Cube Houses of Rotterdam

Rise of McPolitics: Once, all politics was local. Now all politics is national. Can we survive the shift?

 I find this long-game history stuff fascinating but if economics is the "dismal science" then politics is scientific dementia. Two steps forward, one back or one forward, two back, ad infinitum. Like a giant brutally oblivious generational pendulum. Race is a crucible. Class is demagogged. Etc. But POTUS as a Russian espionage asset is BIG and unprecedented. Cold War 2.0. Brinksmanship. Can American democracy survive this attack? Hair on fire. Etc.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-rise-of-mcpolitics

Malcolm Gladwell Likes Things Better In Canada
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/magazine/malcolm-gladwell-likes-things-better-in-canada.html

Currently playing:

Mannequin Pussy - Emotional High

Awesome punk rock girl singer vocal performance. "Yeah-eee-yeah-ah!!!"

"Rule Number One," Sleigh Bells -

Electro-clash shama-lamma-ding-dong; boombastic Le Tigre, Girlschool, Lady Gaga mashup.  

free trade agreements: a good fight even if Trump is blundering again

“It’s something I had taken for granted, that free trade was here to stay,” says guy from Texas that works for a software startup. Free trade: the tired canard that businesses can't pay living wages and compete. Or next thing you know prices for fruits and vegetables will kill us all, etc. Although, this is one area Trump's blundering politics might do some good. At this point, TPP's value was more geopolitical than economic anyway and these agreements,including NAFTA, generally suck for workers, the poor, and the environment. So, yeah, bust them up, but Trump thinks U.S. free trade agreements are bad b/c we've been giving away the store and he's the guy to make the better trade deals that will put America first. (One of the things that is going to suck most over the next four years is that we're going to have to take him seriously, even when he is acting again moronically.) In fact, U.S. corporations have profited handsomely off free trade agreements and outsourcing for cheaper labor elsewhere for decades now. And it's foolish to think Trump's approach has any chance of increasing trade. It won't. This will be worse than those meager and motley coalitions Bush & Cheney pulled together for their post-9/11 wars. Still, a lot of what passes for free trade just means capital is free to exploit the cheapest labor. So Trump busts up free trade agreements and brings home a few manufacturing jobs, he can and most certainly will do much worse.

"Best to You," Blood Orange

How could this not be a single?! Or w/out a video? All singles have videos nowadays, right? That seems to be the case w/ most chart singles, anyway, but not here and this has chart one-hit-wonder gem all over it. Sweet boy/girl R&B yearning combined w/ building, swirling, Freetown jive. It sounds at once familiar and exotic. Like world pop, if that wasn't usually a pejorative. It has a casual, effortless international urbanity ab it. Nice one.

"Back Up," Dej Loaf (ft. Big Sean)

Representing east Detroit, Fairview Manor, Dej Loaf. I'm not impressed by her choice in singles (she has yet to surpass her first hit, "Try Me"), but she always speaks softly and swings a big stick. Future single suggestion: "I'm Gon Win." And I hope she does.

2009 Better-Late-Than-Nevers Round-Up

Ten songs from year-end lists I’ve been motoring to this past month:

“Make Her Say,” Kid Cudi (w/ Kanye West and Common): An indomitably sexy number. As the Lady Gaga coda goes, “He’s got me like nobody.” And it ain’t his (or their) rap(s), I assure you. Although, I will concede Kanye wins the prize here with lines ab her legality and using his medulla oblongata. And how out of touch I am, turns out this jam was nominated for a Grammy!

“Lasso,” Phoenix: “Where would you go tied up to a lasso?” Not very far, presumably. But what these guys lack in sense they make up for in energy and songcraft. Wolfgang Amadeus is one of the few albums on year-end lists that makes sense to me. Pop fans tantalized by a few Of Montreal songs but disappointed by their albums ought to click with this immediately. ELO fans won't be disappointed, either.

“Lust For Life,” Girls: A clanging guitar riff stays around too long before a nasally voice busts out about how he “wished he had a boyfriend” but “he’s fucked in the head.” When he says he wished he had a "father" or a “beach house” his voice dips low as if showing us the self-importance he thought these distinctions might give him. It’s Jonathan Richman’s gay nephew from San Francisco. Over a whole album these guys suffer from Violent Femmes Syndrome: annoying affectation substituting for songs. For one ditty, though, it’s a messy comin’ out party. They might be giants, or at least legends in their own minds.

“If Life Exists (?),” Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard: A junkyard of psychadelic acoustica swirled into some mantric grace: “But it’s hard to get too bored when you pick the right two chords and you keep on strumming as if you don’t know what’s comin’.” It’s Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches’ cousin from NYC. He does comics too.

“Cruel Intentions,” Simian Mobile Disco (w/ Beth Ditto of The Gossip): Relaxed, sultry groove. Southern-fried guitar licks. Could be one of the Weather Girls (remember “It’s Raining Men”?) singing; only older, slightly diminished: “Call me up/we’ll hang out.” Retro disco, anyone?

“My Love,” The-Dream (w/ Mariah Carey): Self-proclaimed (and repeatedly!) “radio killah,” for The-Dream, it’s all in the mix: an economical (i.e., gangsta lean) orchestral lushness. It’s not just the falsetto but this canned-whip-cream electricity (auto-tune?) that gives the music its vibe. Unfortunately, the slow jams don’t always come w/ songs; no fries w/ that coke. Not the case, here, though. Mariah’s bit is minimal but full of gusto: “Tell me what they know about my love.”

“Imma Star (Everywhere We Are),” Jeremih: More influence of The-Dream: icy synths, hey-ho thugamuffin chorus, strutting tempos, bling fantasy, Jeremih’s “got the game on a slipknot.”

“Living Without Your Love,” Walter Jones: More retro disco even though I found this one on a comp called Future Disco. Truly, if I were told this had come from a ‘70s Chic album I would have believed it. Still, there is a spare and elegant quality to this—what I’ll hazard to call a feminine quality— that is lacking in most contemporary club music. Or so what I hear of it via the Rcrd Lbl freebies I get sent everyday.

“Now We Can See,” The Thermals: Sometimes the Thermals have this kinetic spirit that is hard to pin down but undeniable. And then sometimes the Thermals sound too three-chord rock basic. Same band, but one you like, one you're hohum ab. The spirit here is conveyed in a chorus that goes: “oh-way-ah-oh-ho,” over and over. Very nice. They no longer have the disease but still need the fix.

“Drop,” Rich Boy: In your face club-rap: a slow grind (crunk? screw? I dunno), but it’s got a beat that cracks with chain-gang intensity and a mesmerizing backtrack of looped female gibberish. “You forgot to bring your gun so you got to use your heart now,” Rich Boy barks, “...Now, drop.” Meaning, I think, what we used to mean by saying, “get down.” As in down and dirty. It's the kind of song that demands your attention, whether you like it or not. And it depends on the "not" like any real gansta or punk. As the jam fades, a zany non sequitur is tossed out, “Kobe, karaoke comin’ thru!” Gotta love ‘it.

