Friday, April 27, 2018

Notes On The Ken Burns Series, "Prohibition"

I like Ken Burns; his stuff is always entertaining. Last week I watched this three-part series on Netflix. Fascinating stuff.

T-Totaler: a “Capital T-TOTAL” Abstainer from alcohol. It has nothing to do with tea.

Bootleggers: guys who walked around wearing baggy pants with whisky bottles in hidden pockets. They sold swigs.

Skid Row: A Seattle street down which workers skidded logs to the docks for shipping. There were lots of bars to serve the workers after they were done.

All of the big brewers were German-Americans, and they took a big PR hit from the abstinence crowd during World War I. This facilitated Prohibition to some extent, because the abstainers were already associating alcohol with urban immigrants.

The Income Tax connection: before the income tax, the government was dependent on the excise tax on alcohol as a source of revenue. Having the income tax, the excise tax was reduced and prohibition became a financial possibility.

Scofflaw: The Boston Herald offered a $200 prize for coming up with a new word for “someone who knows that something (drinking) is illegal, but does it (drinks) anyway.” Two people shared the prize for “scofflaw.”

Winston Churchill on prohibition: “Prohibition is an affront to the entire history of mankind.”

Grape Concentrate: a popular product during prohibition, and a savior of the growers of wine-grapes. “Do not add water and leave in a dark place or it will ferment and become wine.”

“Jump Steady:” a brand of bootleg alcohol in Philadelphia.

Some states didn’t repeal prohibition until long after the Amendment turning the matter over to the states. Will Rogers: “Oklahoma will be dry until its voters can no longer stagger to the polls to vote against repeal.”

Otis Taylor - Hey Joe - Rare Photos

How would someone decide to try to wring something refreshing out of the 17,682nd cover of Hey Joe? I'd love to have a window onto that process.

This fellow does it, though. The whole thing is atmospheric and entertaining, and Mr. Taylor does manage to own the song. It's quite an accomplishment.

Otis is a new one on me. I've listened to a few cuts so far, and it's all good and there's a lot of variety to it. Somebody said in one of the comments, "Justified brought me here," so I suppose that Hollywood hipsters are putting Otis into their soundtracks. He's two weeks older than me, which is a drawback, but he was raised by a musical family that encouraged him, that's a big plus in life.

Interesting cover. Interesting guy.

Frankie Lee Sims - My talk didn't do any good

Here's another killer cut from the same period. Frankie Lee Sims is a much better known artist, and a big favorite around here. This music has so much life in it. Real life stories in the narratives; relentless rhythms; enthusiastic players. It all sounds like fun. 

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Jo Jo Williams - Rock'N Roll Boogie

Thank you, YouTube algorithm! Great cut. I played it because it was under two minutes in length. That's usually a good sign for this old rock n' roll.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: Biography, Part II

Frederick Ceely (1948- )
Biography, Part II

Freddy never liked it
when retards got pushed around,
just for being retarded,
they couldn’t help it.
Fred would interpose himself,
between the tormentors
and the ungrateful retard,
and require the boys
to push him around too,
if they wanted to try it,
and sometimes they did. 
Fred had a good arm,
and could throw a baseball
as far as anyone in town.
He could hit
as good as many boys. 
He was an okay fielder,
but too slow for the infield,
and his poor eyesight
made him a dubious benefit
in the outfield. 
He was far too high strung to pitch. 

Up until the age of six or so,
Fred had great success
fighting the other boys.
By then his contemplative mood
had begun to manifest itself,
and his fighting efforts,
now exclusively self-defensive,
suffered from existential conflict
about the need for such things.

During the seventh grade
Fred gave up his place
in the real world, the world
of crazy nuns and parents,
of nuclear voodoo
cold-war bullshit,
of the obnoxious New York Yankees,
of bullies and unreliable friends,
moving his things to
the parallel universe of dreams,
with frequent trips to libraries
and museums, fuel for dreams. 
Ceely admits to
knowing nothing at all
about:  women; money;
why people drive the way they do;
success; friendship;
the Chinese; business;
truth; or himself. 

Monday, April 23, 2018

Bobby Blue Bland - Little Boy Blue

The doo-wop song is melancholy, like something that happened long ago. Chet's song is like a sadness that will never fade. Mr. Bland sounds upset, upset with himself, maybe even angry at himself, and more than a little bit embarrassed at himself for playing the big man and blowing a good thing. 

All three of these songs are great. That's Wayne Bennett doing the guitar work on the Bobby Bland cut, which is part of the "Two Steps from the Blues" album. Man, I thank God every day for music like this, all three of them. 

