25 October 2011

The Next (10)

Yesterday, I saw where TIME magazine had released their All-TIME 100 Songs.  First of all, what the hell does TIME magazine know about music?  It actually wasn’t bad and worth a quick read.  Noticeably absent however were the Clash, Cheap Trick – how do you not have a John Prine song on that list?  I was pleased to see Johnny Cash, Metallica, Woody Guthrie and a few other surprises included.  The problem was the sample size, I think.  Plus, they chose songs as far back as the 1920’s (I don’t see the point).  AND how does Missy Elliot warrant inclusion on any list?
 
Rolling Stone recently released a similar list but expanded it to the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  Ambitious.  Not entirely inaccurate.  But they lost all credibility when Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone shows up as #1.  Great song, phenomenal even but the “greatest”? Because it shares the name of your once-relevant publication?

Reading through these lists today, especially this last one, I began fixating on the concept of “greatest”.  It’s a very subjective term, no?  I don’t feel that music can be catalogued in that manner.  I get it.  I understand the need to make these kinds of lists.  I make lists – hell my life is a constant organizing and reorganizing of lists of things to do, people to see blah, blah, blah.  I need that order.  I have to have a list.  How else can anyone expect to keep all the balls that life is, successfully airborne at all times otherwise?  If I could remember 1,000 songs (and I can by the way – remember the lyrics, where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it!) I wouldn’t put them into a directory.  That’s not what music is – not what it is supposed to be anyway.  I don’t think we can put a label on the “greatest” song ever.  

It changes.   

Music is undoubtedly way too personal to publish an inventory of songs in order of importance or merit.  My greatest song certainly isn’t yours…and it might not be mine tomorrow or even five minutes from now.  Music exists in the “is” not the “was".  It’s what I hear right now, what that song makes me feel right now or remember right now or whatever it does right now that makes it the greatest song ever (right now).  There is no possible way to determine the “greatest song of all time” in my opinion.  (But if you could, I’m pretty sure it would be by the Clash.)

In the spirit of not placing preference on any one particular song and in an effort to not diminish the quality or validity of the next song you hear, I give you the next (10) songs in my iPod.  
Enjoy.

1.                  I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor – Arctic Monkeys

These kids blew me away the first time I heard them – reminded me of an amped up Minutemen. The story goes that they all were given instruments for Christmas (2) years prior to recording this album.  I’ve been playing guitar for nearly (25) years and still can’t hit some of their changes.  The first (2) CDs were outstanding but they fell off the deep from there.  Experimental. Non-committal.  Very disappointing.  But the first (2) were awesome – stellar live as well.

2.                  Smooth Criminal – Alien Ant Farm

Probably one of the best covers ever recorded.  It makes you want to jump around and bounce off of things.  That don’t suck.

3.                  This is Shangri La – Mother Love Bone

One of the truly great Seattle bands.  I never listened to them when they were current.  By the time I stumbled onto their music Wood was already dead.  I think they only cut the one album before he passed.  That’s a shame.  Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament went on to Pearl Jam fame.  Never saw them live, obviously, but I hear they were incredible.  Great song – captures their moment.

4.                  Henry Lee – Nick Cave and PJ Harvey

I saw Cave at the Variety Playhouse recently and he’s still got it.  Always kind of a “scary guy” crooner, he re-invented himself with his latest project Grinderman.  Not what I was expecting but I can say now that I saw Nick Cave!  This song is fairly representative of most of his work. Dark.  Lyrical.  Good, good stuff this.  I feel like it’s always Halloween at his house.  An incredible talent.  An incredible story in this song.  And as a bonus he’s singing with a strangely hot PJ Harvey.  (I know, right?)

5.                  I Know What I Am – Band of Skulls

Solid band.  I’ve always been a sucker for a three-piece.  I’ve always had a thing for girls who play bass too. (Blame Kim Deal for that.)  I’ve listened to the rest of their music and it’s not bad.  It’s just not really good.  This song represents a shift in my thinking about music actually.  I once thought that if the album as a whole wasn’t good then the song lost power.  Not true.    I do admit that they quickly lost favor with me based on their association with those ridiculous Twilight movies however.  Sell-out move right there.

