So, it is reported today that a fifth avenue (ny) family have gone completely green. They compost, make their own vinegar, don't use the elevator despite their eigth floor walk up, and ride scooters to work. In another, unrelated story a NY apartment building has collapsed. It's a shame the two aren't directly related. Perhaps when this family's apartment building starts to decay they can master the art of making cement, creating bricks from scratch, miraculously hauling heavy loads 100 ft in the air without motors and growing enough food in a window box to sustain life. I gotta say coffee beans are gonna be tough.
I've noticed that many of my friends are going green. They are buying or planning to buy hybrids and they are switching over to poor household lighting. Fortunately for them when they plug in their electric cars the power will come straight from God's navel to their socket. They should all plan to try to get by without steel, plastic, silicon circuitry and rubber condoms for a while. They should depend solely on Hemp for building materials. I know that there are various websites out there that will tell you that Hemp can save the world. I can unconditionally tell you this isn't true. I've sold rope and I gotta say hemp rope sucks. (an interesting aside is that domestic hemp is pretty bad. The best hemp and jute is grown in the tropics and requires {gasp} fuel to be hauled around the world.} They say solar power will save us. It that is the case then we better conquer South Africa and parts of the former USSR in order to secure at least part of the rare minerals we will need to roll out solar nationwide. It is true that some of these metals come from New Jersey but, having grown up there I realize that there is a very strong movement to abandon New Jersey.
Now I can hear you saying 'oh he's some anti-environmental wacko'. This isn't true. I actually believe that one of the few things that governments need to do is to manage our limited resources. It's just that I don't believe that we can mandate technology that doesn't exist nor can we mess with an extremely complex society in a major way just to give the illusion of doing good.
Yes, we all should live in a utopia under the sea but I'm gonna wait until Richard Branson builds it and offers cheap plots with low taxes. In the meantime I am going to open up a repair shop that at least claims to be able to fix hybrid cars.
"Oh yes Mrs. Wilson, your flux capacitor is shot. It's going to cost $6000 to fix it." Sounds like a profitable game to me. After all no one will want someone driving around with a faulty flux capacitor.
In the meantime I will continue to warn people about the coming ice age, drink imported coffee that is purchased at the going rate and eat old fashioned organic food. You know the kind that's just grown in dirt by farmers like me.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
never trust the drummer and learn to say not to midgets
I'm torn - two topics spring to mind. The first is - why do I have kids? The second is - why can't you ever trust a musician? Oh such dreadfully uninteresting choices. I'm even subjecting you to the maudlin process of me making a choice. I believe in the right to choose. You can choose an abortion and I can choose armed revolution if you force me to pay for it. I'm kinda broke right now and paying for someone else's "I had six pina coladas" kind of mistake is not high on my list.Sorry I drift..
So let's get down to it. Why do I have children? Well, the most pressing argument is that, well... I already have them. Possession being nine tens of that old cliché about the law, I've got 'em and that is a strong, philosophically bankrupt argument for having them. Cheap argument huh? Ok I'll try harder. I have children because if I am going to live with midgets then I'm damn well going to have the right to discipline them! Imagine the chaos of a couple of dependent midgets on the lose in the pantry. I can't imagine that would be pleasant. Not good enough?
I have children because it is the most selfish thing that you can do. All that hubbub about parents selflessness is just that, hubbub. All people crave survival. The only way that you can truly survive one's own demise is..you guessed it!-children! We have children because in a moment of arrogance we become convinced that the main problem with the world is not enough ME. Oh wouldn't the world be so much better with more of me running around doing the things I like to do. Of course it would - everyone knows that. No one seems to consider that copying ourselves is not always a great idea.
A friend of mine was walking along Central Park West, one sunny Sunday morning. Suddenly he noticed an ugly little boy being towed by his father's hand.
'How unfortunate' he thought 'That kid is ugly as hell. He looks just like Art Garfunkel - orange afro and all'
Then he noticed that the dad in question was Art Garfunkel. See my point?
This brings me to musicians. For twenty two years I represented musicians. This is commonly referred to as " managing bands?. Believe me they not very manageable. You are better off cohabitating with feral midgets.
