitter of an Opry appearance, he and other touring musicians could bill themselves as Opry musicians and promote themselves as such. However the Opry had to protect its brand name and charged fees for its use. The musicians were also cut into for touring, simply because they couldn't afford to get too far from Nashville and miss a scheduled appearance. The records could travel, the NBC weekly show could travel, but those who stood in the circle couldn't get too far if they wanted to come back.
Again, this is why the experience seemed so intrisically Southern. The opening act was the most... I don't even know how to describe her. I have no idea how one gets the job of warming up the crowd, much less how the Opry makes the selection. Her act was very calculated to look utterly simple and foolish. Heavy drawling, regular references to likin' the fellers, a sales tag hanging from her hat, an appearance and delivery that was so plain, just so... Almost literally a form of entertainment that could not exist above the Mason-Dixon line (wherever that is), this was delighfully off-putting, like something you know you should turn your nose up at in disdain, but there's something so charming about it.
Some of the performances were quite nice. Standing in the wings, you could see where all the other people on the show that night were milling about. A few other people were present, people who were probably the producer, the director, the sponsor, a girl moving sheet music around. The house singers stayed behind baffles except for their featured spot of the night. The house band was swapped out once for one woman's set. One of the better performers was making his debut appearance and promoting his new single available at Old Country Stores, another regional market that people who aren't from the South would scratch their heads about, but Southerners probably know as a regular part of life. [Or at least it seems that way, who knows how *those people* actually live?]
A group of kids were another act, their main attraction being the smallest and cutest one on the banjo. Quite impressive for what they were, a group of brothers who are doing now what their peers will do in high school, form a band that sounds pretty good. But it's where popular entertainment meets grade school talent show, predating "American Idol" by several generations.
And it still works, those kids will always know they got to stand on that stage with Little Jimmy Dickens, 90 years old with jokes even older. "I take my wife everywhere. She keeps finding her way back" was funny because it was so lame. "I ask my wife if she's cheating on me, she says who else is she going to cheat on" was funnier. His performance included a song from his latest album, released thirty years ago.
The sexy young girls who were really dressed up might have been there for Vince Gill, or because they were going clubbing afterwards and the rest was entirely family-friendly. Just enough off-color innuendo to give the adults a different set of laughs from the kids and enough diversity of entertainment that everybody could find something. The band played professionally, the banjo players did some good pickin', there were a few religious songs, a few love songs. There were regular exhortations of how wonderful the Opry is and interruptions by Hosanna, the Life Insurance company sponsoring this segment, who wanted us to know their name and that they were sponsoring this segment. The other sponsors did the same, whoever they were.
There was a reminder of tradition. The segment's host began moving to commercial at one point, but it had slipped his mind and he had to be reminded that it was Saturday night, which meant it was time for the square-dancers segment. He didn't usually work Saturdays, but the dancers sure did. If you want to know what square-dancing looks like when performed by highly-trained athletes, look no further. Wow. And girls in amazing purple outfits too!
Earlier in the day we had gone to downtown Nashville for the Country Music Hall of Fame. That was fun, although it did help illustrate why museums aren't a good place for music. There's nothing to show. The plaques are nice, with modifications when the honoree becomes posthumous. RCA is heavily represented, Studio B is one of the main exhibits (earning its own tour which we did not go on) and you can at least see the patch of ground where so many people passed over the years to do their turn before the microphone. They had to stay within the circle for maximum audio quality.
Hank Williams Jr. is undoubtedly one of the prime movers of the CMHoF, having found a repository for his father's written legacy as well as his own. And Hank III if the kid straightens up. Hank Sr. was banned from the Opry for drunkenness and a few months later, showed up dead to a concert in West Virginia after a snowstorm in Nashville delayed him. He didn't record at Studio B because it hadn't been built yet, but luckily made a couple of recordings in the period where he could no longer bill himself as an Opry performer. That's probably why he was looking for a few thousand dollar payday in West Virginia, he was getting divorced at the time.
Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill and Taylor Swift are all prominent. It's a good investment from the part of their record companies. Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, the Judds all made good career moves by endorsing the institutions. Amy Grant had hits on the Christian chart and one bonafide pop hit "Baby Baby" in my teenage years. Her song was enjoyable like any other on MTV then, and I still have the issue of "Dr. Strange" that her management threatened Marvel Comics over, because cover artist Jackson Guice copied her image and they didn't want her to be associated with satanism.