Yodeling garage-punk: The Monks "Oh, How to Do Now"

New wave Dylan doing "Jokerman" on Letterman w/ the Plugz

Baby It's Cold Outside

“Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu-Tang, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, & Karen O.)— Combine vintage Wu Tang, the insistency of a tight contemporary club mix, and an impenetrably angsty Karen O. (batting champion in my Top Ten, apparently) chorus, and what you got is some wicked hot jam whose nostalgia (“Rumpelstiltskin,” indeed) feels more than earned next to what else passed for hiphop in ’09. With your now obligatory weed references, it’s just about keepin’ on keepin’ on in a very strange world. BTW, when did underground become code for pothead or am I forgetting (ha ha) it always meant that?!

“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School— Reportedly off an album called The Poor and Needy Need to Party, one of those kind of titles that make you wonder how nobody ever thought of it before, and of which I’m not sure really exists beyond the blogosphere. I first heard this tune on a mix tape given to me this last year but it could have come from Olympia or Eugene or Athens or Charlotte anytime over the last twenty-five years—timeless lo-fi jangle pop distilled into a two-chord hum-a-long of yearning harmonies and self-deprecating humor. Not that I’m at all clear as to what it’s about: being “sick and tired” and calling “oly-oly-oxen-free” to “old friends” in a “crowded universe," all of which sounds to me humble and funny. Maybe it’s about going home, too; doing some gardening, with ringing guitars as accompaniment. If the voluntary simplicity movement doesn’t already have a theme song they could do worse than this disarmingly bittersweet number, for sure.

"I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner

Before this song, all I knew about Antony was Hercules and Love Affair’s retro-disco “Blind” from last year and some ugly pretentious or pretentiously ugly, I’m not sure which, record covers. This, nonetheless, is the best Dylan song put out in ‘09. Purists might have trouble with Antony’s celestial falsetto but if you liked Bowie’s “Song For Bob Dylan” or any Iron & Wine song or ever lost something you loved, you’ll be right at home here. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” croons Antony in his trembling falsetto, making a traditional song sound as indelibly pop as the Cowboy Junkies doing “Sweet Jane.” There’s this old canard that songs are somehow more subjective than albums. I disagree but this song makes me wonder. “I never wrote a letter to my home” and “baby sister gone all wrong” and “can’t go home this way” and “when I pay the debt I owe to the commissary store then I’ll pawn my watch and chain and I’ll go home.” It’s not the story of my life— in this economy, I’m relatively debt free and get to see my parents— but it does intersect with it enough that it makes me want to cry. I found it on Dark Was The Night, a good way to hear some of the best of the progressive freaky folk rock sounds of contemporary indieland. If I sound too sarcastic for you let me try to put my finger on my general ambivalence about the Grizzly Bears and Animal Collectives (it's a veritable zoo) by saying simply: too much Peter Gabriel! Not here, though. And if you find Antony's face-painting foppishness too subjective he’s got a rejoinder already readymade: “If you missed the train I’m on/count the days that I’m gone/you can here the whistle blow 100 miles.” Let’s hear it for the boy.

country gals tellin' it like it is

“Fifteen,” Taylor Swift- The music is about as gritty as a John Cougar Mellencamp car commercial. Esatz, sure; there’s no virtuoso soloists here. Excepting, perhaps, Taylor’s voice, which is fragile, limited; as girl-next-door faceless as any Dixie Chick or Bangle. And that is as it should be, the better to render her songs raw and still somehow emblematic, personal and still somehow universal, like pop songs are supposed to be. Jaded rocker machismo cannot abide Swift’s frilly gossamer lite country pop. But to fifteen year-old girls, like the two in this song, she’s a hero. And tougher than you think: “back then I swore I was going to marry him someday but I’ve realized some bigger dreams of mine.” I don’t want to make too big of deal of her story telling, as it’s not essential to what I think makes great pop, but in pop it’s rarely done better than this. From the git—“you take a deep breath/and you walk through the doors/it’s your very first day/say hi to your friends/and try to stay out of everybody's way”— she takes you there. High school, a ruthless popularity contest, full of shiny new hopes and muffled miseries. Endure, kids; endure.

“Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert- This was closer to my Number One until I watched the videos, where in every version I checked Miranda is, confoundingly, restrained and serious. When this song is, in fact, a stridently big bodacious grinner that stomps and swings cheerfully. “Let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines,” challenges Lambert, “we’re a lot like you, only prettier”! The song is so damn winning I imagine it’d make curmudgeonly partisan columnist Paul Krugman reconsider bipartisanship. “I got a mouth like a sailor and yours is more like a Hallmark card,” she chides. The strutting crunch and sociable lap-steel guitar melody make you want to hug a redneck. Or at least imagine the possibility you could coexist happily with one for the duration of the song. Besides a couple other tugs at the heart her latest album is kind of hohum, though. Why is it the country music outsider alt-rockers love most always seems to turn out to be not as good as you might have hoped?

Rock & roll

"Heads Will Roll," Yeah Yeah Yeahs- The summer hit of ’09, it is unfathomable to me how, more than any of my top three, anybody could resist this club rocker; as if they would have to be somehow immune to the collision of music and physical sensation. Sure, it’s as tritely nostalgic as P-Funk’s “free your ass and your mind will follow” and as emotionally powerful as, uh, masturbation? The synths are as goth as a hearse racing the streets after midnight, the thumping riffage as synthetically powerful as a dentist drill, and the bridge pure Donna Summer disco. Pop music. Dance music. As rock & roll as any shama-lama-ding-dong! Off with your head, just dance!

"If I Can't Have You," Kelly Clarkson- Apparently, I’m the only person in America who really, really likes this song, but I imagine it’s a huge hit with Japanese train commuters. It doesn’t replace “Since U Have Been Gone” as her song but it is heart-racingly classic rock & roll. More Out of Our Heads than Beggars Banquet but rock & roll nonetheless. The blaring buzz to the computerized production kicks like late-night coffee. In a sense Clarkson’s ain’t –no-mountain-high-enough pipes make it harder to tell whether she feels something or is just flexing her muscles but what, as the kids might say, a beast she is w/ those muscles! “I haven’t seen the best that love has to offer…but we can break the rules,” she wails. I’m pretty sure she means it.