6.                  Heavy Things – Phish

Never mistake me for a hippie.  And for the record I detest bands of the ilk that Phish represents.  I just don’t buy it – selling grilled cheese out of the back of mom and dad’s SUV?  Please. (Trust fund baby)  In spite of how I feel about the genre, and “following” a band, this is a fantastic song.  It’s about the song after all, right? 

7.                  Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder

What a song and what an artist.  Stevie has more talent in his two blind eyes than I do in my whole fully functional body.  It makes me wish I would try harder. 

8.                  Summertime – DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince

I couldn’t admit it to anyone I knew at the time but this was my favorite song in the summer of 1991.  (I love the randomness of my iPod.) 

9.                  Young Crazed Peeling – The Distillers

Speaking of smoking hot guitar players.  Wow!  Brody scares the shit out of me.  I like that.  Sadly, her band was a flash in the pan.  She was married to Tim Armstrong (Rancid) and when that ended, the Distillers basically did too.  That second album was the deal though.

10.             The Future – Leonard Cohen

Everything he freaking speaks or thinks is poetry of the highest order.    Absolutely invented cool.  And that voice is stunning gold.  If you don’t know Leonard Cohen then you have a gigantic void in your music, in your art…in your life.  He’s that important.  This old Canadian is still doing his thing at 77 – if I live as long as he, I could only wish to be half as cool.  

I came to know him in New Orleans at the Erin Rose on Conti Street.  At the time, this bar was mostly inhabited by a random mix of punks and freaks and an occasional adventurous tourist - a perfect dive bar. They had an incredible juke box (and air conditioning) filled with songs and bands that I’d never heard.  I spent too many salty Saturday afternoons there in ‘95. Those punks loved L.C. It’s bizarre what you can learn from a true punk musically.  Cohen shared space in that juke box with Johnny Cash, Jonathon Richman, Patsy Cline, Iggy Pop and was in similar rotation.  I think you have to pay attention always: there is music you might have missed.   

The bullshit that is out now is 95% forgettable and a waste of your time.  I know that sounds like some old dumbass, but sadly it is true.  Do you really think that Lady Gaga has any musical and / or historical merit?  Kelly Clarkson?  Drake? Katy Perry? Insert name here?  The answer is a resounding no.  Most “artists” today do not.  It makes me sad.

To plagiarize an idea of Mark Twain’s – if Leonard Cohen doesn’t go to heaven when he dies, I want to go where he went.  If you take nothing else from anything that I’ve said, take Leonard Cohen.  You owe it to yourself to look into his words.  Just listen.  I never cease to be shocked.

That is all (for now).

22 October 2011

The 1st (10) Songs


I’ve always held a belief that music should simply occur in nature in much the same way that wind or rain or shine does. It should just happen. Music should just be. For me it has always been ever-present. I wish that the music that I hear in my head floated away on the air for everyone else. The logistics of this idealistic thought certainly are not worked out (yet). If free-air music were to be real, I feel no one is better qualified than I to program said music.

IF I were in charge of the non-existent Department of Free-Air Music for the Masses I would start with these songs.  No thought has been put into this list – these are the 1st (10) songs that appeared on my iPod on the way home tonight.  It’s a good start but doesn’t nearly begin to touch the beginning.  I fear (and have always felt) that nobody is listening to the right music except me…Fear not!  I’m here to help. 

Enjoy.

1.                   Dixieland – Steve Earle

Steve Earle has always been, for me at least, the absolute definition of an American patriot.  He’s not all red, white and blue all the time but you always know what he means to say.  He says exactly that.  That’s refreshing.

2.                   Roller-Skate Skinny – Old 97s

One of my favorites – the poppier side of the “alt-country” movement.  Rhett is an arrogant, slightly effeminate ass, but the music holds up still.  This song has always held a special place for me.  Awesome live as well.