Chet Baker She Was Too Good To Me She Was Too Good To Me 1974

This is the one that got me started. Earlier this evening I listened to this entire LP. This is late Chet, 1974, after the unfortunate curb-stomping that lost him his teeth, a stretch down on Hard Luck Boulevard, and some good work by a talented dentist. My opinion as a jazz critic is worthless, but I like his post-hiatus records. And boy, he could sure sell a sad song. 

Rochell and The Candles - Once Upon A Time - Early 60's Doo Wop Classic

Okay, it's theme time. Lost love, now that girl is gone, what the fuck was I thinking? There must be fifty songs with this narrative, but these three have been on my mind today. 

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Thank You TSA At LAX, With An Asterisk

Many of us prefer a bit of order in our lives; some insist on a lot of order. Let’s just say that I have a strong preference for the familiar, I prefer consistency in recurring situations. You don’t get that kind of comfort from the TSA security checks at American airports, nor at major airports around the world.

I went through the security check at LAX two years ago on my way back to my home in Asia. From the time that I got onto the checkpoint line, to the time that I walked out the other side, it took one hour and forty-five minutes. The time spent shuffling forward through the maze seemed like forever. As we approached the checkpoints themselves, we could hear the impatient TSA agents barking orders at travelers. It was very stressful, redeemed only by the near certainty that we would be allowed to go on our way without being injured or detained in the process.

Arriving at the checkpoint, we became the ones being barked at. Shoes off! In the trays! Computers out of the cases! In a separate tray! Belts and watches in the tray! Jackets off! And then through the body-scanner.

“What’s that in your back-right pocket!” Oh, taking out a handkerchief, sorry about that. (The agent examines the handkerchief and hands it back to me with a sneer. Luckily it was clean. Carrying them is an old habit from Catholic school, where we were required to carry one. I never use them to blow my nose; I carry them for use as emergency bandages, or as a face mask in case of a tear gas attack.)

Last month I went through the process again. I made sure to get to the airport ridiculously early, in fact I was surprised that they allowed me to check in at the airline counter and check my bag so long before the flight. I figured that they were allowing the extra time for the TSA check. I went up to the same location that the checkpoint was in two years ago, and I wondered where all of the people were. I was directed to the end of a line by an agent who seemed almost relaxed. There was no vast crowd, and no long serpentine line. The entire process took fifteen minutes!

Shoes on, belts on, watches on, laptop in the bag. Out of a sense of cooperation I took the change out of my pocket and put it into the tray with my attaché case. There were no body scanners in sight, just the old-fashioned metal detector, which did not register my belt and watch. The whole experience was surreal.

Many of my fellow travelers and I were a big giddy from the experience. A few even mentioned the change to a nearby agent. Now came our greatest shock: the agent smiled, and she even gave a short laugh! “Oh, don’t get used to it,” she said, “these procedures are temporary.”

I was sitting, waiting at my gate, four hours before we were scheduled to board the plane.

Not only on that day, but also in general, the tremendous variety of the procedures at airport checkpoints around the United States, and around the world, is somewhat disconcerting. The procedures are different in every airport; they vary considerably from country to country; they are often different on any two separate days at the same airport. Most countries give you a thorough going over before you can board a plane to leave, but there are countries, such as Singapore, which give you a more thorough check upon arrival (lest you be one of those miscreants who wishes to pollute their beautiful city-state with chewing gum). Are some places safer than others? The whole thing is confusing.

I know that it is bad form to complain about the good fortune of getting through an airport TSA checkpoint so quickly and easily. Please accept my apology. I’m sure that they’ll make up for it next time.

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Leslie Odom Jr - Forever Young, Obama White House

Sharing this to my Facebook page would be unnecessarily cruel, because many of my friends there would be mortally offended by my sentiments on the matter, which are these:

There are those among us today who will find much to be terribly wrong with this video. Many of the American people have returned to the belief that America is a white, Christian nation, and they still bristle at the idea that for eight years Barack Husein Obama was the President of the United States, and that Michelle Obama was the First Lady, and that they lived in the White House, and represented America around the world, and that they were allowed to fill such events as this with negro entertainment. They find all of this to be an invasion of the natural order of things, a horrible anomaly in the history of our great country.

They are so far gone in this delusion that they believe that Donald Trump is a return to decency and normality. Donald, a gangster in all by name, a gangster in everything from the company that he has always kept to the methods that he has always employed, Donald, a crass, morally and often financially bankrupt man, without an ounce of grace, devoid of any sense of humor, and poor Melania, wife number three, about whom it hurts me to say anything uncharitable, so I'll just call her a trophy-wife where there obviously is no real relationship.