People seem to become musicians for a few simple reasons, the most common being the desire to "get some". As we enter middle school we are faced with the gruesome reality of having to come up with some scheme to win the affection of others. One seemingly easy route is to this is to join a band. Quite simple really.
In recent decades this seems to be the choice of more and more fools. Now in the past human kind had more sense about the status of musicians. A traveling band of musicians would be hounded from village to village with pitchforks and torches. This, of course, always took place after the gig and the corresponding "I had six pina coladas" mistakes. We may have had better morals but we were not completely insane with morality.
This brings me to the most germane argument in all this wasted chatter. Since people become musicians based on the reasoning of a twelve year old looking for some cuddle time they rarely can be trusted to act like adults. Sometimes we can hope that they will grow out of it. In the very least we can tolerate this mad system and hope that they create the next Sgt Pepper.
Would you really give a twelve year old a private jet, steady supply of free drugs and alcohol, the adulation of thousands of people and an overstuffed bank account? It's absurd really but it brings us to today's ridiculous conclusion. You can't trust musician's because they're essentially children. (I love 'em for it the little scamps) You also can't trust feral midgets but that, my friends, is self evident……….
Monday, March 26, 2007
I could have been ringmaster
Like everyone else my parents were crazy. My mother in particular had a strain of madness that although common never results in a common life. On my mother's side I come from a long line of painters and, you guessed it, circus people. So when I decided to become a rock n roll manager my great aunts all clucked their tongues and made dry jokes in a long dead Swiss dialect that amounted to "he has a JOB" HeHeHe. I remember my great aunt Bertie (who oddly enough lived with Aunt Bit and Aunt Toot in a cabin on the slopes of Mt Shasta) asking me about my profession. She listened quite earnestly for about ten minutes while I rambled on about tours, and recording albums and publishing deals. She looked more and more sour as the conversation went on.
"I see." Her mouth tightening into a decidedly Swiss shape of disapproval." You deal with money" She said the word money as if it's real meaning was - cupcake filled with moose turd.
"Well I help people make music."
"Why don't you play the French Horn? The French Horn is nice and you get to sit in the part of the orchestra where you can see all of the young ladies legs."
This bizarre statement was based on the unspoken but understood assumption that she was referring to the circus orchestra. Ya see, the French horn player sits over against the bleachers, hence the covert view of the patron's gams.
"Oh Bertie don't be silly. He's so tall and handsome" corrected Aunt Toot. "You could be a ringmaster! Women would love you. They would admire your hat! You could wear your great uncle Charles' hat."
Now in the company of Aunts, Bertie, Bit and Toot anyone over five foot three is tall. Handsome? They often called my troll-like cousin Scott handsome.
"I don't want to be in the circus. Besides managing a band is enough of a circus already."
My mother promptly smacked me while everyone looked sour. My infraction, of course, was using the term "circus" in a demeaning manner. This immediately triggered the "lecture". You know about the lecture. It is standard operating procedure in every family.
"Your Great grandfather was the greatest strongman in Europe. Your grandfather bless his soul would have been ringmaster in the Basil circus if he hadn't been gassed in the Ardenne by those evil Huns." Aunt Bertie was warming up.
"Look at Uncle Max." interrupted Aunt Bit." His mustache is glorious. Max come over here Max. Show Brad your mustache!" My Uncle was sitting in the shade nursing a beer. He had a handlebar mustache that you could mount on the hood of a Texas cattleman's Cadillac. My family kept the market in mustache wax bullish.
"Leave him alone." rumbled Uncle Max. He had outgrown The Lecture but he didn't care enough to get involved. Besides he had recently started to collect (and live with) wild owls and he would much rather be home playing with his owls.
"Don't be silly Bit." said Toot," He knows what his Uncle's mustache looks like."
"Well, I think he should do something normal. Why don't you paint? For heaven's sake what's wrong with being a painter?" Everyone nodded in approval. "Your mother paints, your uncle paints, your grandfather painted because he couldn't be Ringmaster with his lungs and all. We all paint. Why do you have to do something crazy?"
"He's not crazy." Said my mom defensively.
"I don't want to paint. I'm a lousy painter."
"Nonsense. Why, Grandpa George will teach you. Won't you George?"