[Don't you love the way all this stuff works back into comic books sooner or later?]
Anyway, Amy Grant, past her hit-making years but presumably still a talented singer has an album of Christmas duets with her husband whatsisname coming out. The crossover market works.
THAT'S Southern too. It's something the rest of America doesn't have, the historical memory of foreign soldiers coming in, shooting a few hundred thousand of your people and burning down your homes. Blah blah blah, American Indians, it took the Union four years to tear down the South, for American to kill American.
Lemme tellya, those hills in Nashville are tough. The hills where I live are tough. There's some hardy breeds able to thrive there where us flatlanders are wary.
The South is more than Nashville of course. There's Old Virginia, there's the colonial melting pots of Louisiana and Florida. Texas is eternally Texas (the dumb bastards). Beyond the vastness of Texas, it spreads out into the Southwest which is another region of the country. Above Texas it fades into the farmlands of the midwest and arcs towards St. Louis, bounded by rivers until it reaches our nations' historical spine, the Appalachins. Then the South meets the North in DC, and the ocean becomes the borderline.
There's hillbillies and moonshine, there's church songs and rummage sales, they all have that weird accent, but their money's usually good which is better than some folks I could mention. Except when the people down here congregate in such large numbers, it's done like this, just the same as anybody else.
[As a writer, the potential for story material is amazing, whether it's a sexy Vince Gill groupie or a blue-collar lament to God or motherhood. Or a secret agent on a deadly mission moving through the crowd, there's just so many stories that could be told and I genuinely don't see that reflected in other public crowds, fairs, concerts, bar bands, clubs, etc. Political rallies and churches have their reason for existing and could easily be folded into the mix.
Here's Johnny Cash singing the one song of the night I'd ever heard before, "Lonesome Me".
"My wife looks in the mirror and says she's old and fat and ugly and even the slightest compliment would cheer her up right now, so I say her eyesight is perfect."
Most of them were cameos to set up for future issues (the Impossible Man) or for reasons of continuity. [I still remember the Texas Twister departing with an editorial note where he would next appear]. Then there was the Osprey.
He had a costume with wings on it, but he couldn't fly, not really. Not at all actually. In fact, if one of the FF (the bad ones) could do something about that, he'd really appreciate it. The Wizard slapped an anti-gravity disc on him and the last we saw of the Osprey, he was sailing out into the wild blue yonder screaming 'heeeeeeeellllpppppp!' Even Wikipedia doesn't have a page on him. They've got one on the Texas Twister!
But the Osprey had his two or three minutes on stage. He gave it a shot.
Last night my Dad and I went to see the Grand Ole Opry. Neither of us are country music fans - I'm certainly not anyway - but he had come to visit and we needed a tourist trap in Nashville. He got tickets for a night nobody I'd heard of was playing (although Vince Gill turned out to be the final host for the night, so I must have missed his name earlier).
I have to say there was something intrinsically Southern about the experience. It seemed like a normal public gathering in a high school auditorium in seats that resembled church pews. Most ages were represented, although I didn't see too many kids who wouldn't have preferred a baby-sitter and video games. Just little ones, and a few on stage.
Notable Virginians aside, the South did not produce the people who founded our nation, they were the people who first moved on, and applied to their new land what the founding Americans had created. Tennessee was one of the first new states to join the US and Nashville as a long history (I assume).
The Opry says it made country music popular, and there's probably a good case for that. They certainly gave it a national forum in 1925 when the weekly radio broadcast went national. Sponsors changed, locations changed, they added a television broadcast. One week Elvis Presley stood at the back of the room along with all the other hopefuls for his chance. They told him he had no future in country music and the following Monday he was back at work as a truck driver.
This was when the modern nationwide media truly came into its own. An illiterate southern redneck like Hank Wiliams could sell records across the country instead of the regional markets as he'd been doing. With the glitter of an Opry appearance, he and other touring musicians could bill themselves as Opry musicians and promote themselves as such. However the Opry had to protect its brand name and charged fees for its use. The musicians were also cut into for touring, simply because they couldn't afford to get too far from Nashville and miss a scheduled appearance. The records could travel, the NBC weekly show could travel, but those who stood in the circle couldn't get too far if they wanted to come back.