But those people who hated Obama so much just because he is black now are so full of joy and relief just because Donald and Melania are white. They would find a lot to complain about in the presentation, too. It's on BET, for one thing, and the blackness of the singer would put a sneer on their faces as well. And look at the smugness of Obama and Moochelle! Why, it's disgraceful!

When actually, this video is pure sweetness and light! Barack and Michelle were a dream of grace and decency and style in the White House. They were the first normal family to occupy the position since Jimmy Carter's administration.  Leslie Odom, Jr. is one of the very best singers working today, and this song is another home-run, out of the park, way out in the parking lot, which is just another day at the office for Mr. Odom. It's all beautiful.

In the end, it was President Obama's decency that allowed Trump to prevail in the election. There was plenty of reason to block Trump's nomination, and plenty of solid information about disqualifying acts and facts. But Obama, and Hillary, and the Democrats, and the FBI, and the CIA, were loath to interfere in an election, and besides, no one thought that Trump would win anyway! Why raise a hue and cry and cast doubt on our very system of government for nothing! The chump will lose, of course! Now we are stuck with the chump. I'm a fairly decent man myself, but I would have done things a lot differently. I would at least have torpedoed Trump's campaign. And one never knows what will happen in this life. People's private planes crash every day.

So, no Facebook for this one. My Facebook-Trump-Fan-Friends are safe, for today. I've known some of them since we were children, and I know them to be intelligent and decent, at least in every way not related to politics or Trump. It's a source of amazement for me, but what is one to do? It's a crazy world.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Spin Easy Time!: Sukothai Motorcycle Taxi Ride

Hit the link and you can see a video that I shot in Sukhothai in 2011. It was a very dangerous ride, but it beat walking by a country mile.

Spin Easy Time!: Sukothai Motorcycle Taxi Ride: I love the tropic sky, and the rice fields in Sukothai are among the most beautiful in Thailand. There's something about the countrys...

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Afrirampo - Afrirampo

Afrirampo is one of those bands that I need to be reminded of every couple of years. Why, you say?

I like bands with two members, playing guitar and drums. I like Japanese noise-rock bands. I like bands who courageously disregard commercial considerations. I like Asian women. So, Afrirampo, what's not to like?

People say that western men like Asian women because the women are submissive. Anybody who actually knows a lot of Asian women will tell you that that is a ridiculous idea, a complete non-starter. Here's what they have over the average western woman:

1. They are appreciative. They notice and appreciate any small acts of consideration or kindness that you may offer them;

2. They are fair-minded, and more likely to accept cooperative relationships (rather than insisting on being the boss); and

3. They tend to be more uninhibited (as long as they come from one of the countries that are undamaged by contact with Psychiatry or Christianity).

Like Afrirampo, for instance. I'm sure that they appreciate favorable comments. They seem to have a very democratic arrangement between them; they share the spotlight. And they certainly are uninhibited.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Joey Joey Joey (Leslie Odom Jr) with Lyrics

As a wonderful reminder that it might be worth the effort to remain alive, great songs will jump out of nowhere and attach themselves to your heart.

I discovered Leslie Odom, Jr. recently when I heard his version of "Love, Look Away" on KJAZ in Los Angeles. That song was still on YouTube on the day that I first heard it, but within twenty-four hours it had disappeared from the digital universe. (Unless it's back now, you never can tell.) I listened to everything that I found by him, and I really was hit hard by "Joey, Joey, Joey."

Somehow, it sounded familiar, but I was pretty sure that I had never heard it before, and that the illusion was just a deja vu moment. But no, I had heard it, once or twice, in the late 1990s. I picked up five CDs of lesser known Broadway shows at a silent auction for a school whose owner was a friend of mine, and "The Most Happy Fella" was one of them. I had never heard of the show, but I liked it when I listened to the CD, and this is one of the songs.

How about Mr. Odom's "Joey . . .?" Not bad, 'eh? This guy is really something.

Johnny Hartman / Joey, Joey, Joey

As sung by Johnny Hartman. 

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Springtime in America

(Negativity Alert! May Not Be Suitable For Children Or Right-Wing Snowflakes.)

There's a new baseball season; the green fields are full of a new crop of great young players. Anything can happen! This is always a time of optimism in American culture. We all have our teams, and this is their year! Each team is a mass of raw potential, like children. But isn't it necessary to wait until the children mature to see the difference between potential and the wishes of a sincere but over-matched parent? In the end, only one team will win. Can we at least count on that? There'll be playoffs at the appointed hour, won't there? There'll be a World Series; isn't there always a World Series? Can we be optimistic about that, at least?