3.                   Mr. Telephone Man – New Edition

Not especially proud of this, but here it is in my playlist.  If your mind is open, you know this is a good song (possibly doesn’t belong on the wind however!).

4.                   Sweet Little Sister – Skid Row

These guys put an edge on my ’89.  After Appetite for Destruction this was one of the best albums of the time.  Sebastian Bach was a complete tool (and as I learned on Celebrity Fit Club is still.)  He was cut from the same cloth as Ted Nugent though and that can’t be a bad thing.

5.                   Changes – 2Pac

Poet.  Gangster.  Lyrical genius.  This was the first Pac I paid any attention to.  It was eye-opening.  Have since gone through the whole catalogue and though I might not always agree with the message, he delivered it in a way that forced you to pay attention.  As punk as the Sex Pistols in my opinion.

6.                   Bullet with Butterfly Wings – Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan is a creepy son of a bitch.  He nailed it with this song though.  I saw them once at Tad Smith Coliseum at Ole Miss.  He called out his own audience!  Called the crowd posers and asked them to leave if their favorite SP song was learned from MTV.  That’s bold, no?  They had not nearly “made it” at that point. 

7.                   Pineola – Lucinda Williams

I’ve been in love with this woman for years.  Incredible performer – have never seen a bad show.  As honest a musician as you could ever hope to find.  If all music was created with the same commitment that Lucinda creates music the world would be a better place.

8.                   Bell Bottom Blues – Eric Clapton

Wow.  No words needed. 

9.                   Requiem for a Dying Song – Flogging Molly

My friend Chuck turned me on to these guys a while back and I continue to be blown away.  Irish/Folk-Punk – what a freaking concept!  Amazing lyrics.  Energy.  Saw them in February at the Tabernacle and was floored.  Made me wish I was Irish.  Incredible band.

10.               Half the Way Valley – Sea Hags

Never heard of them have you?  This is who I freaking was in 1990. They were sold to me as the next Guns ‘n’ Roses and the music backed it up. Then the bass player died.  They would certainly be classified as “glam” but they were a balls-out rock ‘n’ roll band.  Only (1) studio album but I’m still listening (22) years later. 


Do with this what you will.

(If you didn't click the links, go back and do so now.)

17 October 2011

What’s Left of the Ball

Sunday afternoons have devolved into something less than they used to be.  In my not-too-distant-past, Sunday afternoons were heroic last gasps of weekend frivolity – squeezing the very last ounce, the absolute last second, out of whatever the weekend had to offer before facing the world again come Monday.  Sunday afternoons now are, in no particular order; Falcons football, laundry, nap, Target, Publix, Lowes (to procure supplies I don’t need for projects around the house that I’ll never complete) playing with the pups in the backyard and a handful of PBRs.  Not exactly the Funday Sunday escapades of yesterday.  I’m not sure I’m all that upset about it oddly enough. 

As much as I like to think otherwise, I’m little more than a big dumb domesticated animal sometimes.

Speaking of…my beagle / springer spaniel / mini-horse / hyper-active child Belle loves her tennis ball – and especially on Sunday afternoons.  She will chase that ball and bring it right back, drop it and wait for you to throw it again, and again, and again.  Never tires.  Never breaks for water.  Never ceases wagging the lethal weapon that is her tail.  And if you don’t throw it, she throws it herself! In the summer when I’m mowing the yard, she drops it right in front of the lawnmower because she knows I will have to stop and throw it. When I'm mowing the front yard, she lays in the grass of the backyard gazing through the gate, patiently waiting until I return to throw the damn ball. If I’m weeding flowers, she drops it right in the flower bed.  She would do this for hours and hours and hours and has.  

I actually encourage this behavior.  It’s good for her to be outside running in the sunshine, getting high-quality exercise, burning that nervous energy she infinitely possesses.  Plus, when the fun is over she’s done.  The first spot she finds back in the house is where she resides for hours!  No barking at the neighbors, no begging to be petted or fed. It’s a win-win, really.

