Somebody Save Jackie Chan!

In the mid-nineties, I was dragged to an art-house movie theater by a friend to see some Hong Kong Kung Fu films. We sat through Drunken Master II and Super Cop 2. I was blown away. The movies were funny, touching, and had kick-ass (literally) fight scenes. I came out of that theater with a new hero—Jackie Chan.

Oh Jackie, what hath Hollywood done to you? Rush Hour 3 is released today, but I won’t be in line for that stinker. Chan brought a great comic sense to martial arts films. Bruce Lee was the master, and Jet Li does that leg split thing, but only Jackie Chan brought a intentional sense of humor that martial arts films need so badly.

When I saw him all those years ago, I thought, what is Hollywood waiting for? What I forgot was the complete lack of cojones Hollywood has. Let’s look at Chan’s American films: the Rush Hour series, Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, and other embarrassments. What is the problem here? The studios are too timid to let Chan man his own film. They pair him up with Chris Tucker, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Love Hewitt?!? Oh the humanity.

He still makes Hong Kong films, and I’m sure they use his talents much more then the American films do. I just wish to God they would write a film that is tailored to his talents. Let’s look at the reviewers say about Rush Hour 3. Here’s the New York Times review:

Given how much pleasure both have provided over the years, especially Mr. Chan, here’s hoping they were paid by the truckload. Mind you, it would be nice if they could find mainstream projects that didn’t insist that the only way an Asian man and an African-American man can hold the screen together is if they engage in mutual abasement and self-humiliation. It would be nicer still if Mr. Chan didn’t have to play the sexual neuter and Mr. Tucker stopped popping his eyeballs.

And here is Salon.com’s review:

But it's frustrating that no Hollywood…has been able to showcase his subtler qualities as a comic performer. Tucker and Chan are a strange mix to begin with, and not just for the dumb, obvious reason: Tucker is an overbearing actor, the kind who'll run off with every big line without even really intending to. Chan is a charming and wonderful comic actor, but he needs room to breathe, and that's the last thing Tucker is capable of giving. So while Tucker grabs laughs with the silliest, most obvious gags -- he woos Genevieve, stroking her skin and murmuring "Jay tam!" and "Voolay voo!" -- Chan is most often left looking as if he doesn't know what movie he has stumbled into. No one has bothered to write a real scene for him, and that's a drag.

That is a drag. Tucker is lucky that Chan is around. Who would pay to see him screech like he does? Chan is getting older. I don’t see how he can do his stunts much longer. If Hollywood is smart, they would scan the world looking for the next Jackie Chan. But in the meantime, let this man star in his own vehicle for the love of sweet and sour Jesus.

Oh Yes It's Ladies' Night and the Litigation is Right

Have you ever see that news guy on ABC named John Stossel? He’s got a mustache, and he’s a libertarian (read: Republican who likes drugs and sex) and he does these condescending news reports in which he exposes some falsehood. Yeah, that guy.

He’s a tool.

Anyway, ABC News has this report of people suing bars over ladies’ night. The lawyer (and it’s always the lone lawyer bringing these suits) is claiming ladies’ nights at bars discriminate based on gender and are illegal.

Roy Den Hollander is a New York lawyer who says Ladies' Night drinks and admission specials are unconstitutional, and he says he's suffered personally. Hollander is also a graduate of Columbia Business School and seems like a guy who should be able to get into a decent bar and afford the drinks. So what irks him?

"I'm tired of having my rights violated and being treated as a second-class citizen," said Hollander, who is seeking class-action status for his suit in federal court.

Sigh. Okay, let’s continue with the article:

Tim Gleason, general manager of the China Club in New York, calls Hollander's complaint "pathetic" and echoes other club owners who argue that the discounts actually help both sexes by balancing out the ratio between men and women. Nevermind that some men are more than happy to pay for inequality in the ratio department.

Yes, that’s true. What will Hollander counter with?

In court papers, he cites a 1970 case against a bar called McSorley's Old Ale House. The ruling in the case struck down a policy excluding women, claiming it violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.

I’ve been to McSorely’s. It’s a great bar, but not a good comparison. Today’s bars aren’t excluding men, only giving discounts to women:

Club owners maintain that Ladies' Night is not a policy of exclusion, but rather an economic enticement to increase business and satisfy their customers. They say the marketplace dictates whether the promotions are abandoned, not the courts.

And Hollander shoots back with fratboy logic:

But, Hollander said these perks do not justify discriminatory prices because the same beneficial end could be achieved by charging men less or equal to the amount women are charged.

"Each guy that walks into that club will have more money to buy her a drink, and the more she drinks, the more fun she and the guys will have," he said.

Okay, so Hollander is wasting tax money and court resources. Normally I would bag on this guy for being so lame and then Stossel does a commentary on it, and I hate John Stossel. ABC News apparently will hire anybody. Here is Stossel on how ladies's night is actually against the law:

…It IS against the law — which ought to make us think about how many laws we have. Ladies' night is a long and useful tradition, but activists have actually succeeded in getting them banned in more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia.

Stossel is saying that discrimination law is one too many. Then he says ladies’ night is long and useful. Long and useful? Ladies’ night? Starting in the 1970s is not long and it’s useful only to greedy bar owners. Here’s a thought, don’t charge to get into your lame meat market. Unless you have live music, you shouldn’t charge to get into your bar. And really, in meat market bars, women rarely buy their own drinks anyway, No need for discounts.

Some people go to bars to relax and see friends. Pubs are social centers. Some go to bars to see sports. Have you ever been to a bar with six television screens? Some people go to bars to get hammered. That’s what they are there for. Some go to dance and see live music.

And yes, some go to bars to get laid. Some people go specifically to get laid. These are the lamest bars of all. Why? Because there is a palpable sadness in the air at meat markets. Desperation and booze don’t walk so well together. And if a place has to bribe women to get them to come down that makes it all the more seedy and sad.

So, why I think it’s a wasteful use of the court, I won’t miss ladies’ night. It’s dated anyway. Women don’t need encouragement to hit the bars. Sorry, Kool and the Gang. Back to you, Stossel, ya tool.

I'll Have a Large Popcorn and a Dry Martini

Every Sunday, my whole family would go to the movies. While the good Mormon families of Utah would do whatever good Mormon families do on Sundays—perhaps playing basketball or patching up their Mormon underwear—we would be munching popcorn and taking in everything from Star Wars to Barry Lyndon.

Now days, I rarely go to the movies. I love the experience, but somehow I rarely make it past the front doors of the multiplex. There are a variety of reasons: my friends aren’t into the same movies I am into; the movies suck; it’s easier to watch DVDs at home; tickets are pretty expensive; and there are so many other things that attract my attention.