I'm not counting on anything this year. It's snowing in April, for crying out loud.

This is a new kind of “anything can happen.” All of the rules have been thrown straight out the window. We have always been told that America is a country of laws, that we are ruled by the law, that our Constitution stands above everyone, and covers everyone with its protective shadow. And its penumbra! We have been told that our representatives and our public servants, from judges to spies, all observe the same set of rules, and are all controlled by the majestic logic and history of our great Constitution. Well, I'm afraid that it's time to awaken from this wonderful dream, America.

The Constitution turns out to have been a suicide pact all along, just waiting for the gun-hand to come along. A vast game of Jenga, waiting for the day when someone pulls out the wrong brick. Then comes a brief period of the blocks collapsing noisily onto the table top, and some laughing and crying out in surprise. We're still in the brief, giddy chaos of the tower's disintegration. What comes next? I guess there are three alternatives:

  1. Put the blocks back in the box;
  2. Leave them on the table and clear it all up some other time; or
  3. Rebuild the tower and play another game.
So, what's it going to be, America? Our entire American Experiment in democratic self-government is teetering on the edge of failure. Nobody is playing by the old rules anymore, most of them are, in fact, breaking the old rules openly. Great, wide swaths of our Constitutional rights have been relegated to purgatories that stand somewhere between the discarded and the disregarded. My own favorite, probable cause, now means, in the words of a talented defense attorney, “whatever the local District Attorney wants it to mean.”

No, I'm not going to make a list of our problems. Either you know what they are, or you will launch off into a glib explanation of why they are not problems at all. Because, after all is said and done, our only problems are Hillary and Obama, right? And the Jews, somehow they always make the list, and the poor niggers (a word that is unfortunately making a comeback among people who should know better), who have never done anything but grace us with their contributions to American culture, and the actors and academics of America, who are always accused of looking down on the real Americans, and the Liberals, without whom all of these Trump voters would be the sole support of their aging parents, and those uppity coastal states, without whom the rest of America would be reduced to subsistence farming, and those damn immigrants. Better be careful, geniuses. If we did manage to kick out all of the immigrants, we'd have to start sending raiding parties into Mexico to draft farm labor.

The map of our current Civil War that most people know best is Facebook, where there is a contingent that sees pirates and charlatans grabbing all of the levers of power, destroying our democratic institutions, and stealing all of the money for themselves and their patrons, and another contingent that sees strong American patriots finally defining our problems in terms that normal people can understand. Patriots identifying demonized groups whom they will be grinding into dust with their heels presently. And just try and stop them! When all of those groups have been eliminated, or maybe just humbled, America can finally become the great, white, Christian nation that God and the Founding Fathers intended! Everybody gets a big-screen TV and plenty of channels, some guns, and a hunk of government cheese, and, if the new bosses are clever, plenty of strong reefer so that the unemployed masses can get a good buzz and watch re-runs of The Walking Dead. For anyone who really wants a job, I'm sure there'll be a lot of openings in the military, or McDonalds, or Walmart. (I'd say Amazon, but they showed up on the Demon list recently.) There'll be jobs for police, perfect for veterans who wish to continue working. Maybe as corrections officers, guarding inmates doing slave labor up at the prison. Or ICE officers, manning checkpoints.

Springtime for America; winter for the American people. Is that the new dream? You tell me.

Monday, April 9, 2018

Ry Cooder - Married Man's A Fool

Go ahead and try it if you want to. Get married! It works out pretty good, sometimes. Just don't be surprised if it all goes south like the geese, around October. 

The thing is, men are annoying. You may not think so, if you're a man, but most of the women that I've known over the years felt very strongly that men were a tribe of big babies, selfish and lazy, or worse. If you catch women talking to each other when they think no one can hear them, you'll see the big picture PDQ, and get the message, too. 

Don't let me discourage you! Go ahead and give marriage a try. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones. The secret is to always do exactly what your wife wants you to do, and do it immediately with a smile on your face, even if what she wants is impossible. If you can do that, you'll be fine. 

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Amazon Memoir? Why Not.

Self-publishing! It’s one of the few good things about the 21st Century. I’ve been writing on this here blog for over ten years now, and when I look back over the many pages I must admit that I like a lot of what I see. Why not self-publish some of it on Amazon? It’s easy enough, and the price is right. The idea is so crazy that it just might work.