The only problem now is that she has shown her ball so much love and affection that there is very little left of it!  The green fuzz has long since been chewed off, swallowed and regurgitated at random locales around the domicile. I think this tactic is employed so that the ball is smoother and will bounce higher off of the patio.  (Less friction and all – she’s very smart.)  She gnawed on this thing so much this summer that it ceased to even be a ball after a while. It was simply two hemispherical halves.  


“Throw the ball.  Throw the ball.  Throw the ball. Throw the ball. Throw the ball.”

Look at those eyes.  She’s stoned as a bat – completely mesmerized!

Those halves became smaller and smaller and smaller over the last few weeks. But that did not diminish her adoration of that “ball”.  She still frolicked with it the same – even better now: “there’s TWO!”  I still had to throw the “ball”, alternating between whichever half she located first.  

"BALL!!!!"
Yesterday afternoon, I found myself throwing what’s left of the ball (now little more than a single filthy piece of rubber that is about the size of a quarter) around the yard so my lunatic dog isn’t bored.  It made me feel ridiculous.  I don’t know how she even finds that thing in the leaves, but she does.  And she brings that little scrap of “ball” back for me to throw again, and again, and again and again.  There is a perfectly good, pristine new ball in the backyard and she will not touch it.  It even has a picture of Snoopy on it and she doesn’t see it.  I throw that ball and she completely ignores it.  She only wants her ball (or what’s left of it). 


Maynard is the opposite of Belle.  If I throw his ball, he will vigorously track it down – churning his little legs as fast as they will go, snorting and grunting.  He loves it!  He loves it once or twice: three or four times if he is feeling especially frisky.  When he’s finished playing, he runs away as fast he can and hides his ball in the hedge.  Comes back, drinks a gallon or so of water and collapses in a sunny spot.  

“Seriously dude?  I’m in my 80’s. Fahgettaboudit.”

So I’m tossing this tattered fragment of a ball around the backyard with my neurotic pup and I realize that I have to break her of this obsession and force her into a new ball.  I sat her down on the patio, took her little crazy mug in my hands and attempted to explain to her the various tenets and overwhelming benefits of the new ball plan. 

She was not impressed.  But as soon as I said “Up, Belle” she dropped her “ball” and galloped to the top of the stairs like she always does.  As she did, I grabbed her “ball” and tossed it into the garbage can.  “It’s for her own good”, I said.  “She could choke on that thing, right?”

I knew I'd done what was best.

Tonight, after her supper, we went out back to break in the new.  She still would have no part of the Snoopy ball. She just sat there, being pitiful, stoically waiting for me to produce “her ball” and throw it like I'd always done.  When I did not, she was inconsolable.  Back upstairs, Belle struck this pose:

 
“…nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…nobody knows my sorrow…”

As a sign of protest against her injustice she has decided to “occupy” the recliner.  Though I admire her spirit, in much the same way as I admire the spirit of those knuckleheads on Wall Street, “the system is too big to change little Belle.  I know I’ve waited way too long to show you who is boss, but I’m standing my ground this time.  Tomorrow night, I’ll swing by Petco and buy you a brand new sleeve of balls and eventually you will remember how much fun it is to chase a bouncing, vibrant green, new thing again.  And you will forget all about your old best friend ball.”


Tonight though, she will not be moved.  Bless her heart.  (A polite way of saying poor dumb shit in the Southern vernacular.)  





She sure is pretty though, huh?

Truth is, there is a better than average chance that I will dig through the garbage tomorrow night and return to her what's left of the ball

How can I really argue with that look?  We both know who is really in charge here.

(Maybe she's a helluva lot smarter than I give her credit for.)




12 October 2011

It Crossed My Mind

That fire was stunning under Huntington pier, dancing and flickering in free-lance slow motion gymnastics.


The sun was bleeding leisurely down the purple sky through slender trails of smoke rising from the blaze.  Adrian and Angelia were being dreamy in disgusting harmony as usual. Jaime had wandered off to phone his girl in Mississippi.  I was resting on my back fighting a battle I couldn’t win with the sandman, high on Southern Comfort; dreaming of tanned skin in cut-off jeans on sun-drenched pool banks.