The movie offerings are pretty sad indeed. Sequels, especially third and fourth installments are pretty dreadful, but studios love ‘em. This summer we have sequels to Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Bruce Almighty, Shrek, Harry Potter, and The Bourne Indentity. Of which I have seen none. We’ve also been treated to another Michael Bay schlockfest, Transformers. I’d rather bathe in hot coals than see a Michael Bay film. Anyone who has seen action done so beautifully in a Hong Kong action films cannot sit through the close-ups and quick cuts of a Bay brain ache.

Apparently few summer movies have legs and they drop in sales considerably after the first week. A lot of this is due to the huge amount of blockbuster films released every week. How many blocks can you bust when you’re gone from the theater in a week? Of course this is business and the money supposedly lies in catching the attention of teens and twenty-year olds.

Thankfully there is another way of thinking. There is a theater in Los Angeles that might be on to something:

The lobby contains a restaurant, a bar, and a book-and-gift shop. Before the movie, people hang out and have a drink or leaf through a hot new novel or a movie-star biography. The rest rooms are spotless, and the concession stand serves delicious coffee. All the seats are reserved, and they are plush, with plenty of legroom. The steeply raked auditorium is dark, and insulated from the sound of the other theatres in the same multiplex. Is this some sort of upper-bourgeois dream of the great good place? A padded cell for wealthy movie nuts? No, it’s an actual multiplex, the ArcLight, on Sunset Boulevard near Vine.

The idea of user-friendly theatres may be catching on. Sumner Redstone’s daughter Shari, the president of National Amusements, the family-owned theatre business, has vowed to convert half the lobbies of the chain’s hundred and nineteen theatres to social spaces with comfortable lounges, and to build more. Martinis will be served; newspapers and magazines will be offered. If theatres go in this Starbucks-plus-cocktails direction, the older audience might come back, with a positive effect on filmmaking, and the value of the movies as an art form and an experience could be preserved. After you are seated at the ArcLight, an usher standing at the front of the auditorium tells you who wrote and directed the movie and how long it is. He promises that he and another usher will stay for a while to make sure that the projection and the sound are up to snuff. There are no advertisements following his speech, and only four coming attractions. The movie begins, and you are utterly lost in it.

This is the way to go. I would go to movies a lot more often if they served martinis with Hendrick’s gin. It becomes an experience. I think people are hungry for social spaces, especially in suburban areas where isolation comes too easily. This is why Starbuck’s coffeshops are so successful; people crave that social area. And if movies theaters have good coffee (unlike Starbucks), good food, good drinks, good books and good movies, Hollywood would find their movies sprouting legs and running marathons.

Starring Zack Braff as King Lear

I felt confusion and then pique when Scatman Crothers received an axe to his stomach. As a preteen in the theater watching The Shining, I thought I knew the story. I read a whole lotta Stephen King as a kid and when Scatman gets offed by Jack Nicholson, I was offended that Stanley Kubrick decided to kill off one of the heroes of the book. What I didn’t understand then was this was a Kubrick film and not a King book.

Richard Schickel writes about Hollywood adapting movies from books in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. You can read it here, but let me summarize: Hollywood improves low culture books, ruins high culture books and tries to capture middle brow books like Harry Potter and Gone with the Wind. He also thinks movies are closest to Victorian literature, in that they are narrative-driven.

Although he doesn’t say it, I assume he meant standard-fare movies, movies for unwashed masses at the multiplex. There are lots of movies out there that are not narrative-driven. Besides famous foreign art films like Breathless and La Doche Vita, there are American films like Waking Life, Magnolia, and perhaps the entire oeuvre of Robert Altman.

Unlike in my pre-teen years, I now believe novels and movies to be apples and oranges. Charlie Kaufman certainly proved that with his film, Adaptation, which has zip to do about orchid thieves. I prefer to movies to change the book, otherwise I might as well stay home. Silence of the Lambs was so thoroughly like the book that I was bored. They should carry the spirit of the book. The movie Troy was a complete stranger to Homer’s Iliad, but it certainly nailed the hubris and pointlessness of the battle. I could have done without the prerequisite “NOooooooo” scene, in which the hero cries out when he sees a friend about to be hurt, but petulant Pitt seemed as narcissistic as Achilles ever could be.

Of course it would take a director with balls as big as church bells to do something drastically different to the Harry Potter franchise. The Potter books and movies are fine entertainment, but I giggle like a little girl thinking of what a maverick director like Kubrick or a visual artist like Mathew Barney, or a whackjob like Alejandro Jodorowsky could do to a Potter film.

But people are comforted by predictability. Even French movies are easy to predict—a main character will die. Our lives governed by enough chaos as is, a little celluloid familiarity is a good thing I suppose. So Harry Potter will do exactly as the book has plotted him to do. But I recommend only reading books that can’t possibly be turned into movies. Gertrude Stein, anyone?

We Need Quality! Send In the Nuge!

Rupert Murdoch, media mogul, evil genius, right-wing propagandist, is the highest bidder for Dow Jones and its flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ is upset over this because of Murdoch’s meddling and obsequiousness towards China. They fear Murdoch will ruin one of the best newspapers in the world. And they are right. Murdoch has a history of turning his news outlets into propaganda machines. They spew faux-populist crap and call it fair and balanced. Murdoch also bends over backwards not to insult totalitarian China, killing book deals that criticize China’s repressive government all in the name of China’s currency: yuan.

Now the reporting of the WSJ is excellent. Their news section is one of the finest in the world. The opinion section is shite. Ayn Randian belief in unregulated markets and knee-jerk conservative values rule the opinion pages. While the supposedly liberal bastion New York Times has conservative pundits such as David Brooks, the WSJ opinion section has no such balance. And apparently they don’t care much about facts or logic. As long as you bleat their ideology, they will print your ravings.

Case in point: the Nuge. Ted Nugent, has-been rocker, famous for being drug free and his love of hunting, wrote an editorial slamming the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Why would the stuffy staff of the WSJ call upon the Nuge to write an editorial is beyond me. Perhaps they love all those paeans to pussy that Nugent wrote, such as “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.” And the Nuge delivers on the hysterical prose:

Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.

Actually I think they were turned off by the Vietnam war, the repression and unhappiness of their parents and what a complete lie the American Dream is, unless your Scooter Libby. He then bemoans the death of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin due to drugs. I can’t argue with that. And then he casually drops a lie:

Other musical geniuses such as Jim Morrison and Mama Cass would also be dead due to drugs within a few short years. The bodies of chemical-infested, brain-dead liberal deniers continue to stack up like cordwood.