"Tie My Hands," Lil Wayne & Robin Thicke

Okay, it’s ab the aftermath of an event from ‘05, was released in ‘08, but it took til ‘09 for “right now we just ridin’ on love, a shot in the dark” to cut through my defenses and “they don’t want us to see but we already know” to register w/ me as Us, like a post-Katrina “won’t get fooled again.” So sue me, I’m slow! Amidst the run-on raps and forays into rock and hard-to-find mixtapes that never sound as good as the critical hype would have you believe, Lil Wayne is still now and then able to make his ridiculously vein boasting sound essential. And then dismissed as Justin Timberlake’s dorky sitcom Canadian cousin by people who should know better, Robin Thicke has made the best blue-eyed soul-sexy-lover’s rock-RnB of the last decade. Together, they’re butter and toast. Post-intellectual, post-cynicism. Obama wins the Presidency, the Saints win the Superbowl, what comes next for a hope and a prayer? We could use some Big Easy right about now, no?

you can't be neutral on a moving train

Howard Zinn, historian and political activist, succumbed to a heart attack swimming Wednesday at 87, evoking for me an image of this intrepid champion of the underdog struggling against the current. Something Zinn has done for over a half century with pugnacious wisdom and irascible humor. The linked obituary, although honorable, for the sake of social context, shares Princeton historian Sean Wilentz's critique of Zinn's counter-cultural history of the U.S.: "turning old heroes into villains...after awhile the glow gets unreal." For me, Zinn's people's history made real sense out of the raw deals and broken dreams I'd been dodging my whole life; family and friends losing jobs, struggling to make ends-meet, the strain on relationships. Zinn gives voice to every worker-minority-immigrant-woman-poor-farmer In American history used up and discarded like an old wheelbarrow. In his heart a belief that progress, such as it is, never fast or big enough, is always forged by the leadership of people and not the benevolent concessions of elites chronicled in textbooks. Class war? Fuckin'-A-right! But few can keep up the good fight. The jingoistic Americanism, greedy capitalism, hawkish militarism, the spiritual desolation and widespread social conservatism grinds you down. But not Zinn, swimming against the current until the very end. I don't know that I would have found my way to teaching without his People's History of the United States. For me, Howard Zinn is one of the very few great American heroes. R.I.P.

One of my better-late-than-never finds from '09 year-end lists, sort of: "Listomania" and "1901" appear on the lists but I like this tune better. Say you've lost your way, lonely, the songs asks, "where would you go with a lasso?" I'd try Whole Foods or the Fremont farmer's market, see if I couldn't rustle up me a little lady. Nothing artier-than-thou, just zoom-zoom power pop w/ a gleaming electro-sheen.

Starting Over

“Starting Over,” Black Lips: Begins with some 12-string Searchers jangle that is intentionally garagy. The voice is some off-script drunkin’ karaoke warble about how he’s gotta keep running and drink some beer and blow out his mind, etc. All of which wouldn’t signify that much if it wasn’t for the crowd counterpointing dude’s sloppy lament with soothing “ahhhs” and beseeching “starting overs.” The chorus transforms the inarticulate pain towards something like a catharsis. The lead ends with some wounded animal cries of “allllriight” a la Darkness Springsteen. It’s all so physically satisfying I’m willing to imagine drunk guy might even give up the hooch. Or not.

Pet Shop Boys "Love, Etc."

“Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys: Split the Pet Shop Boys career into an early pop period and a club period. (And then maybe a musical theater period, although I’m entirely unfamiliar with this one?) From the club period I like the first three or four tracks of Very and lose interest after that. Fifteen years later this song feels like a throwback, and an unassuming one. The first four or five times through I thought, ‘okay, but why not just put on Discography?’ Fifty plus plays later I think “Love Etc.”’s a piece of pop pastry, dreamy electro-pop tempo, hooks galore, big-boy choruses, perfect for 2009. It’s Yes-We-Can pop jingoism (“I believe we can achieve the love that we need”) and still wryly sardonic (“you don’t have to be beautiful but it helps”). Their gayness has never (nor maybe their lousy videos either?) played well in the States but their pop craftiness rules as far as I’m concerned.

You Need More!

2009: Top of the Pops Songs

Top Ten
1. “Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys
2. “Starting Over,” Black Lips
3. “Tie My Hands,” Robin Thicke & Lil Wayne
4. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. “If I Can’t Have You,” Kelly Clarkson
6. “Fifteen,” Taylor Swift
7. “Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert
8. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” Antony with Bryce Dessner
9. “Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu Tang & Karen O.)
10.“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School

Runners Up
11. “Next Hype,” Tempa T
12. “Day ‘n’ Nite,” Kid Cudi
13. “Space,” Sarah Buxton
14. “You’re Not Sorry,” Taylor Swift
15. “Rockin’ That Thang,” The-Dream
16. “My Heart Is Open,” Keith Urban
17. “Be By Myself,” Asher Roth & Cee-Lo
18. “Oh Lonesome Me,” M. Ward & Lucinda Williams
19. “Hey There Ophelia,” MC Lars (featuring Brett Anderson & Gabe Saporta)
20. “Animal,” Miike Snow
21. “I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
22. “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga
23. “Psychic City,” YACHT
24. “Even Now,” Caitlin & Will
25. “Tightrope,” Yeasayer
26. “Never Gonna Happen,” Lily Allen
27. “Right Hand Hi,” Kid Sister
28. “Of the Mountains,” Dan Deacon
29. “My Wife’s Home Town,” Bob Dylan
30. “Tin Birds,” Blank Dogs
31. “Let’s Go Surfing,” The Drums
32. “Nu Style,” Shystie
33. “Fork In The Road,” Neil Young
34. “Wrong,” Depeche Mode
35. “Young Adult Friction,” The Pains of Being Earnest
36. “Do It for Free,” Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles
37. “Blue Snakes,” Canyon
38. “Knock You Down,” Keri Hilston, Kanye West & Ne-Yo
39. “Moth’s Wings,” Passion Pit
40. “Make Her Say," Kid Cudi

So here it is. Some justifications may or may not follow. Radio professionals looking for further progamming consultation leave a message and I'll get back you. If it wasn't for a whole bunch of people who listen to waaay more current releases than I do this would be a list of a whole bunch of Robyn and Wedding Present and Kinks and Le Tigre and Rollings Stones and Handsome Boy Modeling School songs, so thank you. You know who you are and I won't call you out right now so as to spare you from being blamed for my crassly commercial and willfully obscure tastes.

Warning to Children

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, and muchness,
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernal you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed in dappled
Red and green, enclosed in tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel-
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undue the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by the dappled
Green and red, enclosed by the yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still unopened on his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives- he then unties the string.

By Robert Graves

Currently playing: The Raincoats Odyshape

A Year Later, Little Change on Wall Street

More casino capitalism under socialism for the rich. Meanwhile, the right rouses the moron minority to protest extending basic health care coverage to all Americans, not to mention putting a lid on the profit gouging health care industry. The upside-down world logic of the free-marketeers and their satanic bargain w/ bible-thumping social conservatives soldiers on. It'd be funny if I felt more certain ab their inevitable surrender.

Currently playing: Dump Grown-Ass Man

The Obama Conspiracy Theory Challenge

Leslie Savan @ The Nation


Currently playing:Serengeti Dennehy

Listen to the thunder: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

In a recent colunm this is the question sports columnist Art Thiel explores: did the Sonics leaving Seattle doom incumbent mayor Nickels reelection bid?

First, a little context. Seattle’s incumbent mayor, eight years in office, Greg Nickels, just got beat in the primary by two guys w/ very little to no political leadership experience: one guy says he’s going to fix Seattle w/ managerial skills he learned as a top executive in the wireless industry and the other guy is running on a platform to kill the tunnel project and have the City takeover the public schools. (Writing this, it occurs to me that some might think I’m making this stuff up. I’m not.)