I remember thinking that life could not possibly get better than it was at that very moment – the beach at dusk soothes a person, you know?  The world seemed so far away then. The starting pistol had not yet sounded: the race had not yet begun (I was blissfully unaware that there was going to be a race [I was still convinced I’d moved out west to become a rock star!]). There are a few moments in one’s life that you cannot forget, that no matter what happens, you can go back to that singular moment and find some peace.  Touchstone moments, I think they’re called. I have had a few, two of the most profound on L.A.’s beaches. One you’ve just heard: one you never will.

I stop short of saying life changing.  Honestly, I still don’t comprehend why this memory has been wedged in my psyche for all these years at all.  But this is the place I find myself going to more and more often these days; these never-ending days with their increasingly, maddening pace and prolific confusion.  It means nothing really does it?  I have watched a million sunsets across a campfire.  I have spent countless hours with people I know as friends.  I’ve had more than a handful of “unforgettable” moments.  If you break this particular moment down, I am alone in paradise being beaten over the head with the very thing that I have never been able to get a handle on in my life.  I should have felt as alone and lonely as a man can feel, right? 

I did not.  I was at peace. 

I was at peace that night under Huntington Pier and I have never known exactly why.  Given the next 20+ in my life I guess that moment was the celebrated calm before the storm.  It was the first time that I can recall having ever thought about my life as having been (or even having the ability to be) a “life”, as having potential to be anything other than a disjointed series of unfortunate random happenings (punctuated by chaotic joy).  I actually felt for the first time that there might be a bit of meaning to some of the bullshit that was my everyday.  That is powerful, no?  It's a concept that I struggle with daily and have yet to fully reconcile.

I was eighteen years that night. I had an unfamiliar wisdom that I wouldn’t see again for many years to follow. 

It crossed my mind today, that maybe life isn’t as confounding as I’ve always insisted that it must be.  (maybe it is…or even more so.)

Maybe those tiny, quiet moments and memories are the ones that are the most profound. 

Maybe this is all only as complicated as I choose to make it.

Maybe I still have a helluva lot to learn.

Maybe I don’t.

It crossed my mind today that my story hasn’t yet been fully written. 

That’s my new peace.

(I just found out that a friend of mine will have his first born son “first thing in the morning”.  That’s actual touchstone.  Everything I’ve just written seems ridiculous now.  Congrats Ben and Whit!!)

08 October 2011

Today is Going to be Alright



The sun crawled up this morning, frolicking freakishly low; dreamily, dripping tentative tangerine brilliance upon the day. Shattering stillness with foggy, frog harmonies and swallow symphonies of honeysuckled falling flowers…slowly…silently sliding into the solitude of my Saturday. 

She crept cautious and as gentle as an obedient child across the gathering hustle in the streets of my A.

My tomato paste head swam shaky beneath the surface of the subsequent shine, recalling duct-taped tattered visions of yellowed ribbons wrapped tight on every tree in third-person narrative; of tea with Ken Burns and William S. Burroughs in the balcony of the Ford Theatre while the limousines wait in the street.  Snorting powder from the belly of a stripper named Yesterday in the rusting bed of a ’68 Ford pick-up with suede seats parked on the corner of 6th and How to Forget. (a symbiotic salutation of sorrow)

My ashtray mouth spat venom to the fiend and my ears burned with uncertainty.  My skin writhed with knowledge – my eyes blind with frivolity.  My chaotic intellect vomited truth, cleansed my darkened soul and it sounded like Tomorrow!

In a room full of dust drizzled debris I was assaulted with accusing, anomalous, adolescent insolence; adulterous adorations of nimble, numb ne’er-do-wells seeking solace from the shadow of doubt – whistling whiskey weighted wisdom.

“Get down, Moses!”

Questioning. 

Judging. 

Sinning. 

Enticing me with ecstatic indifference to the inevitable edge of endorphin exploding endlessness.

Crafting.

Craving.

Crying.

Creating catacombs of catastrophic clarity, calming the courteous criminals; courting the carnivorous cacophony.