Again, this is why the experience seemed so intrisically Southern. The opening act was the most... I don't even know how to describe her. I have no idea how one gets the job of warming up the crowd, much less how the Opry makes the selection. Her act was very calculated to look utterly simple and foolish. Heavy drawling, regular references to likin' the fellers, a sales tag hanging from her hat, an appearance and delivery that was so plain, just so... Almost literally a form of entertainment that could not exist above the Mason-Dixon line (wherever that is), this was delighfully off-putting, like something you know you should turn your nose up at in disdain, but there's something so charming about it.
Some of the performances were quite nice. Standing in the wings, you could see where all the other people on the show that night were milling about. A few other people were present, people who were probably the producer, the director, the sponsor, a girl moving sheet music around. The house singers stayed behind baffles except for their featured spot of the night. The house band was swapped out once for one woman's set. One of the better performers was making his debut appearance and promoting his new single available at Old Country Stores, another regional market that people who aren't from the South would scratch their heads about, but Southerners probably know as a regular part of life. [Or at least it seems that way, who knows how *those people* actually live?]
A group of kids were another act, their main attraction being the smallest and cutest one on the banjo. Quite impressive for what they were, a group of brothers who are doing now what their peers will do in high school, form a band that sounds pretty good. But it's where popular entertainment meets grade school talent show, predating "American Idol" by several generations.
And it still works, those kids will always know they got to stand on that stage with Little Jimmy Dickens, 90 years old with jokes even older. "I take my wife everywhere. She keeps finding her way back" was funny because it was so lame. "I ask my wife if she's cheating on me, she says who else is she going to cheat on" was funnier. His performance included a song from his latest album, released thirty years ago.
The sexy young girls who were really dressed up might have been there for Vince Gill, or because they were going clubbing afterwards and the rest was entirely family-friendly. Just enough off-color innuendo to give the adults a different set of laughs from the kids and enough diversity of entertainment that everybody could find something. The band played professionally, the banjo players did some good pickin', there were a few religious songs, a few love songs. There were regular exhortations of how wonderful the Opry is and interruptions by Hosanna, the Life Insurance company sponsoring this segment, who wanted us to know their name and that they were sponsoring this segment. The other sponsors did the same, whoever they were.
There was a reminder of tradition. The segment's host began moving to commercial at one point, but it had slipped his mind and he had to be reminded that it was Saturday night, which meant it was time for the square-dancers segment. He didn't usually work Saturdays, but the dancers sure did. If you want to know what square-dancing looks like when performed by highly-trained athletes, look no further. Wow. And girls in amazing purple outfits too!
Earlier in the day we had gone to downtown Nashville for the Country Music Hall of Fame. That was fun, although it did help illustrate why museums aren't a good place for music. There's nothing to show. The plaques are nice, with modifications when the honoree becomes posthumous. RCA is heavily represented, Studio B is one of the main exhibits (earning its own tour which we did not go on) and you can at least see the patch of ground where so many people passed over the years to do their turn before the microphone. They had to stay within the circle for maximum audio quality.
Hank Williams Jr. is undoubtedly one of the prime movers of the CMHoF, having found a repository for his father's written legacy as well as his own. And Hank III if the kid straightens up. Hank Sr. was banned from the Opry for drunkenness and a few months later, showed up dead to a concert in West Virginia after a snowstorm in Nashville delayed him. He didn't record at Studio B because it hadn't been built yet, but luckily made a couple of recordings in the period where he could no longer bill himself as an Opry performer. That's probably why he was looking for a few thousand dollar payday in West Virginia, he was getting divorced at the time.
Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill and Taylor Swift are all prominent. It's a good investment from the part of their record companies. Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, the Judds all made good career moves by endorsing the institutions. Amy Grant had hits on the Christian chart and one bonafide pop hit "Baby Baby" in my teenage years. Her song was enjoyable like any other on MTV then, and I still have the issue of "Dr. Strange" that her management threatened Marvel Comics over, because cover artist Jackson Guice copied her image and they didn't want her to be associated with satanism.
[Don't you love the way all this stuff works back into comic books sooner or later?]
Anyway, Amy Grant, past her hit-making years but presumably still a talented singer has an album of Christmas duets with her husband whatsisname coming out. The crossover market works.
THAT'S Southern too. It's something the rest of America doesn't have, the historical memory of foreign soldiers coming in, shooting a few hundred thousand of your people and burning down your homes. Blah blah blah, American Indians, it took the Union four years to tear down the South, for American to kill American.
Lemme tellya, those hills in Nashville are tough. The hills where I live are tough. There's some hardy breeds able to thrive there where us flatlanders are wary.