(And let’s also remember that the 75% who did not support Nickels in this primary represent ab 10% of the eligible voters in Seattle. I bet he still would have won in a general election and I bet that’s a bitter pill to swallow in the Nickels camp right ab now.)

Couple points ab Thiel’s question: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

Settling for cash, as Nickels did, rather than continuing a case to make the Sonics stay in Seattle until their contract with the Key Arena ended in 2010, a case that most think the law was on the side of the City, was a cowardly nebbish move. No question. Right, anything could have happened in those two years— like an economic meltdown! Maybe Clay Bennett and his Oakies could have been pushed to sell the team to someone local. I don’t know.

But Howard ‘Starbucks’ Schultz-- repeat after me-- sold the Sonics to someone from out of town in the first place, w/out making any public gesture to sell the team to someone who would for certain keep the team in Seattle (there are plenty of people with that kind of money here), thereby flagrantly fucking over Seattle Supersonic basketball fans!

So Schultz is Seattle enemy Number One on losing the Sonics. But Nickels
does at least deserve more blame than Bennett, who I still hear people blaming. B/c, they say, he said he’d try to keep the team in Seattle, are you kidding me?! It is complete idiocy to have expected him to do anything other than what he did.

Commissioner David Stern deserves special mention as a creep here, too, for his patronizing blackmail threats to move the team if the City couldn’t build an arena— unlike The Key, he decreed— up to NBA standards. Standards that have nothing to do with the cost or spectator experience for the average fan, by the way.

Thiel also throws some shame on Seattleites for not supporting large public subsidies for sports franchises. I’m of two minds on this one. I can sympathize w/ taxpayers. Safeco was built even though the public had just voted down public support for a new stadium b/c of the ecstatic momentum created by the M’s victory over the Yankees in the ’95 playoffs (the peak moment so far in the M’s 30 plus year history). I’m glad we have Safeco but can see how the public might be sore over this. W/ the revenues coming to pro sports it doesn’t make much sense that they receive tax subsidies, or not w/out the public having more of a stake in their connection to the city. Meaning: they can’t be sold to another city w/out the public’s consent. Look at the case of the Sonics, duh! This is where Nickels did have a chance to stand up for the city and he turned the ball over, gave it away, so to speak. Maybe some sonic fans voted in the primary. I did and not for Nickels.

On the other hand, this city does seem to have a problem getting behind big civic projects. It’s astonishing how long it’s taken this city to get a little patch of light rail. Oh, light rail’s a huge developer’s appropriation of public funds that would be better spent on more buses or bicycles on every corner or stand-up scooters for everyone, shouts the opposition. Rail transit seems like a nice feature in Portland and SF and NY and Chicago and D.C. For every big civic project proposed here there is a virulent opposition. Now it’s the tunnel. This guy, Mike McGinn, garnered enough support to oust Nickels b/c he opposed a tunnel project to replace Highway 99 through downtown and open up the waterfront to more touristy foot traffic. Again, the imagined result sounds nice. But it’s a huge misdirection of public funds, so say the opposition.

You might expect this is your typical anti-tax/govt spending stuck-in-the-muds but most those people live outside the city. More likely it's a swelling eco-friendly civic responsibility movement that is popular enough to block such big projects but, for me, hasn’t yet (or can’t?)come up w/ appealing big vision alternatives.

Too Cool For Woodstock

Chuck Eddy’s antidote for all the Woodstock anniversary puff pieces appearing everywhere. Let’s face it, the music from this iconic event was, w/ a few exceptions, a “tedious snooozefest.” As “a modest proposal” Chuck suggests an alternative lineup that would have made the three-day concert more exciting and memorable musically. I’m w/ him here until he suggests replacing Jimi & Janis. Before me, I see a stampeding horde of old hippies with pitchforks. It’s not just that the event was ab more than music, for some who were there, apparently, the music was irrelevant. I saw this piece recently where the couple who appear on the cover of the original concert album look a lot older, they are still happily together (yay), and they have no memory of the music at the event at all. For them it was more like this mass give-peace-a-chance happening. For others, it was an exhibition of the potential size of a segment of society, a counter culture. Which turned out to be valuable mostly as a marketing audience. Still, even if it was more ab “peace, love,” or marketing, than “music,” Jimi & Janis are part of the Woodstock brand. Love the idea of Archie Bell & The Drells on the bill, though.

Currently playing:"Tighten Up," Archie Bell & The Drells

Invented post-disco RnB-

Big fish eats little fish-

From NY Times editorial

Moebs Services, a research company that has conducted studies for the government as well as some banks, reported recently that banks will earn more than $38 billion this year from overdraft and bounced-check fees. Moebs also estimates that 90 percent of that amount will be paid by the poorest 10 percent of the customer base.

More "too big to fail" is socialism for the rich-

From Robert Reich (Clinton's Secretary of Labor)blog:

The insurance [govt bailouts]these "too big to fail" banks are receiving makes them more like public utilities than private firms. As such, not only is it entirely appropriate for government to review their pay but also to make sure pay is kept within strict bounds -- not $100 million, not $10 million, not $7 million, but far, far less. As long as you and I are cushioning them, their top brass should be earning just about what the top brass of any public utility earns (which, when I last looked, ranged from $100,000 to $600,000).

The big banks have a choice, of course. They could opt out of the "too big to fail" system. They could break themselves apart (or invite antitrust agencies to do the breaking for them) so they were no longer too big to fail and won't be bailed out the next time they make hugely stupid mistakes. Then they could award their executives and traders as much money as they wanted and as the market would bear -- because then they'd be part of the free market instead of wards of the state.

Currently playing: Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?

No.

But they do need to know how to teach— which is what education degree programs are supposed to teach. Being scary smart or possessing an elite Ivy League education is no guarantee on the “how” part of teaching K-12, I can assure you.

I was annoyed that I had to earn/pay for an ed degree to teach kids but I got two important things out of the experience: 1) I had to talk ab the how of teaching, or pedagogy, w/ a multicultural mix (specially funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, I was enrolled in a cohort w/ over 50% para-educators of color)(paras are non-certificated staff who assist teachers— usually only English Language or Special Education teachers— and they often comprise most of the non-white staff in the schools where I have worked) of 60 other would-be teachers and four professors (it was like a year in a cross-cultural encounter group); and 2) I got to apprentice in a couple public school classrooms with (if not amazing mentors) experienced teachers. The latter was invaluable if for no other reason than once you’re in a public school classroom you are mostly on your own. There just isn’t much room in the day for much mentorship or collaboration. It’s you and a bunch of teenagers in an overcrowded classroom. Sink or swim.

On the other hand, my degree program felt padded and a little disconnected. By the second year students were impatient and grumpy. Others have given me a similar impression of their ed degree program experience.