Not for money, God knows that I don’t write for money. It’s hardly possible anymore, for one thing, and a blog is not a tree to sniff around if money is your goal. Nor is Amazon self-publishing, for that matter. But for readers? Aye, there’s the rub. I have always maintained that I write for my own pleasure, for my own distraction, but that is not necessarily true. This blog has reliably generated over fifty hits per day for years now, and I must admit that I am pleased almost beyond measure to think that someone is reading the things that I write.  Once in a while I post something that generates Google hits in Russia or China, and my hit-count spikes to over two hundred per day. That’s a hallelujah moment for me! So yes, I am prepared to admit that I write, to some extent, to be read.

So, this year I am resolved to put together two collections of blog posts and make them available on Amazon. One in the manner of a memoir, and one more in the nature of general ruminations. I may even devote some resources to marketing these products. Leaving aside the lost dream of writing to make a living, all writers write for a very limited number of purposes. Sure, some write for art’s sake, that happens. Most write just to be communicating with other people. They find a need in themselves to communicate, and short of grabbing random pedestrians by the lapels and explaining things to them, writing seems to be the best alternative. Others write because the terror of unremembered death is just too awful for them to bear. Honestly, I think that I am guilty of all three. Something like 10/70/20. I’d love to connect somehow with others of my kind. I’ve never had any particular talent for connecting with my fellow man. Art? Why not? I love art, and I love the English language, and if anyone with a license to have an opinion thought that some of my sentences were artful, I’d be as pleased as punch. Remembered? Mozart is remembered. Rembrandt is remembered. James Joyce is remembered. Even Benjamin Disraeli is remembered. The rest of us can forget that dream, although the dream persists. 

Ah, it’s the story of my life. Great effort without remuneration. Let’s see how it goes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you are anywhere close to my age, you will certainly agree that these are desperate times.  

Friday, April 6, 2018

ray barretto - indestructible

Let's take a minute to remember our fellow Americans down in Puerto Rico, who are still coming back from that hurricane. We owe those people a lot for all that they have done for us, and we owe them all of the help that our sorry asses can muster.

We owe them, for one thing, this Newyorican incarnation of La Musica, the Salsa music. I can tell you, whether it was at work, or at a party, or playing soccer, or having dinner, or in a band, these guys bring so much energy to the enterprise that you just can't believe it sometimes. They could be hard to keep up with, but it was always worth trying.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

My Old Law School

I started law school at Pepperdine in Malibu the day after my fortieth birthday. I had good undergraduate grades, and a high LSAT score, so I was accepted by all four of the schools that I applied to. I could have gone to Loyola, which is a higher rated school, but I chose Pepperdine. There were two reasons: 1) they offered me a 25% scholarship; and 2) the location. 

This is the view from the law building. In the years before I started school, I regularly rode a motorcycle around these hills and along this coast line. I'd seen Pepperdine, in fact I had ridden around the campus. I thought that law school would be stressful, which is was, and I thought that this location would be relaxing, which it was. 

This is the view from one of the study tables in the library. On a good day, you can see Anacapa Island in the distance, and frequently you will see a hawk glide by, close to the hillside. 

It was a good choice. I was comfortable there, and I got a very good education. You compare the quality of the education by comparing the graduating classes' passage rate for first-time takers of the California Bar Exam. That's a famously difficult test, with the over-all passage rate for first time takers usually falling in the high forties. For my class the passage rate was in the high eighties. We were well prepared. 

It's still a beautiful place, but like all American universities it's frighteningly expensive now. I graduated in 1991, and the tuition was under $15,000 per year. Now it's almost $50,000. It's a nationwide scam organized by the government, the university system, the lenders, and the collection industry. The students are the victims. I've got an old post up here about the whole process in which this new system was set up. I got out just in time, but then I have always been a very lucky man. 

Prince La La - She Put The Hurt On Me 45 rpm!

This fellow perfectly illustrates the similarities between the Brooklyn accent and the accent in a certain part of New Orleans. 

Prince La La - Gettin' married soon

Who shot the La La? Don't ask me, but I know it was a .44. 

Two great records, two hi-scoring regional hits, and bang! Just like that Prince La La left the scene. 

The Dangers Of Relativism And Subjective Reality

Subjective reality is not reality at all. It is something else entirely. It may be personal preference; or naked self-interest; or received religious doctrine; or paranoid delusion. Whatever it is, it is by definition subjective. It is personal to the individual. It is obvious that the American people, many, if not most of them, have elected to go with “subjective reality,” and leave objective truth behind. This phenomenon has reached the level of an existential threat. Let me spell that out in layman’s terms: the future existence of the United States is placed in danger by people’s substitution of a dream world for actual, objective reality. No nation in history has thrived by resorting only to subjective reality to run their governments and their economies. Subjectivity is doom on the express tracks.