The South is more than Nashville of course. There's Old Virginia, there's the colonial melting pots of Louisiana and Florida. Texas is eternally Texas (the dumb bastards). Beyond the vastness of Texas, it spreads out into the Southwest which is another region of the country. Above Texas it fades into the farmlands of the midwest and arcs towards St. Louis, bounded by rivers until it reaches our nations' historical spine, the Appalachins. Then the South meets the North in DC, and the ocean becomes the borderline.
There's hillbillies and moonshine, there's church songs and rummage sales, they all have that weird accent, but their money's usually good which is better than some folks I could mention. Except when the people down here congregate in such large numbers, it's done like this, just the same as anybody else.
[As a writer, the potential for story material is amazing, whether it's a sexy Vince Gill groupie or a blue-collar lament to God or motherhood. Or a secret agent on a deadly mission moving through the crowd, there's just so many stories that could be told and I genuinely don't see that reflected in other public crowds, fairs, concerts, bar bands, clubs, etc. Political rallies and churches have their reason for existing and could easily be folded into the mix.
Here's Johnny Cash singing the one song of the night I'd ever heard before, "Lonesome Me".
"My wife looks in the mirror and says she's old and fat and ugly and even the slightest compliment would cheer her up right now, so I say her eyesight is perfect."
17 August, 2011
Meanwhile, in another part of town...
The Republican primaries are becoming a popular ticket, with a Texas newcomer following Obama's bus tour. This one may burn out like previous new favorites.
It's coming down to Betty and Veronica. Bachman is on the 'inside', going along with the system and wowing everybody, Palin is the 'outside' but with a key constituency. Between the two of them, they'll pick an Archie and I would hope that all the candidates are collaborating in making sure any of the others can use their assets.
The veep slot is another unknown card. In theory, male Republican primary winner could pick one or the other for veep and guarantee enough votes period. However, if two males make it across the finish line (as it were) they might risk the 'chick vote'. If they're collaborating, I'd assume it includes the agreement to time everything in accordance with the plans, whatever those are. Everybody involved will be expected to endorse the eventual ticket against Obama.
The biggest upset would be Palin declaring herself a write-in candidate at the last moment, which would probably give him four more years. If matters get to that point, than no one can foresee conditions on the ground right now, so just go with everybody endorsing the plan. "If we don't hang together..." as someone once said.
Bachman or Donald Trump or Matt Damon or somebody could probably declare a last-minute write-in candidacy with enough votes to matter somewhere. Unless he completely chokes doing the "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message" recordings, there won't be any challenge for the Democratic candidacy.
I still think Biden might be switched out. My guess is John Kerry will take over, giving his junior Senator colleague a little help in the executive wing. Or some really surprising candidate like Joe Lieberman. Hillary has been mentioned but probably more out of reflex than anything.
Obama has the black vote. How much of it remains to be seen, and I don't have any evidence one way or the other. [Then again, aren't votes confidential? How do they know in the first place?] The 'let's vote for a chick' vote might outweigh that. Or not.
I'm slowly getting the book into production. I have started editing what I would like to do as a follow-up, another book of roughly equal size. Another single, basically.
This book will have "Life and Polonia", the book I wrote last fall in a seven week period, and in a music industry analogy, the flip side will be an edited version of all the other material I wrote in same period of time. One's the A-side and one's the B-side.
So, carrying that idea to the follow-up single, I've printed out all of my essays about pop culture. Comics, movies, tv shows, music, cartoons, etc. I'm even going to go through my Facebook posts and include every Star Wars joke I've ever made, just because.
The flip side will be a series of short stories I wrote at the end of Basic Training through the next few months, as well as a couple more stories featuring the same characters. The main characters are a rock band and the stories take place at various points in their history. They work as a 'side' to this single.
A third book is in the planning stages. That is, I have a print-out of most of the material and it's ready for editing to make a second draft. This would focus on history, the war, poliics, religion. I haven't decided what the flip side to that book would be, but considering I have a ton of pre-enlistment material and several hundred pages of Facebook one-liners (minus the Star Wars jokes) to choose from, I don't think it will be a problem.
I could see a fourth book, compiling the best of what's left into various word pictures from a journal. I already have a few months of backlog that could be edited for a flip side there, and that's assuming I don't complete another lengthy work of prose any time soon.