In some cases these programs even give off the fumes of a racket. The continuing ed program in Washington, instituted after I’d already entered the profession, thankfully, just reeks of backroom deals between state legislators and higher education: ‘okay, we’ll support raises for teachers if you make our continuing ed programs for teachers required.’ And it’s not that I’m opposed to continuing education. It’s a travesty that critics talk ab the importance of teacher academic preparation without bemoaning the fact that, of all professions, public school teachers rarely receive money for rigorous continuing education. And so it’s not surprising that most teachers fulfill their cont ed requirements with coffee and cookies clock hour seminars.

What ed degrees are supposed to do should probably really be part of an apprenticing, probationary, period for new hire teachers that includes a lot of collaboration and mentorship and participation in book groups on education theory. On the job training. Make it three year’s long, give new teachers three sections their first year, four their second, and a full schedule that final year of the apprentice program. (In fact, all Ed PHD candidates should, minimally, have to go through this practicum b/f they begin their research, if you ask me.) One advantage, here, is you’d reduce the number of unemployed teachers with education degrees and so this aspect of the higher ed racket. Most importantly, you’d separate the chaff from the wheat teacher-wise much more efficiently. Educators lament the number of teachers leaving the profession b/f they’ve taught five years, and this on top of their expensive one or two year ed degree program. It could be done better.

If you really want to raise teaching standards what is needed is more time for teacher planning collaboration and more money for continuing education. The fact that teachers have to pay for almost all their continuing ed out of pocket, in the field of education of all professions and w/ the current focus on raising teaching standards, is the height of hypocrisy.

Should people with undergrad and advanced degrees in subject matter (history, English, math, etc) be able to go straight into teaching? W/ some sort of on-the-job mentorship and pedagogy training program, sure.

(See the NY Times Room For Debate blog for other perspectives.)

Currently playing: "Tin Birds," Blank Dogs

The Amazing Lightening Bolt!

Jamaican Usain Bolt sets new record(9.58)in the 100 meter sprint in Berlin. I cannot recall any sprinter in my lifetime who has so dominated the field in the 100 that he could cruise at the finish line as Bolt did in Beijing. Someone ought to create a superhero comic book about the guy.

Currently playing: Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Health Care Crucible: Public or Private?

Fits over health care reform at congressional Town Halls around the country have dominated the cable news for the past week, so the Pres weighs in with a NY Times Op-Ed. Perhaps it’s his measured style, or intended to counter the “loud voices,” but it comes off too lukewarm. Once the hysterical opposition talk about “death panels” and, gasp, “socialism” (“We gotta stop this madness before we turn into Russia,” one woman stammered in frustration. It’s still the Cold War! Later the same lady admitted on some cable news show that she didn’t hear a word of what Arlen Spector said in response to her question) blows over it’s going to come down to costs. How is this thing going to be paid for? Universal coverage means increased costs. Meaning: higher premiums. Making it illegal to deny people coverage because of their medical history is going to increase costs. Meaning: higher premiums. It is extremely hard to believe that cutting wastes and inefficiencies (networking records, bundling payments for doctor care, etc), as good as these ideas might be, will cover these increases in costs. Taxing the rich might get us universal health care but it won't stop inflation in health care premiums and costs. Or let me put that more directly: based upon what evidence could we possibly believe that health insurance companies given this scenario will NOT continue to raise premiums? Backroom handshakes w/ Big Pharma? Over the last decade or so health care premiums paid by people, families, has grown three times faster than wages. The measures to keep the insurance companies accountable that Obamacare is now talking about, at the height of the debate, involve coverage issues but not, seriously, costs. Sure, I think everybody should have access to basic health care. But Obama is still pulling punches w/ the corporations, and has apparently given up on the importance of the public option, or in his words, "keeping the insurance companies honest." Come on, the profit gouging will continue without a not-for-profit public option to keep the private insurance companies, yep, honest on costs. The NY Times prints some University of Chicago economist (also something in the Washington Post)explaining why any public option (under a "fair" set of regulations)would not impact health care costs significantly. His case is not convincing. How is it all those European countries and Canada get way more "care" for the buck than we do after all? Tell me it has nothing to do w/ the fact that as public services they don't have to pay CEO and managerial supersalaries or hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying the government? So, apparently, we're going to get universal health care and more inflationary health care preminums and costs. This is the great democratic compromise on the table at the moment. And when costs do blowup it will be blamed on Obamacare, of course. Wall Street is going to be O’s undoing, I'm just saying.

Currently playing: Best of Tom Ze

Yes-we-can in the just-say-no days-

Currently playing:


Couldn't find an original but this will do, although the cover shot is just the kind of MJ pic I cannot bare. (Close your eyes or be prepared to do so b/c otherwise there are some fun dance sequences.) From the special edition version of Bad. Four or five great tracks on that LP but this is the overlooked gem. I might have liked Pretty Woman if this ditty would have been part of the soundtrack.

Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery?

This is one of those kinds of front page stories on the economy where the headline and reporting seem to be at odds. Editors must hope most readers won’t read much past the encouraging headline because the reporting chips away until by the end of the story you have almost the direct opposite sense from what the headline has suggested.

The first paragraph establishes that the employment report serving as the basis for the story is somehow encouraging despite that fact that businesses have not started hiring or even stopped shedding jobs.

In the second paragraph we learn the good news is that fewer jobs were lost in July(247,000)than any month in the last year. The unemployment rate actually dropped from 9.5 to 9.4 but this was because a lot of Americans have simply given up looking for work. Good news?

There is anecdotal evidence from businesses that the pressure to cut jobs is ending but several paragraphs on we register what’s lacking from the other side of this equation is that there remains no sign as to when they might start hiring again! Something like 15 million Americans have gone over six months without being able to find any kind of job. This is a 61 year-old record. Again, many more have stopped looking altogether.

There is a lot of talk about the 700 billion stimulus putting the brakes on job cuts and jumpstarting a recovery. I’m sure it hasn’t hurt. But how does this 700 billion measure up to the spending cuts at the state and city levels continuing across the country?

Currently playing: Wayne Shorter Speak No Evil

notes from summer '09 road trip

Drove over 7,000 miles in 19 days, seeing friends and family, watching lots of baseball, eating way too much junk food.

Saw the Boise Hawks play Salem-Keizer Volcanoes; Short Season A ball, affiliates of the Cubs and Giants. The guy who MC’d the betw inning entertainment (usually standing on one of the dugouts w/ cute kids from the crowd or the high school-age girl ushers) carried on like some fringe character from a David Lynch movie: bushy headed, Hawaiian shirt, pot belly, shorts, smarmy prime time DJ banter, something sleazy behind his steely smile. Fun baseball, although more raggedy than the majors, of course. The heckler sitting next to me mentioned a couple of players being almost washed up at 23 or 24. Someone needs to write a book ab some great minor league careers. Not just those guys who finally make it to the Bigs, but also guys who played their whole careers in the minors. The latter including a majority of major league managers today, right?

The shapes and colors of the canyon lands of S. Utah and N. Arizona are striking and beautiful but then you finally get to the Grand Canyon and it is so “grand” it takes your breath away, a miles wide and long and seemingly deep, craggy rock chasm in the earth. I might be one of the last Americans to see it b/c most of the other people there were Europeans.