I hover in my hovel. 

Humiliated.

Horrified.

Humbled.

Then through my east lite – with the warmth of a mother to a babe she found her way into my heart and laid her golden hand upon my head, calming my troubled soul and assuring me of a peace to come. In said slumbered spell, this tumultuous trance, I danced.  Naked in the rain of my unreality, unashamed and unrelenting I danced.  Twisting; mind, body and soul wrenching, contorting in my madness I screamed to the sun and the shade and the day I am ALIVE! And there is nothing that you can do about it!”

Then I awoke. 

I awoke in my little house, on my little street, in my little bed, in my little neighborhood. I had air in my lungs, my dogs by my side, the wind at my back and a smile on my face. 

I bask in the glow of morning’s compassionate, fragile embrace. 

In the distance, I hear a quivering siren and the howling, humming hilarity of the ghetto bird searching for prey. If Calvin was still alive, he would be ringing the door bell to blow leaves out of my yard or clean out my gutters. “What’s up neighb?”  In a few minutes, I’ll see my friend down the block stroll up to the Green House (they have a pool table in the driveway and a less than legal lifestyle).  The dog-walkers and joggers will follow just after that and Belle will lose her mind.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses were here last weekend so that shouldn’t be a problem today.  The neighbors of the pink house had a party last night and the stragglers are slinking off still.  Alice is already out raking her twigs into a pile for her son Bill to bag.

I love my neighborhood. 

(I wonder if this is the way Cube felt the morning before he wrote It Was a Good Day.)

It’s Saturday! 

GameDay will be on soon and maybe if I’m lucky, my beloved ‘Dawgs will eek out a victory over a lesser opponent later.

But for now, I rest.  I rest easy with the peaceful awareness that our big beautiful ball of fire has indeed rolled up again in the east and I therefore have another opportunity to do right today what I did wrong yesterday.   

Today is a new day!

Full of light and promise and hope…and today is going to be alright. 

Today is going to be all right.

Right?

Right!

(Yes, I could have simply written, “I had weird dreams last night, and then woke up in a good mood and watched a beautiful sunrise.”  But what fun would that have been?!!)

05 October 2011

As I See America

I couldn’t get to sleep last night and found myself aimlessly flipping channels. I briefly paused on Jay Leno. I’ve never really been a fan. He’s never been that funny and has only become less so through the years. I’m more of a Charlie Rose guy. 

Leno’s headliners were Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. Who the hell is Kris Humphries? He’s apparently a mediocre pro basketball player. He doesn’t play for the Hawks so I have no idea. He’s irrelevant.

Why I stopped on this I can’t say. It’s like rubbernecking at a crash on the freeway I guess – you know there is nothing to gain but you still have to look. Kim Kardashian is possibly the most vapid, dimwitted human alive. From what I can tell she possesses no discernible talent other than being attractive. And what’s with that monotone voice? I shamefully admit (through no fault of my own) I’ve kept up with the Kardashians over the last few years. About all I’ve learned from that program is that Kim isn’t the hottest one – her sister Kourtney is (and with a normal sized ass, no less!) But her colorless speech is even worse than her sister. Watching Kourtney Kardashian speak is like watching a hot, retarded robot attempt to verbalize in public for the first time. I just don’t understand it. Why are Americans so infatuated with this family? There is no ‘there’ there.

Watching this display on Leno I was struck with this realization: This is why the world hates Americans!

When did this happen? When did this country become so entranced with all things celebrity? Especially celebrities who are famous on no perceptible grounds?  “Reality” television? If Toddlers and Tiaras is reality, somebody give me a bus pass to Crazy Town, the ship may already be lost. I can’t think of anything you can do with your time less productive than viewing this crap. Watching Jersey Shore actually sucks knowledge out of your brain. You become dumber with every second you are tuned in.

When did Americans begin to devalue intellect? Has this country become so depressed in our collective actual reality that all we can do is stare into the glistening abyss of television and film? Granted, there are people in my neighborhood, and yours as well, that are going through some scary shit right now. The economy is hanging on by a thread. Wall Street can’t string together (2) consecutive sessions of positive growth. The in-fighting and division and political posturing in Washington has reached epic levels. We are still sending our young men to fight and die in a war no one can fully explain or justify. These are somber times. So grim though that we have to look away?