I have ideas for another work of fiction. I'd like to do a "Back to the Future" rip-off, where the time travel becomes really complicated as its main gimmick, but it works. Basically taking the cool parts of the trilogy (minus the McFly family) and jam them into one plot-intensive book, roughly as long as "Life and Polonia". If it works, I could see a trilogy (of, well, trilogies).
The "Seth DeSignor" strips are still a source of joy, as are some of the other comics I've made with Microsoft Paint. I could do more with those. It'll end whenever Seth DiSignor himself shows up and a funny in-joke will be complete. I have a few other comic ideas, and have even surprised myself by cranking out a few short short superhero stories on a notepad.
In another part of my brain, the urge to record another album of music is growing. I'd need to replace my recording gear and instruments, but maybe I can find some dumbed-down way of using digital technology. Frank Zappa bought the synclavier and it sat around for a couple years because he had no idea how to make it work. He hired someone to read all the manuals and give Frank basic answers. "How do I make this note?" "You push these buttons." "How do I change them in such-and-such a way?" You push those buttons." That's why most of Zappa's compositions in his final years were on synclavier.
If I have to go back to a cheap 8-track recorder from Amazon, I will, but isn't there a better option?
But as you can see, I have quite a few creative irons in the fire, and too few hours in the day as it is. That's not counting my job, sleeping or anything else. And I'm only a few pages into the second draft of the second book, still beginning the printing process for the first. And I'm lazy.
It's coming down to Betty and Veronica. Bachman is on the 'inside', going along with the system and wowing everybody, Palin is the 'outside' but with a key constituency. Between the two of them, they'll pick an Archie and I would hope that all the candidates are collaborating in making sure any of the others can use their assets.
The veep slot is another unknown card. In theory, male Republican primary winner could pick one or the other for veep and guarantee enough votes period. However, if two males make it across the finish line (as it were) they might risk the 'chick vote'. If they're collaborating, I'd assume it includes the agreement to time everything in accordance with the plans, whatever those are. Everybody involved will be expected to endorse the eventual ticket against Obama.
The biggest upset would be Palin declaring herself a write-in candidate at the last moment, which would probably give him four more years. If matters get to that point, than no one can foresee conditions on the ground right now, so just go with everybody endorsing the plan. "If we don't hang together..." as someone once said.
Bachman or Donald Trump or Matt Damon or somebody could probably declare a last-minute write-in candidacy with enough votes to matter somewhere. Unless he completely chokes doing the "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message" recordings, there won't be any challenge for the Democratic candidacy.
I still think Biden might be switched out. My guess is John Kerry will take over, giving his junior Senator colleague a little help in the executive wing. Or some really surprising candidate like Joe Lieberman. Hillary has been mentioned but probably more out of reflex than anything.
Obama has the black vote. How much of it remains to be seen, and I don't have any evidence one way or the other. [Then again, aren't votes confidential? How do they know in the first place?] The 'let's vote for a chick' vote might outweigh that. Or not.
I'm slowly getting the book into production. I have started editing what I would like to do as a follow-up, another book of roughly equal size. Another single, basically.
This book will have "Life and Polonia", the book I wrote last fall in a seven week period, and in a music industry analogy, the flip side will be an edited version of all the other material I wrote in same period of time. One's the A-side and one's the B-side.
So, carrying that idea to the follow-up single, I've printed out all of my essays about pop culture. Comics, movies, tv shows, music, cartoons, etc. I'm even going to go through my Facebook posts and include every Star Wars joke I've ever made, just because.
The flip side will be a series of short stories I wrote at the end of Basic Training through the next few months, as well as a couple more stories featuring the same characters. The main characters are a rock band and the stories take place at various points in their history. They work as a 'side' to this single.
A third book is in the planning stages. That is, I have a print-out of most of the material and it's ready for editing to make a second draft. This would focus on history, the war, poliics, religion. I haven't decided what the flip side to that book would be, but considering I have a ton of pre-enlistment material and several hundred pages of Facebook one-liners (minus the Star Wars jokes) to choose from, I don't think it will be a problem.
I could see a fourth book, compiling the best of what's left into various word pictures from a journal. I already have a few months of backlog that could be edited for a flip side there, and that's assuming I don't complete another lengthy work of prose any time soon.
I have ideas for another work of fiction. I'd like to do a "Back to the Future" rip-off, where the time travel becomes really complicated as its main gimmick, but it works. Basically taking the cool parts of the trilogy (minus the McFly family) and jam them into one plot-intensive book, roughly as long as "Life and Polonia". If it works, I could see a trilogy (of, well, trilogies).