"Of course. Happy to." Rumbled Crazy Grandpa George. My mother turned a steely gaze at Aunt Bit. Grandpa George was one of the best painters in the family but he had the noticeable drawback of being crazy. In his youth he had been a leading member of some kooky movement of painters. He painted these dark, nightmarish scenes of old ladies carrying crushing loads of faggoted sticks through haunted forests. He painted crippled dwarfs being hounded by villagers. He painted the suicides of clowns. Cheerful enlightened stuff. Unfortunately he had lost his way. He had made his living as a commercial artist and continued to paint real art on the side. In recent years he had become less stable. He became obsessed with bowling and watched the bowling championships on ABC's Wild World of Sports. He started to go to bowling events and then to paint famous bowlers. He saw them as heroic. Heroic bowlers, imagine that.
Then he started to make presents of these paintings to the bowlers. He very rapidly became a celebrity amongst A league bowlers and his paintings hung in places of honor in the classiest bowling alleys. Then his inner child started to betray him.
He had always had a taste for large canvasses. I remember his attic studio filled with eight foot high paintings of bowlers in action in various forms of completion. Once his "art" had gained acceptance he started to step out a little and take some risks. His old obsession with cripples and freaks came back. He went to some big PBA event to present a famous bowler with one of his paintings. I think it was Dick Weber.
When they unveiled his monstrous canvas the crowd gasped. Here was Dick Weber, at the line as the ball rocketed from his hand. The painting was a masterpiece of action and time frozen. Unfortunately Dick Weber now had a shrunken left arm, club foot and dead eye. Grandpa George's bowling painting career was ruined.
"Bah! They don't understand art" had been his only comment.
"There in no way Grandpa George is going to teach him to paint." My mother said closing off that particularly mad career choice.
Aunt Bertie gave me the once over." It just seems so sordid and dirty. Dealing with money and people's money." She started to sniffle.
"It's not that way Aunt Bertie. I like doing it."
"It just seems so straight. Next you'll be telling us you want to be a business man or lawyer or God forbid pickpocket." In circus terms this is the lowest of the low.
They all set about murmuring in Swiss.
"You could be ringmaster. I want you to remember that!" huffed Aunt Bertie.
Ah there is no place like home and nothing like growing up in a family where being the manager of Rock n Roll bands is considered too straight.
"I see." Her mouth tightening into a decidedly Swiss shape of disapproval." You deal with money" She said the word money as if it's real meaning was - cupcake filled with moose turd.
"Well I help people make music."
"Why don't you play the French Horn? The French Horn is nice and you get to sit in the part of the orchestra where you can see all of the young ladies legs."
This bizarre statement was based on the unspoken but understood assumption that she was referring to the circus orchestra. Ya see, the French horn player sits over against the bleachers, hence the covert view of the patron's gams.
"Oh Bertie don't be silly. He's so tall and handsome" corrected Aunt Toot. "You could be a ringmaster! Women would love you. They would admire your hat! You could wear your great uncle Charles' hat."
Now in the company of Aunts, Bertie, Bit and Toot anyone over five foot three is tall. Handsome? They often called my troll-like cousin Scott handsome.
"I don't want to be in the circus. Besides managing a band is enough of a circus already."
My mother promptly smacked me while everyone looked sour. My infraction, of course, was using the term "circus" in a demeaning manner. This immediately triggered the "lecture". You know about the lecture. It is standard operating procedure in every family.
"Your Great grandfather was the greatest strongman in Europe. Your grandfather bless his soul would have been ringmaster in the Basil circus if he hadn't been gassed in the Ardenne by those evil Huns." Aunt Bertie was warming up.
"Look at Uncle Max." interrupted Aunt Bit." His mustache is glorious. Max come over here Max. Show Brad your mustache!" My Uncle was sitting in the shade nursing a beer. He had a handlebar mustache that you could mount on the hood of a Texas cattleman's Cadillac. My family kept the market in mustache wax bullish.
"Leave him alone." rumbled Uncle Max. He had outgrown The Lecture but he didn't care enough to get involved. Besides he had recently started to collect (and live with) wild owls and he would much rather be home playing with his owls.