Morrison’s death remains a bit of a mystery because no autopsy was done on it. He certainly was no stranger to drugs, but more than likely, Morrison died due to his enormous drinking habit, and although alcohol is a drug, hippies for the most part rejected alcohol. Mama Cass died from a heart attack brought on by obesity, a true American, Midwest, American-Values problem. (No, she didn’t choke on a ham sandwich.) Also, the term liberal deniers make it sound like someone denying liberals, but clear grammar and logic is not the Nuge’s forte.

Then he gives a powerful description of what he went through in those turbulent times:

I literally had to step over stoned, drooling fans, band mates, concert promoters and staff to pursue my musical American Dream throughout the 1960s and 1970s. I flushed more dope and cocaine down backstage toilets than I care to remember. In utter frustration I was even forced to punch my way through violent dopers on occasion.

I love this image: Terrible Ted punching his way through a zombie force of drooling drugged out hippies. Say Ted, didn’t you sing “The stakes are high and so am I” in your song, “Free For All”? Oh I see, you can exploit drug use in your songs but you didn’t use them.

And it seems being stone cold sober means you get to print lies with the imprinteur of the WSJ:

The 1960s, a generation that wanted to hold hands, give peace a chance, smoke dope and change the world, changed it all right: for the worse. America is still suffering the horrible consequences of hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect.

A quick study of social statistics before and after the 1960s is quite telling. The rising rates of divorce, high school drop outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes, is dramatic. The "if it feels good, do it" lifestyle born of the 1960s has proved to be destructive and deadly.

Did you get that, folks? Hippies smoking rag weed cause divorce, kids leaving school, drug use, abortion, STDs, crime, more government and taxes. Where are these statistics, Ted? I’m guessing he pulled them out of his ass. All these things have risen along with our population. Not to mention these things existed well before the 1960s. Why do conservatives look to the past with rose-colored glasses? I’d also like to point out we’ve had more conservative leadership since the 1960s then liberal, and I think the government has more power then the hippies of Haight Street.

He goes on:

So now, 40 years later, there are actually people who want to celebrate the anniversary of the Summer of Drugs. Hippies are once again descending on ultra-liberal San Francisco--a city that once wanted to give shopping carts to the homeless--to celebrate and try to remember their dopey days of youth when so many of their musical heroes and friends long ago assumed room temperature by "partying" themselves to death. Nice.

Shopping carts to the homeless? Those crazy, Godless San Franciscans! Room temperature? You would think a hunter could come up with a better metaphor than that for death. God knows, he has caused a whole lot of death. Then Nugent ends his piece:

There is a saying that if you can remember the 1960s, you were not there. I was there and remember the decade in vivid, ugly detail. I remember its toxic underbelly excess because I was caught in the vortex of the music revolution that was sweeping the country, and because my radar was fine-tuned thanks to a clean and sober lifestyle.

If your clean and sober lifestyle lead to the formation of your shit-sucking band, Damn Yankees then pass the joint, Ted. And WSJ, don’t worry about Murdoch buying your paper. If the Nuge is your idea of high journalistic standards, Rupert can only make things better.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: The Attic

On Saturday night, I saw a friend perform in a Hip Hop dance show. Hip Hop dance is fluid movements, punctuated with sharp stops symbolizing major attitude. You definitely do not want to get into these people’s grills. My friend is an excellent dancer, and his time on stage was woefully short. After the show, we retired to a bar a couple of storefronts away from the theater. I’ve never heard of The Attic, but San Francisco never ceases to surprise me.

The Attic resembles many hipster bars in the Mission. The interior is painted in black, and the paint job looks sloppy, as if the painters were hitting the hooch as they worked. The entrance is like a long narrow hallway with the bar on one side. In the back is a bigger room with booths and tables. Horror movie posters sporadically line the walls. A few peculiar paintings hang on the wall. One has a giant head of a conquistador floating above a harbor, very strange. We sat in a booth, whose seats seemed entirely covered in duct tape.

We sat and drank and made fun of the hipsters. As the title implies, hipsters try to stay hip by wearing unusual clothes. I knew one guy that wore women’s pants and clown shoes?!? I kept making fun of two guys wearing bright-red tuques, a knitted hat they wear in Canada because it’s so freaking cold there. I am way too lazy to dress hip. I look like a preppy that has gone to seed. A D.J. started spinning records of hard rock bands from the seventies and eighties. I complimented him on a Pat Travers choice; I haven’t heard Travers in a long time. He also played Saga, another band I haven’t heard in some time.

On going to the bathroom, I noticed a flyer for a drink special: Canada night, all Canadian whisky and beer discounted. Hmm, I thought, they have a Canadian night, how hipster-ish. When I returned to the booth, they handed out the words to “Oh Canada” in English and in Québécois French. Ah, the light bulb appeared over my head. Sunday must be Canada’s Independence Day or whatever they celebrate since they are still under England’s queen. That’s why people are wearing the tuques. That’s why the D.J. is playing Pat Travers, Saga, Rush, April Wine, and Triumph. Canada did put out some fine hard rock bands.

At midnight, we sang “Oh Canada” along with a recorded version by Céline Dion. I pounded my chest, just like the screecher from up North. With the exception of a friend who went to camp up north and knew the melody, we butchered the melody. Of course, this is a perfect example of hipster-ness, a mix of fascination, adulation and a huge dose of irony. They are making fun of Canada while worshipping it. While annoying as that is, it is also fun. It sure beats a normal night of drinking. And it is surely more fun then drinking in a Marina bar, watching the aging frat boys and sorority girls do the sad mating dance they do.

Yes, Please Jump

I hate Van Halen. I spent some formative years in the suburbs of San Francisco, when Van Halen ruled the radio dial along with a couple other bands. It’s not like I started hating them when Sammy Hagar took over vocal duties or even when they switched to synthesizers. No, I pretty much hated them from the very get go. Of course, since my friends liked them and the radio played their crap nonstop, I know a whole lot of their catalogue. So it’s not like I don’t know their music.

And to give proper respect, Eddie Van Halen really pioneered a guitar style, a style that was de rigueur during the eighties—neck tapping. Neck tapping is when you take your picking finger and tap down notes on the fretboard while simultaneously hitting notes with your regular playing hand. You’re basically hitting more notes without picking them, by tapping the notes out instead. It sounds very classical. Every cock rock band from that period had some prettified guitarist in torn nylons and a bouffant hairdo tapping away on his guitar. Thankfully no one taps anymore, less they immediately date themselves circa 1982.

David Lee Roth was a big reason for my loathing. He always reminded me of the non-too-bright guy who thought he was god’s gift to everybody. He could belt out a song, and their version of “Ice Cream Man” is actually pretty good. But Roth is made of cream cheese. He has a showman in him that’s partially vaudeville but mostly Vegas. His idea of wit is from Panama when he tells the woman/car object, “you reach down, between my legs…(here he pauses for effect) ease the seat back.” I’m sure there was a 12 year old who laughed his ass of at that one. I kept waiting for the funnier line. It never came.