The "Seth DeSignor" strips are still a source of joy, as are some of the other comics I've made with Microsoft Paint. I could do more with those. It'll end whenever Seth DiSignor himself shows up and a funny in-joke will be complete. I have a few other comic ideas, and have even surprised myself by cranking out a few short short superhero stories on a notepad.
In another part of my brain, the urge to record another album of music is growing. I'd need to replace my recording gear and instruments, but maybe I can find some dumbed-down way of using digital technology. Frank Zappa bought the synclavier and it sat around for a couple years because he had no idea how to make it work. He hired someone to read all the manuals and give Frank basic answers. "How do I make this note?" "You push these buttons." "How do I change them in such-and-such a way?" You push those buttons." That's why most of Zappa's compositions in his final years were on synclavier.
If I have to go back to a cheap 8-track recorder from Amazon, I will, but isn't there a better option?
But as you can see, I have quite a few creative irons in the fire, and too few hours in the day as it is. That's not counting my job, sleeping or anything else. And I'm only a few pages into the second draft of the second book, still beginning the printing process for the first. And I'm lazy.
06 August, 2011
What if Obama ran for...
Vice-President? If Joe Biden (or Hillary Clinton, or Al Gore) is the Democrats preference for the top slot, could that be done? If Obama sits out the next four or eight years, he can watch someone else do the job and try again. How about Ralph Nader or Joe Lieberman? Both of them were credible candidates for the top two slots once upon a time. Nader would provide a long track record of unabashed liberalism to finally prove to the American people that progressive policies work when the right people do them, people unattached to corporate influences or profit-motives of any kind. Lieberman still votes with Democrats on pretty much everything and he was more qualified for Vice-President than Sarah Palin (not that that’s any major accomplishment, right? She’s an ignorant twat.) He also showed up at the Republican Party convention and said ‘don’t vote for my party, vote for the other party’s candidate’ so it’s unqualified bi-partisanship from a long-time committed Democrat.
I’ve never heard of Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi mentioned or President ever, but if you’re looking for senior level Democrats who could sensibly take the top slot, win an election *and* let Obama learn in office for four years, they’d be on anybody’s top ten list. Hillary’s a long shot, just because she looks like she’s ready to claw her eyeballs out if that will release her from the insane hell she’s caged in. I can’t stand the woman and will applaud the way she’s performed under unbelievable pressures for these three years. You can’t govern as Secretary of State, and it’s the closest thing Obama has to a positive role model right now. If she’s up for another go around, she and Bill have earned the chance to try again.
Al Gore seems much happier as a private citizen so I doubt he’s interested. John Kerry’s still fairly young. He spent 30 years as the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, he might have earned another. This way Obama hasn’t wasted the only time he’ll ever get to be President again and prevented the Democrats from winning a popular majority in ’12.
It would keep Obama’s mojo alive and spare the Party from an embarrassing Nader-esque candidacy. Because at this point, as far as the voters are concerned, why not have Matt Damon run for office? He could call himself a Democrat or run as a third-party candidate, either way he’d probably pick up at least 5% of the vote on general principles, By picking Obama for the bottom slot, Democrats would keep his voting base, and conspicuously reprimand someone for failing to meet basic standards that yes, even Republicans consistently meet. GWB kept an AAA rating and the Senate got bills passed under his tenure. These are good things and Democrats only set themselves up for failure by denying it, who’s going to be the first to say it?
The sooner Democrats realize this, the sooner they can salvage something from Obama’s four years in office and go into November ’12 with a candidate people will want to vote for without having to run against Obama specifically. The alternative is surrendering the Oval Office to Republicans who will have a much more pliant Congress in regardless of how the public votes.
I’d be worried about a third-party candidate, a serious Ross Perot-level wacky person with his own money to throw around. [Jack Nicholson instead of Matt Damon, for instance. Or Rob Reiner. Or Carl Reiner. Now I’m just being funny.]
So, in the interest of Democratic Party victory, what odds would there be in moving Obama to the back because of merit? The Presidency is not a learn-on-the-job sort of thing. Ok, now he’s going to take some time to grow, as a person, and the powder is still dry. In a bloody re-election campaign, someone might snap from the pressure and release his college grades. If he doesn’t run as Veep or get installed as a czar by the next Democratic President, he takes a step down, maybe runs for Senator of Illinois again. Does a reality show with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, I dunno.