"Don't be silly Bit." said Toot," He knows what his Uncle's mustache looks like."
"Well, I think he should do something normal. Why don't you paint? For heaven's sake what's wrong with being a painter?" Everyone nodded in approval. "Your mother paints, your uncle paints, your grandfather painted because he couldn't be Ringmaster with his lungs and all. We all paint. Why do you have to do something crazy?"
"He's not crazy." Said my mom defensively.
"I don't want to paint. I'm a lousy painter."
"Nonsense. Why, Grandpa George will teach you. Won't you George?"
"Of course. Happy to." Rumbled Crazy Grandpa George. My mother turned a steely gaze at Aunt Bit. Grandpa George was one of the best painters in the family but he had the noticeable drawback of being crazy. In his youth he had been a leading member of some kooky movement of painters. He painted these dark, nightmarish scenes of old ladies carrying crushing loads of faggoted sticks through haunted forests. He painted crippled dwarfs being hounded by villagers. He painted the suicides of clowns. Cheerful enlightened stuff. Unfortunately he had lost his way. He had made his living as a commercial artist and continued to paint real art on the side. In recent years he had become less stable. He became obsessed with bowling and watched the bowling championships on ABC's Wild World of Sports. He started to go to bowling events and then to paint famous bowlers. He saw them as heroic. Heroic bowlers, imagine that.
Then he started to make presents of these paintings to the bowlers. He very rapidly became a celebrity amongst A league bowlers and his paintings hung in places of honor in the classiest bowling alleys. Then his inner child started to betray him.
He had always had a taste for large canvasses. I remember his attic studio filled with eight foot high paintings of bowlers in action in various forms of completion. Once his "art" had gained acceptance he started to step out a little and take some risks. His old obsession with cripples and freaks came back. He went to some big PBA event to present a famous bowler with one of his paintings. I think it was Dick Weber.
When they unveiled his monstrous canvas the crowd gasped. Here was Dick Weber, at the line as the ball rocketed from his hand. The painting was a masterpiece of action and time frozen. Unfortunately Dick Weber now had a shrunken left arm, club foot and dead eye. Grandpa George's bowling painting career was ruined.
"Bah! They don't understand art" had been his only comment.
"There in no way Grandpa George is going to teach him to paint." My mother said closing off that particularly mad career choice.
Aunt Bertie gave me the once over." It just seems so sordid and dirty. Dealing with money and people's money." She started to sniffle.
"It's not that way Aunt Bertie. I like doing it."
"It just seems so straight. Next you'll be telling us you want to be a business man or lawyer or God forbid pickpocket." In circus terms this is the lowest of the low.
They all set about murmuring in Swiss.
"You could be ringmaster. I want you to remember that!" huffed Aunt Bertie.
Ah there is no place like home and nothing like growing up in a family where being the manager of Rock n Roll bands is considered too straight.
sacred monkeys, butterflies and I wanna kill you
An old friend once told me over dinner that when I died he intended to throw a party and force all of my friends to tell a story that I had once told them. He laid claim to the one about my Great Uncle the merchant seaman. It seems he once stole a sacred monkey from an Indian Temple. Of course, he trained the monkey to beg for whiskey. The monkey would drink half a shot and my Great Uncle Jack drank the other half. Although this story has a good punch line I believe there are better ones in my portfolio. After my friend told me this I had to resist the urge to kill him and then throw a party to tell my friends the story.
This leads to the question is this blogging thing about stories? Is it about the absurdity of cyber space? Is it about my obsession with the obscure footnotes of long dead prussian military logistical theorists? Is it about the relationship between you and the Simpsons? The simple answer is Yes.
Those who cannot do teach. Those who can not do it in person blog. We do it because we can and in dreadfully simple human philosophical terms that makes it somehow have value. This of course tempts me to test how valueless this can be. Time's a wastin' they say and I say Thank God for that.
So now I have this page on myspace and immediately I encounter myspace spam. This spam is based on the assumption that you are a turd. Oh, yes a beautiful twenty something well lit model wants to be my friend. Oddly she is obsessed with free ringtones, myspace tracking software and me. It makes me all gushy to think of it. Yeah, I'm a turd and as a result I'm gonna click on all those parasitic links.