But what really bugged me was the lack of a bassist in the band. I played bass for 15 years, and sometimes still take my bass out for a run. I grew up with John Entwistle of The Who, Chris Squire of Yes, and Geddy Lee of Rush, powerhouse players who could be fast, melodic, groovy and impressive. So hearing the single note bass line for “Running with the Devil” made me cringe with the lack of imagination. Not that you need to have the bass be intricate. It’s just every Van Halen song has a retarded bass line. I hear Michael Anthony is a nice guy. He must be cuz he’s a lousy bassist. Eddie Van Halen has said in interviews he didn’t want a bassist to compete with, but seriously it’s like Carl Lewis racing against Stephen Hawking.

Of course, in the end, it doesn’t matter much. Music, much more then other art, is subjective. I have MP3s of shameful music that I grew up with and love but couldn’t defend in a debate. I heard that music at a time before my critical mind took form, so hearing that music now brings a goofy smile to lips. So if you love Van Halen, I can understand. Hell, if you love Milli Vanilli or Britney Spears or Dave Mathews or other stuff that makes me want to scrape out my eyes with a dull spoon, I can’t say you’re wrong. You like what ‘cha like. Just don’t man the stereo at the party, cuz you will clear the place out.

Sun Dappled and Scorned

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
—Dylan Thomas, “I See the Boys of Summer”

If you want to read an example of reporting with an obvious bias, exposed like a canine baring his sharp teeth, read this article about guys in their 40s renting a beach house in the Hamptons.

From Bar Harbor, Me., to Virginia Beach, there is a particular boy of summer who can be found preserving a postcollege life decades past his undergraduate days. While most party-oriented summer share houses are filled with single people in their 20s and early 30s, who seek weekends of beachside fun for several seasons before moving on to the more sober pleasures of marriage, a few share houses include men with more than 40 summers under their trunks.

These surfside Peter Pans survey each summer’s crop of young women on the sand like an incoming class of freshman co-eds on the quad. Theirs can be a bittersweet existence, where the highs of the evening’s party are occasionally doused by the recognition that matrimony and fatherhood may be slipping away with each relationship that dissipates on a cool September wind.

You can practically here the tisk tisk in the reporter’s tone. I kept thinking the writer’s name, Allen Salkin was a pseudonym for that douche bag, Dr. Phil. The assumption here is that matrimony and fatherhood is the endgame, that the sober pleasures of marriage is the zenith of life. This is a lie, unfortunately. While marriage and fatherhood can be wonderful in themselves, they are not the only choice in life. Believe it or not, you can have a happy life without them. And sometimes marriage and children can make you miserable.

But Salkin continues to beat a dead horse:

As he sipped beer in the fading light of the sun disappearing behind the Fire Island Lighthouse, Mr. Mahony, whose light brown hair is flecked with gray, considered how his life had brought him here tonight, one of the oldest people in a crowd drinking Heineken from plastic cups. “Relationships I thought were going to last didn’t last,” he said. “And to tell you the truth, the past five years, the older I get the shorter the relationships get, and now it’s like a game of musical chairs. There’s nobody left. It’s sad.”

People on death row contemplate how their life brought them to this point. Guys drinking crappy beer while looking at pretty girls in bikinis do not. Oh, and, Mahony, there are plenty of women out there of every age looking for long term relationships. Don’t give up, my gray-flecked friend.

Here is the Dr. Phil part, in which Salkin brings in a woman to judge:

There is something about the four-oh that turns many women off summer playboys. Adrienne Matt, 38, a strategist at an advertising agency, said she arrived for her first weekend at a Fire Island house a few years ago to find it was being run by a man in his 40s, who had done his best to fill the rooms with “vapid, insipid women.”

“It was disgusting,” she said. “He ran the house only to have sex with 25-year-old girls.”

One wonders if Ms. Matt considers older women and younger men hooking up disgusting as well, or for that matter, older and younger gay men and lesbians hooking up. If Matt was looking for intelligence and wit, perhaps she should have spent the weekend at a literary salon instead of a beach house. I can’t imagine her being much fun since she attacks both the women and the men, and comes off in the article as a shrew.

The article goes on with its braying, but I won’t bore you with that. The title of the article, “When the Boys of Summer Linger Till Autumn”, references the Dylan Thomas poem I quoted at the top of the post. Perhaps Salkin should have read the poem slower. The harsh narrator calls himself a son “of flint and pitch” (III, 5). Much like Salkin, he is not the kind of person who approves of fun. But Dylan himself knew fun quite well, and he lets the boys of summer reply:

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the country gardens for a wreath.
In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies,
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry.
O see the poles of promise in the boys.
(II, 13-24)

The images of the boys are light, nature, power and sex. The world of the critical narrator is where love’s muscle dies and kisses are broken like rocks in a quarry. I prefer the boy’s world of oceans and wreaths to the flint and pitch of the critic. While the poles of promise can be seen as a phallus, it’s a positive image nonetheless; the poles promise energy, sexual energy, energy that is preferable to staid boredom.

The Video Game and the Damage Done

Oh, I have my vices, yes I do. Fun little exercises in excess they are, but I couldn't call them addictions. Addiction is where you are so obsessed that you can't work and you can't sustain a relationship. Addiction is when you keep doing a formerly fun thing when the fun has drained out, leaving you with only grim repetition. And I have had addiction—one in which I killed and had magic powers and spent countless hours on. I'm referring to the video game, World of Warcraft.

It would take too long to describe the game and it would bore the bejesus out of you. Instead read this sympathetic article about WOW gold farmers in the New York Times Magazine. It explains an awful lot about the game.

The most illustrative term in the game is called grinding. Basically it's the little quests you do for points and game currency. WOW makes these jobs labor intensive. In order to accomplish a task you need a certain amount of skins, but not all the creatures you kill yield the skins, so you have to keep killing creatures. You have to grind away.

I have some friends who live an hour away. With the dawn of high-speed internet, we could hang out, drink beer and play games, while never leaving our respective houses. We'd play first person shooter games, like Tribes or civilization games like Age of Empires. The games were fun, but really it was the socializing, especially since we can talk over Skype.

And then a good friend, a friend who keeps up on the coolest games, brought WOW to the table. The creators of WOW, Blizzard Entertainment, understand how addiction starts in a social circle; Blizzard gives you a free credit card to give to a friend when you buy the game. The first one is always free. My friend gave me the card and the game to put on my computer. I was hooked.