Santa Fe, NM looks like a pastel beehive splayed across some shrubby desert foothills. On closer examination, however, it’s my first taste on this trip of tourist glitz: guys in fancy shoes w/out socks, women carefully tanned and accessorized, an upper middle class cheesy kitsch to the place. A lot of the art looked like stylized road signs or unused furniture. Georgia O’Keeffe would be embarrassed. All of which I say as if I knew what the fuck I was talking ab after a hour walk around downtown.

So I’m speeding betw Amarillo and Tulsa, banging radio stations betw audio books, when I find two guys and gal talking about health care reform. They say the health care proposals in congress will increase abortions by providing more tax dollars for abortions and/or requiring insurance companies to pay for abortions. Dripping w/ sarcasm they insinuate that the whole health care reform effort in congress is really a stealth effort by liberals, Democrats, so-called progressives, immoral secular humanists to promote abortions. The stuff ab liberal motives is right wing boilerplate crap (can’t you just see James Carville rubbing his hands together in diabolical glee, “More abortions, yes!”). Still, extending coverage to more Americans by sheer numbers alone probably would increase the number of abortions. What is the number of women now who don’t have abortions b/c they don’t have insurance coverage or can’t afford them? So these guys would have us believe that it is more important to prevent abortions (any abortions) than provide every American w/ basic health care, let alone allowing every woman the right to choose whether or not she gives birth. Righteous creeps.

Outside my motel in Tulsa stood a dense orchard of green leafy trees, from which a buzzing whine blared upon my arrival. A ringing metallic sound so startling I stood listening to it for minutes waiting for someone else to come along and explain it to me. I’d heard Cicadas b/f but never this screamingly loud. I would have asked how locals deal w/ them at night, sleeping, but I never noticed them over the air conditioner in my room. Never tried any fried Cicadas, either.

I wish I had taken a picture of people along side the road, sitting on the tailgate of their pickups, the back full of watermelons or some other assorted fruits and/or vegetables, sunflowers, etc.

What makes Busch Stadium is the fans, the sea of red. I liked the country music soundtrack (although I doubt enough that I’ll track any of it down) but that was all they played. And, honestly, the Stan ‘The Man’ Musial statue out front is too cartoonish, looking like some superhero baseball player from The Incredibles.

Parts of north St. Louis looks broken and neglected. Talk ab the recession there would be a cruel joke; it’s always a not-so-great depression in this part of town. Where’s the stimulus money supporting entrepreneurial efforts in these communities? And I don’t mean a Starbucks.

The immense public works in downtown Indianapolis look like this life-size model of classical imperial architecture made out of poured concrete.

The Cubs and White Sox, w/ their combative managers, Lou Pinella and Ozzie Guillen, have to be one of the best rivalries going in interleague play. Guillen, recently said of the Cub’s park, “Wrigley Field is just a bar.” My kind of bar, though. As baseball parks go, it’s charming w/out being ostentatious. The ivy, the spoked, half-wheel steel framing, the bleechers on top of brownstones across the street. You miss all the information delivered by the jumbotrons found at most MLB ballparks and then again you don’t, either. At the field level, anyhow, the aisles are roomier than the tightly engineered sardine can seating found in most newer parks. They serve this frothy pilsner called Old Style. They sing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” louder than any other park I’ve attended. And, if they win— which hasn’t always been that often!— their victory song spills out into the street. Right, a bar, but a damn good bar.

At the White Sox new U.S. Cellular Field they have an open causeway like at Safeco. That’s where you can see the field from the main concourse all the way around the field. Nice feature. But, otherwise, Cellular feels a little non-descript and generic. Super big billboard ads ring the outfield. It does the job but seems, in Chicago of all places, lacking in character. Old Comiskey Park’s home plate in the parking lot is maybe the best Cellular has to offer.

The thing ab the Chicago style hot dog is that it’s not really ab the dog at all. So it’s 100% Vienna beef, big deal. They are no better than your average dog served at the local Cost Co. W/ the Chicago dog it’s really ab how you dress the dog. Ketchup, which I’m tempted to agree w/, is considered a sin. Instead, they insist upon serving the dog w/ a small salad on top. Not just any salad, though, but this particular Chicago style salad, which is hotly disputed, but goes something like this: shredded lettuce and tomato, glo-green relish, spear of pickled cucumber, sport peppers, and celery salt. They’re good.

Sculptor Henry Moore is one of those kinds of artists so iconic that reaction against his style only goes to affirm his greatness. Abstract, elemental, sexual, all curves, entangled, enveloping beauty; ab presence and absence, isolation and connectedness. Overly serious, perhaps. But always viscerally pleasing.


I lucked onto an orchestral music performance at Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park. Should not be missed.

On a road trip, McDonald’s is a pit stop oasis b/c of their reliably clean bathrooms. So I’m in one near Milwaukee (some suburban mall expressway). There are at least five TVs in the place, one even broadcast on the mirror in the bathroom! All of them are set to the Fox News Channel. On Fox they’re talking ab the doubts and fears of Americans regarding the health care reform proposals in congress: they’ll ration health care, old and weak people will be euthanized, they’re an underhanded effort by godless liberals to increase abortions, they’re a guvment takeover by a blackcommiesocialist in the white house! Working stiffs, families, old people watch silently, munching down their burgers and fries. People ought to leaflet these places w/ the address for the O Team’s website debunking these industry supported distortions.

Wisconsin is lush, green, and fragrant farmland.

What is it ab big tree-lined streets in college towns like Flagstaff, Ann Arbor, Madison?

The Metrodome in Minneapolis brought back nightmares of the Kingdome. The cavernous concourse; shivering under the interrogation lights of the dome; the superball bounce of the indoor turf; the echoey blare of the sound system. But I saw some good baseball at the Kingdome and the Twins certainly have some storied history of their own at the Metrodome. Besides, they finally move into a new outdoor ballpark next year. It’ll feel to fans like a get out of jail free card. But what will happen to Kirby Puckett street?

What makes the Badlands so bad? It’s not that they are without beauty. The canyons, ravines, colored rocks, plains of prickly shrubs and dusty roads and vast horizons. It’s b/c it is merciless land and you know anybody living there w/out air conditioning would have to be tough as leather. Generally quiet but capable of ferocity like the lightening storms driving along I-90 through South Dakota and Wyoming.

Drove through Yellowstone too fast to see any bears.

Long road trips and audio books are a perfect combination. Enjoyed them so much I tried listening to one at home only to find I couldn’t stay focused w/out the wheel and scenery of the road.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In case you haven’t heard of it, episodic panorama of life on the antebellum Mississippi. Important lessons from the story: fear and desire, equally, make people do stupid things; loyalties often defy common sense; w/out lying life would be dreadfully dreary.

The Old Man and the Sea: ode to heroism in work.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Always enjoy stories ab the Spanish Civil War, but this one is weighted down by lots of the kind of corny romantic machismo you expect in Hemingway’s writing.