What am I talking about? Here are a few simple examples:

1.   People don’t like abortion, so they try to eliminate it by creating laws and programs that will insure an increase in the numbers of abortions, such as abstinence only programs; making contraception expensive and difficult for some women to obtain; failing to provide our youth with proper sex education classes; and stigmatizing sex itself.
2.   Our government rejects the science of climate change that is substantially due to the burning of fossil fuels, preferring to keep in place the money stream that benefits only themselves and a small number of their friends. This while more enlightened, reality-based governments in other developed countries are having great success changing over to many now well understood sources of renewable energy, such as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and hydroelectric.
3.   Americans have lived with numerous external threats since World War II. Some have been real, and some totally imaginary, but our responses have consistently made matters worse and increased the level of danger to ourselves. Afraid of Russian nuclear weapons? Build many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and several undefeatable delivery mechanisms, all, or most, aimed at the Soviet Union, insuring that the Soviets will build a similar array of nukes, all aimed at us. Afraid of communism? There’s no need to differentiate between communist regimes. Treat the North Vietnamese the same as the Soviets and the Chinese, in spite of the fact that they fought beside us against the Japanese and appreciated all of the help that we gave them, that they preferred us by far to either the Soviets or the Chinese, and that they would have been glad to become our steadfast ally, communism notwithstanding. Not to mention the weird adventurism of our policies in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula, and our unfathomable practice of filling up the entire world with military bases, ships, and planes.
4.   The government, to suit its own purposes, has whipped the population into a frenzy of the fear of crime and drugs. They counterintuitively respond by criminalizing everything and creating the largest incarceration statistics in the history of the world. Most of this prison population are incarcerated for trivial reasons, like personal drug use. They have done this in the name of justice, but it is actually the paranoid opposite of justice. They have done this largely on the basis of race, according to related set of fear based, irrational reasons, thus compounding the error.

I suppose I could come up with more, but this is already starting to look like a marathon. There’ll be more specifics later on. I should begin to get to the point.

The History of Relativism

Relativism: the doctrine holding that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to cultural, societal, or historical context only, and are not absolute concepts. In other words, one person’s reality is as important, as “real,” as anyone else’s.

There was a time when most Americans agreed on most of the things that form the foundations of human life, even if that did include a great deal of nonsense obtained from revealed literature. Even so, plants were plants, life on other planets was best left to science fiction writers, the earth was not carried through the cosmos on the back of a turtle, and scientists were usually right about the things that they were sure of. Scientists were able to persuade most people that the earth and the cosmos had existed for vast millennia, developing into the climate and continents that we see now slowly over the course of hundreds of millions of years. After all, the atomic bomb did explode on schedule. It was even possible for Godly people to sustain their faith while simultaneously understanding that the world had not been snapped together in six days like a cheap puzzle. It’s hard to imagine now, with modern Americans flying off on weird tangents constantly, and believing any stupid conspiracy theory or bit of propaganda that comes along.

This seems to have undergone a rapid change beginning in the 1960s.

Some of us remember the 1960s. Popular culture produced books like “The Secret Life of Plants,” by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. In what was quite a novel idea at the time, they suggested that “studies showed” that plants had some kind of interior lives, intelligence, as it were, that plants engaged in problem solving, and communicated with each other. Another popular book was, “Chariots of the Gods,” by Erich von Daeniken, which revolved around the importance of aliens in human history, you know, building the pyramids, and so forth. I remember thinking that books like these were all foolishness, but many people were more in the mood to be persuaded. What I did not realize until much later was that a certain portion of academia was becoming open to ideas similar to these examples, based upon the concept of relativism.

They were teaching that all ideas were valid, and that no one’s truth was any truer than anyone else’s. Who are we to say that the earth is not carried through the cosmos by a turtle, if some people believe that it is so? To treat other cultures that way is patronizing! Why, it’s cultural imperialism! These academics, on the fringes of academia at the time, were opening the door to subjective reality. Any stupid shit that could be believed by some critical mass of individuals could be seen as being just as valid as any scientifically observable counter idea. So now we have a startling percentage of Americans who believe in angels; who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. They argue about the nature of angels, and the specific date on which God embarked upon the enterprise of creation. They take themselves very seriously, as befits people in the throughs of paranoia. They are not treated like other demonstrably mentally ill people. Rather, they are encouraged by friends, neighbors, religious leaders, and politicians. Vast swaths of the American population still believe that President Obama is a “Kenyan Muslim,” or even the Anti-Christ! Some of us know better, but it puts us at some risk to oppose these delusions. Who are we to tell them that what they know to be true is manifestly false? Who indeed.