I'm not whining; the game is amazing, a huge synthetic world, that even after months of playing, still had areas I had not seen. And it was fun. You really jump up in the beginning levels quickly. And there is a lot of eye candy and goofy names, and cool armor. I've made friends with people, whose real names are unknown to me. Believe me, there's a reason why there is around 8 million people playing this game.

But WOW is a great black hole of time. Even traveling in the game can take up to 10 minutes. Add the grinding, the goofing off, the deciding what to wear, and you end up sitting down for six-hour stretches. You babble WOW arcane trivia, while non-players try to hide their yawns. I've seen people spend more time in WOW than at their job. I've seen marriages get rocky over the game, and friendships turn cold. My wrists began to hurt, my eyesight turned weak, I had to stop. What was once fun was now repetitious.

My salvation came when my computer died. When it was fixed, I did not put WOW back on it. Now I go outside. I meet people. I even get laid once in a while. To tell the truth, I don't even miss it. It's a brilliant game, but the real world is satisfying enough.

Honey, I Shrunk the Porn

It was like coming across an old friend and not recognizing him or her at all. I was waiting for a haircut in the old style barbershop in my neighborhood. I perused the magazines and found Penthouse. Being that the Castro is a gay mecca, it’s a bit strange to find a nudie girl magazine, but these types of mags are a part of barbershops. So I flipped through it.

I sort of grew up with Penthouse. My brother would bring one home, or my friends might have few copies taken from Dad’s nightstand. Even back then I understood the hierarchy of the nudie magazine. Playboy was pretty but dull. Hustler was way sleazy. Every model had to be greased up for a Hustler shoot. I imagine they had a 10 gallon bucket of grease at the studio. Penthouse was a nice middle ground: they showed more than Playboy but had nicer models than Hustler. Back in the seventies, they showed genitalia. As a kid I poured over the pictures wondering at the model’s beauty, wondering what it would be like to have sex with them. At that age I wasn’t even masturbating yet, but I was intensely curious.

They had articles like Playboy, but they were more about sex. And there was the Penthouse Forum. The Forum was letters from readers describing their sexual adventures. It was all fake, of course. I had one of those Santa Clause/Tooth Fairy moments of clarity when I thought, hey, wait a minute, these stories sure are familiar. So people don’t quite have these random hookups described by the Forum writers, but I sure learned an arsenal of descriptive words: tits, bazongas, bodacious tatas, prick, dipstick and my personal favorite, raging manhood. Great name for a band if it’s not already taken.

So as I flipped through the Penthouse at the barbershop, I searched for any similarity to the mag of old. It’s a lot slimmer these days, and perhaps smaller too. The Forum was two letters only. The articles were all about stuff you could buy, or they were bullet points—lists of cool things, but not any interesting articles. Penthouse now resembles those stupid lad mags like Maxim or FHM, whose readership apparently has the attention span of gnat.

And strangely enough, Penthouse is coyer these days. I only saw a slight glimpse of genitalia. I don’t think I miss the gynecological photos they use to do, but it does seem a bit more tame. The pundits proclaim the pornification of society, but Penthouse is toning down the raunchiness. Of course, you can see all sorts of wild and wacky stuff on the internet for free, so to be coy is sort of a fresh idea. And, unlike Playboy, the women didn’t have breast implants.

But in the end, Penthouse was a dull read. I flipped through the entire magazine in 10 minutes. If you took the nudity out, you would have a minor Esquire magazine. But I suppose Penthouse will survive. Times change but the enjoyment of seeing naked people is eternal.

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

Every once in a while, sanity prevails. Americans are pretty hypocritical about many things, but at the top of the list is sexuality. And a subset of that is language about sexuality. To me words are just words, but to the F.C.C., words can cause everlasting damage. Obscenity by its very nature is subjective. It supposedly can't be defined, but the authorities know what it is when they see or hear it. But a U.S. Court of Appeals, said to Bush's F.C.C.—and I paraphrase—"Fuck you, buddy."

The opening paragraph of the New York Times article says it best:

"If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts."

Both fuckwads have uttered swear words or "fleeting obscenities." So why do television networks have to pay $325,000 when Bono (a good Catholic by the way) or Cher utters a swear word? The Bush administration feel they are above the law, of course, but this time the courts grew some balls and said no.

The F.C.C. hack gave his rebuttle:

“I completely disagree with the court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families,” he said. “The court says the commission is ‘divorced from reality.’ It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality.”

Nice touch about the families. Won't someone think of the children? I also like how he noted that the court was from New York. That's conservative code for Eastern liberal elites. I'm always amazed how people can do the most amoral things and then get heated up over words like cock, cunt and shit. It's as if they can accept the bad stuff they do, if they don't use words deemed offensive. It's also worth noting that words like nigger, faggot, chink, and the like are not deemed obscene only rude. You can be racist but not sexual or scatological.

Of course, like most moral controversies, the swear words are a distraction for the real problem: media monopolies. Bush's F.C.C. has been gutting regulations and now there is no local radio. Here in S.F. we are lucky enough to be a big market, so our D.J.s are local and talk about local issues. But smaller towns or even cities listen to D.J.s who aren't even in their own state. Music genres are rapidly expanding, but you wouldn't know it by listening to the radio. No wonder internet radio is so popular.

Strangely enough I believe that swear words should keep their power to shock, but not through fines. I'm sure the F.C.C. will take this to the conservative Supreme Court and the networks will lose. And in the end we'll all lose, although we'll keep on swearing. Fucking A, yes we will.

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers

Evidently there is an eternal battle between wine drinkers and beer drinkers. In that fight, we all know the beer drinkers will win because they hang out with the hell raisers. And although I love good wine, my heart belongs to beer. But, alas, according to a wonderful article in Slate, wine consumption is increasing while beer consumption is down. It's a great article, by the way, written by the well-named Field Maloney. Seriously, wouldn't you want to have a beer with some one named Field Maloney.

In a two page article, Maloney discusses trends, statistics, marketing, and history. I have no qualms with the article, but the beer he is talking about is mass produced beer, the macro-breweries. And even if beer sales are stagnating, craft beer sales (or micro-brews if you like) have increased. Maloney notes this in a side bar, but it seems a little disingenuous not to mention it in the main body of the article. But he makes some interesting points, such as:

Meanwhile, the American middle classes have fast become connoisseurs of everything—coffee, '80s Japanese garage-rock bands, environmentalist toilet paper. Now, Americans who want the exclusivity that connoisseurship offers but didn't want to seem like snobs can have it both ways. Beer's approachability became less of a virtue. Ironically, in the ultimate about-face, craft-brew drinkers lifted the language of wine. (Tasting notes for a pale ale from the Web site Beer Advocate: "Nose is floral, like orange blossoms, with some citric rind and soft apple.")