Nobody Move, Denis Johnson: More corny romantic machismo, actually. But also more humor and humility, messy desperation, and gritty sexuality. Good crime novel; good fast-food reading.

In Defense Of Food: Eat food, mostly plants. More leaves, less seeds. Avoid: processing; ingredients you don’t understand; “refined” sugar and carbohydrates (meaning: pop and white bread). Don’t rely on nutritional additives and don’t trust nutritional claims (including “organic”). Grow your own and/or shop your local farmer’s markets. Eat “real” food b/c the Western diet of fast food kills.

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth: What if fascism would have taken hold in America? What if aviator, national hero, and Hitler protégé Charles Lindbergh would have been elected President of the United States in 1940? Story told from the perspective of an 8 year-old Jewish boy from New Jersey. Equal parts funny and fucked up. The story achieves a believable balance of whimsy and tragedy but ends abruptly, leaving an incomplete, unsatisfying feeling.

Cobra II: Peloponnesian War-length account of invasion and occupation (although way more on the invasion) of Iraq. Would-be/should-be lessons learned: 1) The incredible arrogance of Rumsfeld and the Bush Team that they were going to transform the military approach to combat with efficiency management strategies from the corporate business world and “shock and awe” technology; 2) The compelling evidence that the domestic campaign for the war— shoddy intelligence ab WMD’s, trumped up links to terrorism, spreading the expectation that Iraqis would receive American soldiers as liberators, and a stubborn commitment to fighting a high-tech war w/ as few soldiers as possible— cost innocent Iraqi and American lives; 3) The incredible amount of “friendly fire” soldier’s face in combat; 4) The amazing acts of courage by soldiers in combat; dragging comrades to safety under a hail of deadly fire, etc; 5) The lack of adequate planning and commitment to empowering Iraqis to organize and rebuild their own country after overthrowing Saddam was as criminally irresponsible as the manipulations to snooker congress and the American people into supporting the original invasion.


Great way to see the country.

Currently playing:"Street Walker," Michael Jackson

"Dream On" By Robyn

Thugs and badmen
punks and lifers
locked up interns
pigs and snitches

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be strip-searched, torn up tonight
you won't be cut up, bleeding tonight
you won't be strung out, cold, shaking to your bones
wishing you were anywhere else but right here
So dream on

Thieves and muggers
tricks and hustlers
cheats and traitors
scum and low-lives

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be sad or broken tonight
you won't be squealed on, ripped off tonight
you won't be back-stabbed, double cross, face down
teeth knocked out, lying in a gutter somewhere
So dream on

So dream on

Freaks and junkies
fakes and phonies
drunks and cowards
manic preachers

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be pushed or messed with tonight
you won't be lied to, ruffed up tonight
You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night
So dream on

So dream on

You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night

So dream on



Currently playing:Robyn's "Dream On"

Neil Young, 1970-71

Phil Dellio on the massively expensive Neil Young Archives box set (first installment!). It's still too rich for me but this does make me want to take some Neil on my road trip and replace my old bootleg cassette copy of Massey Hall as soon as possible.

The Embarrassment go with the Force--

Currently playing: "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough," The Embarrassment

The Black Van Gogh

don’t stop until you get enough

“Listen up and I’ll tell you a story/about an artist growing old/some artists go for fame and glory/some artists aren’t so bold.”-Daniel Johnston

Michael Jackson was so bold. His rocket to fame may have been fueled by terror but it was blazingly bold terror. Prince of Disco. A West Side Story for the MTV 80s. Military regalia that made him look like a dictator from a Third World country.(Or for awhile there maybe it was all the TW dictators wanted to look like Michael?!) But w/ one white, sequined glove, of course. Jackson was the man who would be king. The self-proclaimed: King of Pop. And if you’re talking numbers who, beyond Elvis Presley and the Beatles, both with considerable headstarts, could possibly contest his crown? Thriller sold more than a 100 million records. The next closest is AC/DC’s Back In Black with 45 million. MJ more than doubles the rest of the field.

A friend complained to me recently ab not being able to connect w/ the 24-7 coverage of Jackson’s death. Glorifying a pedophile, was his objection, basically. I blustered back ab what a singularly brilliant icon of American entertainment he was, blah, blah, forgiveness, blah, blah, and then dismissed his post-Thriller music as strained, stuck in caricature. Typical second-hand rock snob humbuggery.

Truth is beyond the biggest singles I barely knew his post-Thriller music. I’d never heard until recently the three albums he put out after Bad (’88): Dangerous (‘91), Blood On The Dance Floor (although I know some or most of this material from the History Part 2 CD) (’96), and Invincible (’01). Truth is I felt squeamish ab Jackson myself. But I turned him off before the pedophilia soap opera began.*

For me, it was his evolving/devolving/mutating appearance. He looked like a freakish plastic surgery casualty. I think I even remember the video where I turned away: “Remember The Time,” or if that’s the one where he and some perfect African model are Egyptian pharaohs or some such. He looked like he was wearing a creepy Diana Ross theater mask. I cringed looking at him, shocked by what he’d done to his appearance. Forever after I’d channel surf past him faster than you can say Jerry Springer Show.

But then the day he died I started playing his music again. We grew up together, for goodness sake. "ABC" on TV is one of my most exciting early pop memories. When I was living in group houses in the '80s he was moonwalking. He’s barely a year older than me. “Don’t Stop Til I Get Enough,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature,” “Man In The Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” etc. The guy completely invented post-disco RnB. He ate hiphop for lunch and then served it as an after-dinner dessert. But I’d played all those songs silly when they came out. I wondered what the hell he has been doing musically for the last twenty years?!

So I’ve been checking out MJ’s 90s and beyond music. I was familiar with more of this inspriational stuff than I expected in that way we pick up massively popular music in the air, radio, out of cars, in malls, dentist offices, on the street. It's astonishing how many of his lyrics from this period directly fuel the tabloid soap opera. Sings MJ in “In The Closet,” from Dangerous, “Something about you baby that makes me want to give it to you/just promise me whatever we say or do/ you’ll keep it in the closet.” But then he throws everybody off by using female pronouns. Right. Makes me wonder if his lyrics were ever used evidence against him in the child abuse trials? He sounds increasingly embattled and isolated; he is part of the culture but sounds a part from it too, both solipcistic and universal.

At any rate he was definitely NO musical caricature of his former self in the 90s. There is no sign of decline until at least 2001’s Invincible and then that’s arguable. During the 90s his music in several ways expanded, growing in variety and depth.

His funk rocks harder than ever. Check out “Who Is It,” “Give In To Me,” the aforementioned, “In The Closet,” or “This Time Around.” Play these songs up against your favorite grunge, Nine Inch Nails, or whatever hard rock from the same period. Nothing as classic as “Billie Jean” but they stretch his rock inclinations without sounding like retreads. They feel less like a crossover novelty than “Thriller.” They are angry Michael w/ angry guitars.