Personalized Facts

It’s obvious that Americans today feel entitled to their own interpretation of facts. Since the election of Herr Professor Doktor Fuzzy Drumpf, whom people say is the greatest president in the history of America, if not the world, this entitlement is a right more recognized than the right to due process or probable cause. When the Fabulous Prezzy D. John says, “I won the popular vote by three million votes, if you don’t count the illegal ballots cast by (fill in the blank . . . don’t forget to include immigrants), he is giving Americans the right to manufacture their own facts to suit themselves. What shooting down at that school in Florida? Those were crisis actors! No one got shot! No one died! George Soros paid those 800,000 kids marching in Washington D.C. $500 apiece! And he paid their expenses, too! And that skinny punk who’s all over the TV, he wasn’t even at the school that day! We can prove it! (Which usually means, “I saw it on Fox News/Breitbart/The Daily Caller.”)

Things have gotten pretty out of hand by now.  Think of the range of paranoid opinion concerning the 9-11 attack, or the JFK assassination.

It is true that we all “see” a world that is different from the world that other people “see.” We do this through our own senses, in a manner that is unique to us. We all “remember” a world that consists of our own, personal perceptions and experiences. On some level, it’s all very subjective. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” That is the tension between the self and the other, the subjective and the objective. These things are part of life, and they are the basis of most art.

Having said that, objective reality does exist. Of course it fucking exists! Reasonable people can argue the aesthetics of a particular Frank Gehry building, but they must agree that the building does, in fact, exist. This becomes more problematic when applied to buildings that no longer exist, let’s say the Crystal Palace that was built for the exposition of the same name in London in 1851. It no longer exists, not even in human memory, and there were no photographs to be taken at the time. We have, however, voluminous contemporary sources from magazines and newspapers with drawings and descriptions to use as evidence that it did once exist. Is that enough? What if I say that it was a hoax? What if I produce some counter-evidence? Can we agree that that would be a silly idea? Of course, it existed.

How about the Colossus of Rhodes? Now we have a problem. There are many contemporary descriptions, but they present inconsistent details about the statue. Some of these were written down at later dates from second or third hand accounts. We know where it is alleged to have stood at one time, but the configuration of the land and the sand bars making up the harbor has shifted over the centuries. There are many drawings, based “on evidence,” but they do not agree on the size or the aspect of the statue. It is still famous as one of the Eight Wonders of the Ancient World, but we are taking a lot on faith. Objectively real? I am prepared to accept it as such, but maybe that’s just me.

Personalized Belief in Events

This works slightly differently with regard to events. The example of the moon landing is interesting to me. Somehow, a huge number of Americans have gotten it into their heads that the moon landing in 1969 was a hoax. It was staged by Hollywood to distract people from the Vietnam War or something. They present a great deal of evidence to prove that it was all dummied up on some sound stage by cinema technicians. Shadows go in the wrong directions; flags seem to “wave” in the absence of wind. The paranoid mind makes it all sound very sinister.

This all flies in the face of a vast trove of physical and circumstantial evidence. The proof supporting the moon landing, moon landings, multiple, is vast and compelling. The intention was stated well before the ramping up of the war in South East Asia, so any connection would have arisen later. There were many years of impressive achievements before the landings themselves. A great number of impressive rocket launches, lots of guys spending lots of time in earth orbit, later in moon orbit. There were technological achievements a ‘plenty, electronics for the computers, chemistry for the propellants, engineering for the rocket engines, mathematics for the navigation. The entire vast enterprise played out in the media before a rapt public. We were all, I can tell you, extremely impressed by it all, beginning with John Glenn’s first orbital flight and right on up to the moon landings. Those launches and recoveries were all live, filmed on analog cameras using film, and they were all on TV.

This particular paranoid delusion is fascinating to me. Why should we not have gone to the moon? We had obviously created all of the necessary tools and had them at the ready. What agenda is served at this point by encouraging the belief that the moon landing did not happen? Three presidents and hundreds of thousands of people were involved. How would you organize a hoax like that? It boggles the mind.

Agendas, ah, there’s the rub. Whose agenda is served by any particular paranoid belief?

The Holocaust is another case in point. From our particular point in history there are multiple agendas that are served by the assertion that the Holocaust never occurred.