I disagree about the want for exclusivity. I think people like connoisseurship with beer because people are sensual creatures and a beer that tastes good is sensual, for me at least. I agree with Maloney that beer is enjoyed upfront as a way to get loaded, while wine has a pretension that it’s not about getting loaded, when in reality it is. If any one has traveled the wine country, first and foremost it’s about getting fucked up in a pastoral setting. But being a beer connoisseur is about the explosion of taste in your mouth. It really is a party in my mouth. I don’t care if you think I’m a snob. I’m not drinking beer (or wine for that matter) to show status; I’m drinking a good tasting beverage that makes me happy.

He then talks of beer marketers trying to entice this aficionado class of drinkers:

…beer marketers seem torn between broadening their appeal and energizing their base. But brand repositioning has to be at least somewhat convincing: In 2005, Anheuser-Busch released a malt liquor called Bistro 8, a "new fermented beverage created in collaboration with Master Chefs to complement Bistro Fare. Bistro 8 features the aromas of exotic fruits, spices and citrus.…" Bud executives pulled it.

Again, Maloney is only looking at the macro-breweries, who brew for money rather than love. Craft breweries don’t have to reposition because all of their beers can be paired with food, perhaps with a wider range of food. Anheuser-Busch tries to latch on every fad there is. One that struck me as incredible lame was something called B2E, pronounced Bee to the E. It’s caffeinated beer. Bud was trying to cash in on all those lame-os ordering vodka red bulls, another disgusting drink. I never tried B2E, but I’m sure it sucked. Vodka red bulls taste like children’s aspirin. Try the Irish coffee if you want to be wired and drunk. Or cocaine and martinis.

Maloney also talks of the uniqueness of wine:

The hallmark of beer is consistency: A brewer strives to make batch after batch of Pilsener so it tastes the same—and often succeeds without much difficulty. Wine is more variable: The sugar levels and tannins and acidity of the grapes fluctuate from year to year, and so does the character of the resulting wines. This explains why the whole concept of vintages is so central to wine but largely absent from beer.

Again: macro-brews. I really wish he would make that distinction. Belgium beers are usually fermenting in the bottle. And most craft beers have different tastes batch to batch. Macro-brews try hard to have consistency, much like McDonald’s french fries.

But in the end he is right. Americans are becoming more white collar and turning away from beer. Here in S.F., I am separated from the rest of the country. Every bar has a great selection of local and foreign craft brews. Our supermarkets have a wide choice too. Sometimes I assume people have stopped drinking crappy, tasteless beer, but in the heartland, Joe Six Pack is picking up a cheap 12ver which he’ll drink and then beat the wife or dog. Harsh I know, but it’s true. Better beer equals peace love and understanding. Now stop whining.

Build It and They Will Lynch Your Ass

My God, a whole lotta stuff to blog about. First thing:

In the New Yorker, there is an amusing tidbit about tee-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" that Gehry himself likes and buys to give to friends. What caught my eye was this line:

“Yeah,” [Gehry] said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary..."

When one is a child, does one imagine a candlelight vigil being held against you when you grow up? Who has such passion against architecture? Apparently we do. When Jasper O'Farrell designed Market Street here in San Francisco, he was almost lynched. I pulled this next quotation off of Wikipedia, but I have read it before in other histories of S. F. so I can vouch for its veracity. It comes from a book called Forgotten Pioneers by T.F. Pendergast:

"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."

Ooh, tough crowd. The Transamerica Building is iconic. It's hard to think of downtown S.F. without its pointy little head, but even the great Herb Caen was against it...until he got used to it. We all have to share this space here on earth, so you better not ruffle feathers. But in not ruffling you have some pretty lame architecture. The square boxes of glass and concrete, the international style, is everywhere. I suppose it is cheap and easy and stable but so very dull. When the Art Deco buildings peek out from beneath the behemoth skyscrapers, they resemble Cinderella, outshining her ugly stepsisters. So I wish we had more weird Gehry type of buildings. Same old argument I guess: More beauty please, even if it is weird beauty.

So Ann Coulter and a Priest Walk Into a Gay Bar...

I'd like to think that comedy and politics are like oil and water, but that's not a correct similie. Comedians have always found a rich vein of comedy in politics. But politicos are not funny. Watching a politician interviewed on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report is fun because you're seeing professional comedians riff during an interview. But while the politician is trying to spin or look good to younger viewers, they mostly look uncomfortable. You might get lucky and see a politico brought down a peg or two if Stewart of Colbert are in a devilish mood, but it's nothing illuminating.

President Bush cracks jokes all the time; there are just not funny. At all. Most of the time, his jokes are surreal, having no apparent reference. But those folks at his extremely-inclusive rallies laugh like he was a sharpest wit in the room. Here's one quotation:

"I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck. That's a pretty cool first name, isn't it, Mayo. Pass the Mayo."

I think people laugh because he is the POTUS. Have you ever laughed at your boss' joke and then walked away wondering why you laughed? There is an inborn need to please your superiors, which means laughing at unfunny jokes. If Bush was a stranger at a barbeque and made a joke like that he would be met with an awkward silence.

Comedy definitely does not mix with ideology. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter say they are making jokes, but to have insults rise above pettiness, they have to be funny. Calling someone a femi-nazi or a fag isn't really funny for anyone over twelve. Playing on someone's fear and hate doesn't make for wit. The picture above comes from a right-wing tee-shirt company. Nuke the Moon? Tee-shirt jokes, like bumper stickers are not that funny.

And it's not just the right-wing either. I once spent a dull night watching a left-wing feminist comedy troop. Not funny. At all. You have to be a comedian before any ideology. I think Jon Stewart senses this; when his audience clearly hates the right-wing blowhard, he keeps them in line, avoiding easy jokes that his lefty audience would love. He senses that once you give yourself to ideology it becomes funny only to the true believers, and even then they are laughing out of hate and not true humor. Colbert turns ideology on its ear with his spot-on satire, but his show's heart is pure comedy rather than scathing left-wing anger.

What is funny is the picture of the models the tee-shirt company uses to sell their wares. I'm guessing they are the daughters of the owner. They are blonde, blue-eyed, and holding weapons. They're like little Ann Coulters before they start starving themselves. The weapons they are holding is a Joycean epiphany, a little detail that illuminates the weird mix of fear, paranoia, violence and Aryan sex appeal that the right cling too. Keep those weapons handy, kids; the crazed, multi-kulti, gay socialists want to take you away and make you bake pot cookies for Medea Benjamin’s presidential campaign.

You Left the Bodies!!

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

—Emily Dickinson

According to the New York Times, cemeteries are raising money for upkeep in novel ways. The gravesites are throwing dinner parties, giving tours, charging dog owners, and my favorite, hosting Halloween parties. As a kid, I loved going to cemeteries and hanging out. They had an eerie sense that I liked, along with cool sculptures, a sense of history, and narratives—sometimes happy as an old couple buried together and sometimes sad, like a child’s tombstone with marble cherubs hovering about.