His inspirational balladry, a weakness in his solo work of the 70s and 80s (“We Are The World” aroused the first MJ backlash, as I recall), grows in depth and songcraft: “Heal The World,” “Keep The Faith,” “Gone Too Soon,” “Earth Song” “You Are Not Alone,” “History.” Sure, there’s a lot of Hallmark card sentiment in these songs but I find their let’s-all-sing-together gospel fervor more uplifting than “God Bless America” at post-9/11 baseball games. In every one of them it’s as if he were trying to top that gospelly Coke commercial, "we'd like to give the world a coke," in hand-holding pop universality.Pleading for unity over cynicism is fine by me w/ a nice melody or beat.

What stands out in this period as something different for Mike are these personal songs like “Stranger in Moscow” and “Childhood” going gothic. This is music not quite like anything he’s done— uber-loungy Judy Garland-Barbara Streisand-Nelson Riddle-Robert Plant baroque pop elegance— and he totally owns it, as good as my beloved Dusty Springfield doing “What Are You Doing With the Rest of Your Life” or any other song I’ve heard in this style. His vocals soar, delicate as gossamer wings, dramatic as Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, plucking and dropping intimate flower petals of melody in a slow hypnotic dance, like some pied piper of the apocaplypse. Compare these w/ ballads from his early period, “She’s Out Of My Life” or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” In the 90s his voice assumes a heft and virtuosic richness unavailable to him before. His singing is stunning.

On the other hand, “Childhood” also stands out as a song in which he takes head-on the tabloids attacks: “People say I’m not okay/because I love such elementary things/It’s been my fate to compensate for the childhood I’ve never known” and “Before you judge me/try hard to love me/the painful youth I’ve had/look in your heart/and then ask/have you seen my childhood?” Yeah, but like Kimya Dawson says, “Having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up,” either. She also suggests, in her songs "My Heroes," if MJ is guilty "off w/ his balls." All I know for sure is if he is guilty this has to be one of the creepiest great songs I’ve ever heard.

When he isn’t singing, he resorts to his post-JB jams. Pre-hiphop and anti-dance music people will never get this stuff but it's MJ’s bread and butter, really. Sure, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Bad” and “Jam” are repetitious. But as long as you feel the force “keep on with the force don’t stop,” just like Michael says. And through the 90s he does not disappoint. Check out album tracks like “Can’t Let Her Get Away” and “Money” “2Bad.” He works the rhythm like it were an exorcism— his kinetic dance energy feverishly masterful. It's always state-of-the-art funky, incorporating current Rnb trappings and then showing the way. At his best, MJ makes the pleasure of rhythm feel involuntary and this will probably last as his greatest aesthetic achievement.

My overall sense is that his post-Bad records will eventually grow in reputation with his death. He's been set free and so has his music. Only Invincible starts to feel merely ordinary in Jackson terms. (Which means it was probably strikingly better than most pop long players put out that year. And talk about star-crossed: the guy puts out a record called Invincible a month after 9/11!) Dangerous and Blood On The Dance Floor, or what I know of the latter from History Part 2, are as unique and musically rewarding as Thriller or any other record he has made.

None of this is to suggest I haven’t had trouble following the TV coverage, too. I don’t want to see the dangling-baby-over-the-balcony scene ever again. He was unhinged, no question. I don’t know how anybody takes that many drugs. I don’t want to watch Joe Jackson plugging his new record label, again. I prefer seeing MJ at one of his last public events, the announcement of his proposed upcoming 50 shows in London. He’s decked out in an Elvis Presley shirt and hair, Ross fright mask, giving some Nixonesque peace signs. And then into a Kung Fu fighting stance he works the crowd with some grunts and stomps like he really believed he was going to do it to them all over again, as only the king of pop could.

And the best eulogy I’ve heard so far comes from radio talk show host Bev Smith on a News Hour last week. Brought on the show to defend all the MJ memorial coverage (how could Jackson be given more coverage than the cap and trade system being discussed in congress? groused a panel opponent), Ms. Smith would not give an inch, concluding one of her segments with “He’s our Van Gogh” or something to that clear effect.

The black Van Gogh sounds about right to me: Michael Jackson R.I.P.


*(So he's a pedophile? Duh, the guy built a theme park for pre-pubes in his backyard! The evidence as to whether he hurt children is not clear to me, although I’m no expert on the literature. But, I gather, nor are most those positively sure he’s a perverted monster.)

Currently playing: Michael Jackson

Need a life? Plenty of folks are willing to share their’s online.

From Melody McDonald in the Seattle Times:.

“Experts say social-networking junkies — people consumed with e-mailing, texting, tweeting, blogging, podcasting and videoing — are everywhere. They're college students, marketing professionals and journalists. They're attention-seeking extroverts and anxiety-ridden introverts. They're young; they're old."

My blogging isn't an addiction yet but it certainly does feel a little silly. No one is reading this. (Or this or that or laugh or don’t or think or don’t or tell me why or don’t or keep it to yourself or I don’t care that much. Do what you can, okay?) It’s a message in a bottle. It’s scrawlings on this bathroom wall, public restroom. (But no one writes back!) I’m part of none of the groups from which most social-networking junkies belong. I’m an attention- seeking introvert. And I’m old but not “old.” I’m like a blogging Yosemite Sam, “Where the hell is everybody, dagnabbit?” If I could only get Shaq to twitter ab me I’d be really big, living large. But is that what I really want?

Currently playing:Wilco a ghost is born

1969: A Space Odyssey

An A.O. Scott essay ostensibly ab Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but in which said film is barely directly referenced. This is, however, not such a bad thing. He historicizes the film’s release in 1969, the year a man walked on the moon. It’s in the Space & Cosmos section of the paper. (BTW, 6% of Americans today believe the moon landings were faked.)

Currently playing:Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life

Art Thiel on the surprising success of the M’s through first half of 2009:

The M’s are unexpectedly over .500, 46-42, at the all-star break. So why not give some credit to the new coach and the new general manager. And, sure, throw in there some praise for the veteran clubhouse leadership of our depleted former stars, Ken Griffey jr. and Mike Sweeney, as Thiel does. But let’s also not forget to mention the most miraculously successful hitting by a handful of guys hitting close to or below the Mendoza (that's .200, as in NOT good non-baseball fans)line I’ve ever seen. They only hit when you absolutely need them to. It's uncanny. Now let’s hope they can keep this up all year!

Currently playing:"The Way You Make Me Feel," Michael Jackson

Too big to fail is socialism for the rich—

and who is and who isn’t too big to fail anyway?

Currently playing:Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy

Goldman Sachs- Up, Everyone Else- Down!

During the second quarter Goldman Sachs recorded the biggest quarterly profits in the institution’s 140 year history, while unemployment, pushing 10%, reached its highest point in three decades. Isn’t the amount, the humongous dwarfing scale, of financial investment profits on Wall Street that— and this is key— do NOT CREATE JOBS on Main Street an important, crucial, if not the biggest long-run, problem with the economy?

Currently playing:Flying Saucer Attack Rural Pychadelia