In addition to this kind of spam I've received a few really disturbing friend requests featuring little girls and well, I can't even describe how warped the comments are. Oh great, you're sick and now you want to bless us all by making us want to hunt you down and end your miserable existence. It's enough to make me want to become a Luddite.(wow look at that I put a link in I'm almost as clever as my three year old daughter!)
My new revelation which is about six years behind the rest of the universe is that many of the lady's pages on myspace take about nine weeks to load. I've got broad band (hell, my 3 year old daugther has got broad band - but that's a long story. I had to give it to her to distract her from making cell phone calls) and it takes forever to download these confused over designed pages. By the time the pedestrian rap song starts to play, the graphics flash, the automatic video playback begins and the midi score loads I've started to shop for a coffin. The really scary thing about this trend is that there is a whole generation of young people that have developed the "I'm gonna serve up web tomfoolery to you weather you like it or not" school of design. When these over enthusiastic young designers come to power on the web we're in for trouble. I forsee chaos when every house hold has to have a fiber optic trunk line the diameter of a two hundred year old oak installed to handle the ten quadrillion gigabits of butterfly backgrounds that are roaring down the web whenever we click on a page. Boy do the ladies love the butterflies.
Don't worry, I realize that the male equivalent in over design is even worse. I guess it boils down to soft porn, speed metal and explosions.
Well I'm off to build a butterfly house, sew up a butterfly coat and teach my two year old son to say the word Lepidoptera while winking to prepare him for the teenage battle for the attention of the fairer sex.
Oh yeah, in the end the monkey ends up sitting on a fence post, with his throbbing head in his hands and Uncle Jack says "I told you not to order the sloe gin fizz!"
This leads to the question is this blogging thing about stories? Is it about the absurdity of cyber space? Is it about my obsession with the obscure footnotes of long dead prussian military logistical theorists? Is it about the relationship between you and the Simpsons? The simple answer is Yes.
Those who cannot do teach. Those who can not do it in person blog. We do it because we can and in dreadfully simple human philosophical terms that makes it somehow have value. This of course tempts me to test how valueless this can be. Time's a wastin' they say and I say Thank God for that.
So now I have this page on myspace and immediately I encounter myspace spam. This spam is based on the assumption that you are a turd. Oh, yes a beautiful twenty something well lit model wants to be my friend. Oddly she is obsessed with free ringtones, myspace tracking software and me. It makes me all gushy to think of it. Yeah, I'm a turd and as a result I'm gonna click on all those parasitic links.
In addition to this kind of spam I've received a few really disturbing friend requests featuring little girls and well, I can't even describe how warped the comments are. Oh great, you're sick and now you want to bless us all by making us want to hunt you down and end your miserable existence. It's enough to make me want to become a Luddite.(wow look at that I put a link in I'm almost as clever as my three year old daughter!)
My new revelation which is about six years behind the rest of the universe is that many of the lady's pages on myspace take about nine weeks to load. I've got broad band (hell, my 3 year old daugther has got broad band - but that's a long story. I had to give it to her to distract her from making cell phone calls) and it takes forever to download these confused over designed pages. By the time the pedestrian rap song starts to play, the graphics flash, the automatic video playback begins and the midi score loads I've started to shop for a coffin. The really scary thing about this trend is that there is a whole generation of young people that have developed the "I'm gonna serve up web tomfoolery to you weather you like it or not" school of design. When these over enthusiastic young designers come to power on the web we're in for trouble. I forsee chaos when every house hold has to have a fiber optic trunk line the diameter of a two hundred year old oak installed to handle the ten quadrillion gigabits of butterfly backgrounds that are roaring down the web whenever we click on a page. Boy do the ladies love the butterflies.
Don't worry, I realize that the male equivalent in over design is even worse. I guess it boils down to soft porn, speed metal and explosions.
Well I'm off to build a butterfly house, sew up a butterfly coat and teach my two year old son to say the word Lepidoptera while winking to prepare him for the teenage battle for the attention of the fairer sex.
Oh yeah, in the end the monkey ends up sitting on a fence post, with his throbbing head in his hands and Uncle Jack says "I told you not to order the sloe gin fizz!"
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