The cemeteries are also looking for future inhabitants. The article quotes a president of a cemetery board, “We want them to think, ‘Wow, I think I’d like to spend my eternity here,’ ” Ms. Page said of efforts to lure visitors. “It’s a way of saying, ‘We would love you to stay with us permanently.’ ”

One thinks of little Danny Torrance in The Shining meeting the ghosts of the slaughtered twins in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel: “Come play with us, Danny...forever and ever and ever!”

When I die, I’d rather be cremated and cast to the wind, which, according to the article, is how most Americans die, the cremation part anyway. Like golf courses, cemeteries seem like a waste of space, space that would serve better as a public park. You’re dead, so why should you care if you have an expensive headstone? Ah, but people are vain. Here’s another quotation from the article:

Forest Lawn in Buffalo spent $1.2 million to erect the Blue Sky mausoleum, a spare design by Frank Lloyd Wright, with 24 crypts from $125,000 to $300,000. Each crypt-owner will receive a Steuben glass sculpture of their eternal home-in-waiting. “It’s about exclusivity,” Mr. Dispenza of Forest Lawn said. “It’s about being one of the 24.”

What could be put towards housing for homeless goes to some schmuck’s corpse. Will your rotting wrist have a Rolex? Of course, this is not new. The great pyramids are testament to man’s vanity. And famous people’s graves are very popular with tourists. I have been to Père-Lachaise and seen Jim Morrison’s grave. It’s sad site indeed, with graffiti and broken wine bottles. And maybe someday, I’ll go to the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich to have a glass of Swiss white wine at James Joyce’s gravesite. A pointless exercise, really. A walking tour of Dublin would be a better way to pay respect to the master.

So cemeteries are for the living and not the dead. Wouldn’t a photograph work just as well? Old letters? Perhaps an old video? We don’t have to go as far as Faulkner’s Emily Grierson in “A Rose For Emily”, but there must be a better way to pay our respect and cherish a memory rather than the expensive and wasteful cemeteries. Didn’t Jessica Mitford teach us anything?

That said, I would love to go to a Halloween party in a cemetery. That would be too cool.

It's an American Dream...Includes Indians Too

The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love is upon us, and the retrospective articles are appearing. Joel Selvin is writing a series of articles for the SF Chronicle. Selvin is a good journalist, and although it's hard to capture the zeitgeist of that time within the confines of a newspaper article, he does a good job. The Summer of Love was centered on the Haight neighborhood. It occurred one year before I was born, so all I have is the memory of the folks who were there. But I see what's become of the Haight, and I know modern hippies. Time has not been kind to either.

Of course, the Summer of Love was a media construct that died even before it started. As a rule of thumb, if you are reading about a happening in the media, it's generally dead. Such is the nature of the hip and cool: ethereal wisps that fall apart in your hands. The earlier groovy folks of the pre-67 Haight were replaced by something much more American. Selvin puts it this way:

But they didn't turn out to be the literate beatniks and poetic artists who had come out earlier. These kids were squalid, ragged castoffs and, as they crowded the sidewalks of Haight Street night and day, they came to be known as street people.

Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead says in his own mixed-metaphor way, “We would come together for celebrations and stuff like that, and it was a lot of fun. But starting around June, the creativity of the scene was starting to be piled over by just having to batten down the hatches, bar your doors and windows 'cause there were speed freaks on the street.”

Good old speed. Invented by the Germans and beloved by certain Sci-Fi novelists to marathon sex tweakers. And it’s safe to say those speedy street people are still on the Haight. I’m sure the original tweaks are dead, but young ones take their place. They sit on the sidewalk with their dreadlocks and puppies and ragged army clothes asking for spare change, hitting on the yuppie chicks and generally smelling less than sweet. I can’t say they are hippies. They resemble Mad Max Thunderdome desert rats. None of the ideas of revolution and utopia sweep their minds.

The Haight itself is now one big shopping mall. You won’t find real hippies, but for a steep price you can dress like one. Don’t get me wrong, I like the street. It has nice bars and restaurants, and Milk has some good Hip Hop shows, but there is not much life in the place when the sun goes down and the shoppers leave.

And the hippies that I’ve known in my life don’t really follow the ideals of their elders. They are left-wing, but most of them are not active in politics. They are attracted to pot and music. You would hope for some laid back and passionate guys, literate beatniks and poetic artists, but instead you have neurotic stoners.

Maybe there never was the perfect ideal, only pale shadows, but the general ideas of the counterculture were great. Freedom and equality, love and forgiveness, art and sensuality are all ideals to live up to, but it takes more than a joint and a flowery shirt. If the Summer of Love teaches anything, it teaches that we keep trying for utopias, even if they crash like a tweaker after a three-day binge.

Breathless and Paralyzed

I sit here, paralyzed at the keyboard. I'm trying to connect the dots of existentialism. But instead of making a leap of faith towards god, or becoming an ubermench, or being nauseated by a tree root, or embracing Marxism as the solution, I'm barely moving.

I watched Jean-Luc Godard's À Bout de Souffle, otherwise known as Breathless, last night. Besides being the usual French tale of love and death sans plot, it was full of dialogue such as:

"I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy."

"I'm tired. I'm going to die."

"When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other."

Godard's existential dialogue is similar to Ingmar Bergman's work. To my contemporary ear, they sound cliché and pretentious. They've also been widely parodied. Woody Allen's comedy, Love and Death, turns this type of dialogue into a great joke:

Russian gentleman: So who is to say what is moral?
Sonja: Morality is subjective.
Russian gentleman: Subjectivity is objective.
Sonja: Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality.
Russian gentleman: Not as an essential extension of ontological existence.
Sonja: Can we not talk about sex so much?

I can only appreciate existentialism through art. As brilliant as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre are, their writing doesn't create empathy. Even Sartre's plays are like the dialogue of Breathless: interesting, but not empathetic. But the literary approaches are wonderful, Albert Camus' The Stranger, Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, and, for me, John Barth's The End of the Road not only illuminate existentialism, but they bring it home to me. Especially the idea of paralysis.

James Joyce talked of Irish paralysis in Dubliners, but he saw it as an Irish response to the repression of religion, England, and provincialism. The existentialists see paralysis as alienation from being authentic. We can't be authentic because we identify ourselves through other people's eyes. When one realizes that everything is subjective according to a group belief and not our own, we become paralyzed by the thought that nothing matters. Nihilsm, really.