The Holocaust is a unique case. It’s very vastness almost tends to create doubt in some minds. It took place over the course of many years, with many thousands of participants, over great distances and at thousands of sites, but there are evidentiary problems. It was not well photographed, and dead men tell no tales.

Our modern world is full to overflow with apologists for the Nazis; Nazi revisionists; Neo-Nazis; and Nazi fans in general. Add to that the Hitler fans, most notably the cult of Hitler as “a man of peace,” who just wanted to protect Europe and America from those evil Soviets, and who did not bear any malice to the Jews or anyone else. If anyone killed the Jews, it must have been the Soviets! They were the real anti-Semites!

The “peaceful Hitler” thing is all over the Internet. Why, they say, if Herr Hitler and those brave German soldiers, particularly those talented SS boys, didn’t knock the wind out of the Soviet hordes, we’d all be speaking Russian now and living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare. (That last part came true, anyway, just not the Russian part.)

The Holocaust becomes an inconvenient detail in this Peaceful Hitler scenario, so it is rejected as a hoax. The problems faced by those making this assertion are legion, and they are compelling and daunting.

Just the mathematical problem is overwhelming: after the war, there were six million Jews MISSING. It’s impossible to suggest that they were all collateral damage to the combat that was taking place around them. Worst of all for those backing the hoax story is the fact that the Nazis were relentless record keepers. They recorded the details of the Holocaust in real time, with Germanic precision. The records are amazing in their detail, and shocking in their banality. For the Nazis, it was just another bureaucratic exercise, like running a railroad. How many Jews were put on a certain train this morning? Why was that train delayed at this certain stop? Where did the train change locomotives? How many Jews arrived (still alive) at which camp this morning? And usually the records also included things like: what were their names? How much gold was recovered? How many kilograms of hair were packaged? What mattress factory was it sent to? How much did we charge them for the hair? Did they pay their bill? How many kilograms of fat for the soap factories? (“Aus Feinem Fett Gemacht.”) HOW MANY WERE KILLED TODAY? HOW WERE THEY KILLED? (Amazingly, “drowned in a pool” was a common way of murdering Jews.) It was all written down, and you can read the records today. 

So yeah, it’s hard to argue that the Holocaust never happened. It should also be impossible to believe that it never happened. And yet there are many people who argue that the whole thing never happened, and a much greater number of people who believe them. The truth of it should be obvious to everyone, but that is obviously too much to ask in today’s world of subjective reality.


It would be just so great if we could agree to work on identifying a version of reality that we could all agree on. Or at least come to some agreement about the very existence of objective reality. Great if we could agree that the consensus of the scientific community represented real facts that we could recognize and act on. Great if we could agree that “thoughts and prayers” are not a suitable response to real-world problems like mass murders and natural disasters. Great if we could even begin to agree that discovering the difference between fantasy and reality was important.

Forgive me if I am not optimistic. We are trapped in a web of interconnecting problems that are as novel as they are dangerous. New problems arise so rapidly that it is impossible to keep up. It’s like playing fifty games of Whack-a-Mole simultaneously with one pair of arms. Where do you even start addressing such a complex, everchanging set of challenges? I certainly don’t know, but I hope that I have at least shed some light on the problem.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

The Kinks - Tired of Waiting

Good lip-sync by a band that could play when they had to (and weren't afraid to hire somebody in the studio when it was convenient). I wondered if the drummer, Mick Avory, was looking at his watch about a minute in, and there are a few people in the comments who wondered the same thing. He might have known there was a change coming, and wanted to make sure he stayed in the pattern with the soundtrack.

Billy Preston - Will It Go Round In Circles (1973)

Billy Preston was a very talented guy, and he made a lot of great records of his own. He also played on a lot of records by other artists, and he helped to make those some great records too. That's my opinion, and I'm the first to admit that my opinion doesn't mean much in the scheme of things. Billy doesn't need my approval. His career can stand on its own.

Or can it? He was such a cheerful guy, unrelentingly cheerful, that we mostly missed the fact that he had a lot of unfortunate drama in his life. We missed it unless he got arrested. Towards the end I think that the memory of the records was being crowded out by the tales of arrests and drugs and court cases and underage boys getting assaulted. He died pretty young too, Billy did. Had the old hypertension, big time, he found out the hard way that cocaine is for horses, human beings don't have the body weight to deal with that kind of pressure.

These are some great records, though. "I wrote a song, it ain't got no moral. Let the bad guy win every once in a while." I've got a story like that myself. I might even finish it someday. Yeah, as soon as somebody can convince me that there's more than a plugged nickel in a self-published novel.