Or maybe the President goes into private business. He builds a big temple to himself, signs contracts committing to a four-year demonstration of ability, and then sells whatever he’s got to sell. A model private citizen, someone who fervently believes in the government’s right to do as he demonstrated in office will now show how the government does it right.
He says he doesn’t need the income he makes from his books, now he can look at Sasha and Mahlia every day and determine how much they are not entitled to from the government. They’ll need new clothes. They’ll still need food. Obama’s half-brother lives on, what, one American dollar a day? Fidel Castro found a use for his brother, the most powerful man on Earth hasn’t given this guy a job yet? Ok, let him create a job, his own (President of the Company) and his half-brother’s (selling what the former President of the United States produces for the world’s benefit). He will abide by all government restrictions no matter how unfair and he will pay any taxes no matter how socially-unjust they are towards the rich. He will support his fine upstanding wife and raise their daughters to be proud Americans and four or eight years later, he will try again to be President.
In this next election, the Republicans will be unstoppable. The US just lost its AAA++ grade from mucky-mucks in the measuring economics department. As the superpower, our economics grades start at the highest level and number two is measured from there. China and India and Japan and Russia and others are measured according to the standards America sets. All the teachers can look at Obama and tell him how brilliant he is for another four years, maybe that’ll be enough votes to win, but it’ll just give everyone else four years without having to be distracted by events or decisions that turn out completely wrong. Even David Lee Roth gets off-stage once in a while. Surely the President would like to take a long nap.
A victory here for Obama might mean this decade in history is remembered like Ulysses S. Grant was in charge. Great general, drank a lot. Lousy President. Oversaw the end of Reconstruction. Stick with the pre-Presidential track record. ‘As God is my witness, the South shall vote Democratic again!’ as it were.
Life is getting in the way, but inshallah I am tidying up the final ends on having an actual book as soon as my check clears. I do have a timeline and hope the resulting books are sturdy enough to travel. A notion to splurge on myself and see Sammy Hagar play in a far-off city got dashed quickly and easily. Now I'm casting about for another creative project although I haven't yet finished this one.
Music is tempting again. I have a job where I can sing again and I can relate to that kind of 'performance'. I'm actually a bit nostalgic for when I sat down and recorded stuff and some of my vocal takes impress me more than I remembered. Even some of the stuff that flat-out sucks has a fun quirkiness to it, but some of it doesn't suck. I mean, I can't play an instrument to save my life, there's an attitude that compensates. As performance art there's some pretty good snapshots there.
The problem with performance art is that there's no record for virtually any of it. It also leaves no time to practice. I made music for years and showed hardly an improvement as a technical player. Dancing, acting, magic tricks, stand-up comedy, live theater, these are all fields that are primarily performance art, where it's all about what happens in the moment. Singing is generally in that area, but with recorded music in the last century, it becomes more of a production matter. You can make Paul McCartney sing "Let It Be" 100 times in a row at any decibel level by programming the CD player, just like you can watch Mark Hamill blow up the Death Star on a big-screen tv. Books are ideas translated into words and about as far from performance art as you can get.
Tired now. Need sleep. Here's Weird Al's not-quite-Steinman but otherwise a great song. Send it to everyone you know.
I’ve never heard of Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi mentioned or President ever, but if you’re looking for senior level Democrats who could sensibly take the top slot, win an election *and* let Obama learn in office for four years, they’d be on anybody’s top ten list. Hillary’s a long shot, just because she looks like she’s ready to claw her eyeballs out if that will release her from the insane hell she’s caged in. I can’t stand the woman and will applaud the way she’s performed under unbelievable pressures for these three years. You can’t govern as Secretary of State, and it’s the closest thing Obama has to a positive role model right now. If she’s up for another go around, she and Bill have earned the chance to try again.
Al Gore seems much happier as a private citizen so I doubt he’s interested. John Kerry’s still fairly young. He spent 30 years as the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, he might have earned another. This way Obama hasn’t wasted the only time he’ll ever get to be President again and prevented the Democrats from winning a popular majority in ’12.
It would keep Obama’s mojo alive and spare the Party from an embarrassing Nader-esque candidacy. Because at this point, as far as the voters are concerned, why not have Matt Damon run for office? He could call himself a Democrat or run as a third-party candidate, either way he’d probably pick up at least 5% of the vote on general principles, By picking Obama for the bottom slot, Democrats would keep his voting base, and conspicuously reprimand someone for failing to meet basic standards that yes, even Republicans consistently meet. GWB kept an AAA rating and the Senate got bills passed under his tenure. These are good things and Democrats only set themselves up for failure by denying it, who’s going to be the first to say it?