I read that Beckett would lie in bed all day. When Jacob Homer, in Barth's End of the Road, sits paralyzed in a train station for a full day, I fully empathized. I feel that paralysis myself, especially working in a corporate environment. This is a go-go world, where the powerful people are nonstop 24/7/365 getting things done. And when those things are done, there are more things to do. For me, pushing paper is hardly an incentive to get out of bed. Homer Simpson solves this dilemma by posting pictures of his daughter at his desk. I don't have children, nor expect any soon. And I'm not sure children can stop existential paralysis. The only thing that can bring action is boredom and sex. Boredom is the lack of interest for a restless mind and sex is a basic drive. So I guess the key to life is boredom and sex. I have to admit, I've never been bored by sex, and I will definitely get out of bed for it. Although it's better in bed.

Museum Guitars

At a public auction, a Stradivarius violin sold for $3,544,000. I don’t play violin, but supposedly the sound of a Stradivarius would be like Jesus giving you a back massage. He does have awfully big hands. On the more proletarian front, a 1959 Gibson Les Paul can go for $400,000. You could trade one Stradivarius for seven Les Pauls. But still almost half a million dollars is a bit high for the average musician. The sound of a Les Paul is a nice fat tone made very popular by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Tom Scholz of Boston. In fact, Scholz’s distinct tone is how I think of Les Pauls. They are forever trapped as the guitar solo in “More Than a Feeling.” God rest Bradley Delp.

Not only did these guy perfect a sound that sold the Les Pauls, as Hendrix sold the Fender Stratocaster, but they also guaranteed the exorbitant price. Being that most musicians are poor or at least under paid, few of them can afford a vintage guitar. The rich rock star is one percent of all musicians, probably less, with today’s splintered music market. So who is buying these guitars at Christies’ auctions? Obviously, people who can afford a guitar for half a million and still make rent—people who made money in tech or stocks or inheritance and grew up idolizing guitar heroes.

The guitar has value other than its inherent sound; it has history attached to it. Much in the same way a first edition book or a rare stamp has perceived value. Of course, value has its ugly side. When Jerry Garcia died, he left his custom-made guitars to his luthier, Doug Irwin. Irwin hurt himself in a car accident and, to raise money, wanted to auction off the guitars. The Grateful Dead organization, ever-protective over Dead merchandise (and ever-exploitive, have you seen Grateful Red, the non-alcoholic wine endorsed by the Dead, shesh!) threatened legal action saying the guitar was the band’s property and not Garcia’s to give away.

The band wanted to put the guitar in a planned GD museum and didn’t want it hanging in some rich deadhead’s wall. Either way the guitar would have just been hanging on the wall. The Dead settled with Irwin and he sold two of his guitars for 1.74 million dollars. Don’t cry for the Dead, though. They never built a museum, but they did sell some of his other guitars just last week, making $1.1 million for three guitars and other memorabilia. Not bad for some old acid heads, huh? I think the Dead might even have some other revenue streams too. Now, these guitars are too expensive to play. Now they sit protected and quiet.

If Pete Townsend and punk taught us anything, it is fuck it; break the fucking thing; it’s just a tool, easily replaceable. Not true, but at its heart, its very true. What matters is not the historical value, but the talent of the pickers and players. I’d rather sit around a campfire and hear a drunken fool play “Wild Thing” than marvel at a Stradivarius behind a bullet-proof plastic wall.

Oh Camille, My Camille

I love reading Camille Paglia. I don’t agree with her opinions, but she can write and her opinions are so passionate, veering towards nutty, that I have to laugh. She has a column for Salon.com. She expounds on politics, pop culture, and current events. Basically anything she wants to. In fact it’s what I do with this blog, but she gets paid for it.

In her recent column, in reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings, she calls for more vocational training in high schools. I have no argument there; high schools need more money for everything. When I went to high school we had auto shop, wood shop, ceramics, art, other vocational classes. I assume they’ve been stripped away.

But what cracks me up is her prose. Here are some examples:

“…our present educational system is an insane pressure cooker, dangerous above all for boys, with their restless physical energy.”

“Age segregation by grade, in my opinion, is a mechanistic atrocity that spawns ruthless social cliques, who oppress and enrage the losers in the provincial pecking order.”

“We need to strip the elite aura from the claustrophobic "prestige" jobs in sterile corporate offices, where high salaries drug the worker clones from recognition of their own imprisonment and castration.”

Okay, I’m not quite sure if the educational system is the pressure cooker, perhaps the parents are the cause. Plus it is sexist to think that boys blow up with pressure with our physical energy. Granted more males kill than females, but I think mental instability is the source instead of gender. The VT Killer certainly didn’t care about grades; he was an English Major!

And I’m not sure age segregation causes ruthless social cliques, although I did love Heathers. But not as much as I love the term, “mechanistic atrocity.” Anymore high-falutin purple prose like that and Paglia will start resembling the crazy street people in my neighborhood.

Being that I work in a sterile corporate office, I have to say I recognize my own imprisonment and castration. But that’s probably because I have a very low salary.

I love you, Camille. I know you're gay, but you can whisper in my ear anytime.

We're Gonna Twisty Twisty Twisty

Last night, while lying on my couch, prostrate from the heat, I watched Beach Party, the first Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello beach movie. The movie is high camp and very entertaining. I caught the beginning where Dick Dale and the Del Tones are jamming at a beach joint, and everybody is dancing. Perhaps it was the heat, but I was transfixed by the dancing. The movie came out in 1963, well before the Beatles flew into JFK Airport, but a couple of years after Chubby Checker released his hit song, "The Twist". I make this distinction because the cats and chicks in this flick are twisting it up.

The Twist is probably the most simple dance move you can do. Here's a quotation from a member of Checker's band—I got off of Wikipedia, so it's who knows of its veracity—but it captures the dance perfectly: "It's like putting out a cigarette with both feet, and wiping your bottom with a towel, to the beat of the music." It also resembles convulsions, at least in Beach Party it does. Now days, it's a dance that no one consciously does, but there are some moves that still are around. In the movie, a girl with tight slacks shakes her booty so quickly, that I was reminded of hip hop videos in which women with generous backsides shake it like an earthquake (girthquake?). Check out the dance scene in the second to the last panel of Moving Pictures on your left.

When I played in a cover band in the late eighties, we would whip out “Twist & Shout”, and that always brought people out on the dance floor. We played to mostly white crowds and The Twist is so basic that drunk white people have no trouble getting up with the get down. I think it is because they never have to move their feet. All they have to do is shimmy from side to side. With booze, the shimming becomes a lot less self-conscious. I'm not making of fun of those people; I'm no great dancer, although I do like to dance. I'm sure our contemporary dance movies will look ridiculous in 40 years, but in the end, dancing is about connecting with music in a physical way, so who gives a rat’s ass what you look like?