Certainly we need a break from the every day grind. And I am not suggesting that we all get serious and only talk about the “issues” all the time. But the crap that passes for entertainment is troubling to me. I’ve often thought, when scrolling through 372 channels, what a waste of time and money this is. More times than not, I end up on PBS anyway.

Does anyone read? Or talk? When is the last time you had a conversation with someone about literature? Or art? Or even a conversation about politics? Are these dialogues a thing of the past? My boy Chuck and I used to have long conversations on Wash Street about this stuff. Music, art, architecture, history – this is important stuff. I miss that. Is what I long for an antiquated ideal?

Have you ever had an honest conversation with someone who disagreed with you politically? It pumps the blood and reminds you that you and your opinions are just as important as anyone else’s. Being passionate and pounding your chest in defense of your belief is one of the most vital acts a human can perform. But is it asking too much for everyone to stop yelling and start looking at the problem together?

My Republican friends like to bash our president and blame him for all that is wrong with this country. I bashed their guy too. I get it – it’s what we do. I voted for Barrack and the difference is that I do acknowledge that in many respects he shat his pants as a leader. He inherited a bad deal and in many ways made it worse. Casting dispersion on any single person or group doesn’t help though, does it? It’s like honking your horn in traffic – it might make you feel better, but it does little to change the situation.

He's probably not the answer in 2012, but the really terrifying question is this – who is?

I’ve seen the Republican debates. That cast of characters, working all together hand-in-hand, couldn’t organize a successful trip to the bathroom much less devise an executable plan to abate another financial collapse and provide a solid base for a true sustainable economy. Take no offense reds, if you are paying attention you have to agree. Michelle Bachmann? Speaking of freaking mind-controlled robots! Herman Cain? Really? Rick Perry? Romney? Ron Paul? Is that guy even still alive?

Not that the Dems are going to trot out much better. Talk about a fractured party. There will certainly be a show at the national convention in Charlotte but in the end they will hitch their wagon to the strongest horse and that is always the incumbent. I drank the Kool-Aid once (and I still have fingers crossed that it doesn’t end like Jonestown). I don’t think I would vote the same again. If not O then who? I’ve wasted more than (1) vote on Ralph Nader (and I do still believe that he could have done the work if elected – however impossible that was). I was younger then. It’s going to be more important this time around.  The sad point is that neither party has a viable candidate.

Henry Rollins once said that he wished for a president that he could love in the same way that he loved Al Green. What’s better than Al Green, right? I don’t think that guy is out there. And I think it’s bigger than the president or party affiliation now anyway. We all need to get on the same page or this mess only gets worse.

Hey, don’t look to me for answers; I certainly do not have any. Right now, I’m thinking about getting in the truck and riding around the neighborhood blaring Tupac just for the helluva it.

As I see America, our biggest problem is apathy. I’m not sure that most of us even care. We all like to say that we love America, and we all undoubtedly do. But few of us are willing to make the sacrifices it does in fact still take to be American. It is much easier (and I’m as guilty as you) to retreat to the safety of our home and block out the troubles of the world as best we can. That attitude has gotten this country nowhere in my opinion.

Do you know who the best president in U.S. history is? Lincoln? No. Jefferson? Not even close. Reagan? Hell no! The best president ever was Andrew Shepherd. Remember him? If you’re not inspired (or at least agitated) by this speech you, my friend, are un-inspirable. That’s a president I could love in the same way that I love Al Green. The problem with that, of course is that he is a Hollywood fabrication. (For the record, I too am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.)

I’m not sure how a rant on pop-culture devolved into a discussion of American politics. I swear I don’t know where the thoughts that populate my overcrowded housing project of a brain come from. Maybe that proves that I am in fact crazy. Either way, I feel much better having gotten all of this out of my head.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”

If the shoe fits, right?