The sooner Democrats realize this, the sooner they can salvage something from Obama’s four years in office and go into November ’12 with a candidate people will want to vote for without having to run against Obama specifically. The alternative is surrendering the Oval Office to Republicans who will have a much more pliant Congress in regardless of how the public votes.
I’d be worried about a third-party candidate, a serious Ross Perot-level wacky person with his own money to throw around. [Jack Nicholson instead of Matt Damon, for instance. Or Rob Reiner. Or Carl Reiner. Now I’m just being funny.]
So, in the interest of Democratic Party victory, what odds would there be in moving Obama to the back because of merit? The Presidency is not a learn-on-the-job sort of thing. Ok, now he’s going to take some time to grow, as a person, and the powder is still dry. In a bloody re-election campaign, someone might snap from the pressure and release his college grades. If he doesn’t run as Veep or get installed as a czar by the next Democratic President, he takes a step down, maybe runs for Senator of Illinois again. Does a reality show with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, I dunno.
Or maybe the President goes into private business. He builds a big temple to himself, signs contracts committing to a four-year demonstration of ability, and then sells whatever he’s got to sell. A model private citizen, someone who fervently believes in the government’s right to do as he demonstrated in office will now show how the government does it right.
He says he doesn’t need the income he makes from his books, now he can look at Sasha and Mahlia every day and determine how much they are not entitled to from the government. They’ll need new clothes. They’ll still need food. Obama’s half-brother lives on, what, one American dollar a day? Fidel Castro found a use for his brother, the most powerful man on Earth hasn’t given this guy a job yet? Ok, let him create a job, his own (President of the Company) and his half-brother’s (selling what the former President of the United States produces for the world’s benefit). He will abide by all government restrictions no matter how unfair and he will pay any taxes no matter how socially-unjust they are towards the rich. He will support his fine upstanding wife and raise their daughters to be proud Americans and four or eight years later, he will try again to be President.
In this next election, the Republicans will be unstoppable. The US just lost its AAA++ grade from mucky-mucks in the measuring economics department. As the superpower, our economics grades start at the highest level and number two is measured from there. China and India and Japan and Russia and others are measured according to the standards America sets. All the teachers can look at Obama and tell him how brilliant he is for another four years, maybe that’ll be enough votes to win, but it’ll just give everyone else four years without having to be distracted by events or decisions that turn out completely wrong. Even David Lee Roth gets off-stage once in a while. Surely the President would like to take a long nap.
A victory here for Obama might mean this decade in history is remembered like Ulysses S. Grant was in charge. Great general, drank a lot. Lousy President. Oversaw the end of Reconstruction. Stick with the pre-Presidential track record. ‘As God is my witness, the South shall vote Democratic again!’ as it were.
Life is getting in the way, but inshallah I am tidying up the final ends on having an actual book as soon as my check clears. I do have a timeline and hope the resulting books are sturdy enough to travel. A notion to splurge on myself and see Sammy Hagar play in a far-off city got dashed quickly and easily. Now I'm casting about for another creative project although I haven't yet finished this one.
Music is tempting again. I have a job where I can sing again and I can relate to that kind of 'performance'. I'm actually a bit nostalgic for when I sat down and recorded stuff and some of my vocal takes impress me more than I remembered. Even some of the stuff that flat-out sucks has a fun quirkiness to it, but some of it doesn't suck. I mean, I can't play an instrument to save my life, there's an attitude that compensates. As performance art there's some pretty good snapshots there.
The problem with performance art is that there's no record for virtually any of it. It also leaves no time to practice. I made music for years and showed hardly an improvement as a technical player. Dancing, acting, magic tricks, stand-up comedy, live theater, these are all fields that are primarily performance art, where it's all about what happens in the moment. Singing is generally in that area, but with recorded music in the last century, it becomes more of a production matter. You can make Paul McCartney sing "Let It Be" 100 times in a row at any decibel level by programming the CD player, just like you can watch Mark Hamill blow up the Death Star on a big-screen tv. Books are ideas translated into words and about as far from performance art as you can get.
Tired now. Need sleep. Here's Weird Al's not-quite-Steinman but otherwise a great song. Send it to everyone you know.
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