Grasping At A Straw That Always Fails

Another day, another shooting.

There is nothing to be said for all of these shootings, except maybe, “oh shit, we are so fucked.”

The mall shootings; the workplace shootings; the neighborhood shootings; that recent concert shooting; and, God help us, the school shootings, especially the ones where some random adult, who has no particular association with the school, invades the campus and lets fly at kindergarteners; these are all events that are beyond redemption. Beyond redemption in themselves, and perhaps pushing our society beyond redemption as well.

The aftermaths of these shootings bring multiple reactions and responses that are in themselves evil, or at least embarrassing. Many other deranged individuals get the idea that their own egos would be flattered by an adventure of this kind. I say, “deranged,” but this type of derangement has obviously grown within the definition of “normal” in our society. We must acknowledge that a mass shooting every day and a half is the very definition of “normal.”

And then there is the sickening outpouring of totally insincere prayer by politicians. “Our thoughts and prayers,” and asking God to “grant peace to the families,” have become the defining clichés of our times. The prayers of the politicians are the worst, but let’s face it, the prayers of local community groups aren’t much better.

Assuming that there is a God is already a giant leap of faith, because there is not one shred of evidence in 10,000 years to suggest that there is such a being. Assuming that there is a God that answers prayer is a further leap into the dark void of supernaturalism. This outpouring of senseless prayer is the height of foolishness, but therein may lie a spark of positive energy at the center of the awful blackness of these mass shootings.

All prayers are "Hail Mary passes." They all grasp at straws that will not support any weight. They all fail to achieve results. 

It has been a long time now that we have been suffering these terrible shooting incidents on a regular basis, and we have all the while been listening to all of these demonstrations of prayers, and seen all of the moments of silence, all of the politicians’ heads hung in mournful contemplation of the money that they receive from the NRA. And perhaps some people will begin to notice that no one has been listening to those prayers. This massive outpouring of prayer, the volume of which must be almost record setting, has obviously fallen on deaf ears, or non-existent ears. There has only been an acceleration in the number of mass shootings. Even such a tremendous volume of prayer, rising from such multitudinous sources, in all voices, languages and accents, has done nothing. I hope, I wish, I pray! that more people, more Americans in particular, will take this wonderful opportunity to question the entire idea that there is a supernatural being who “watches over us,” who supposedly “cares for us,” or even “loves us.”

Only “we” are responsible for “us.” Only “we” can bring about the changes that are required. Society must take responsibility for its own shortcomings, and begin to take emergency measures to correct its own excesses and mistakes.

The societal “we” that is empowered to take action has been defined in America to consist of the elected officials in our representative government. It is also obvious by now that that experiment has failed. A new “we” must arise to take its place. A “we” that actively seeks the comfort and security of all of “us.” Our elected political rulers do not care for us, or our families, or our children, in the least. That much is clear; it is as plain as the nose on your face.

What form that new political entity might take is beyond my limited powers of imagination. I only hope that greater minds than mine are devoting some time to the problem even as we read, and write, here and now.

Willie Nelson - Smells Like Teen Spirit

When one artist does a version of a song that has been written and performed by another artist, you can really learn a lot about both parties to the transaction. A great song travels well from one artist to another; a great artist can take someone else's song and breath a different life into it.

This version of one of the most popular songs of the last thirty years is transformational. Willie takes it to another universe altogether. This cover version flatters Willie, the song, and Nirvana, all at the same time. The first time that I heard it, I'll admit to a certain confusion. By now, after five or ten listenings, it's one of my favorite songs.

Bishop Bullwinkle Hell To Da Naw,Naw,Naw With Da Bicycle

Small town America, you may have noticed, is filled up with churches like the oceans are filled with salt water. My sister lived for twenty years in a small desert town in New Mexico. The whole town hardly had two nickels to rub together, but one thing they had was churches. More like fifty things that they had were churches. It's pretty much that way most places that I've been. 

Just about all of these churches are money making enterprises, and they do very well at it. Check out that Joel Osteen's house sometime, it's a pip. I doubt if most of them do anyone any good at all. Homeless people? Hell no! We just got new carpets up in here. The odds, though, are that some of those little churches do some good in communities where less than prosperous people predominate. 

I like this Bishop Bullwinkle fellow. At least he's got a good band, and I'll bet that services at his church are as entertaining as all get out. The man has charisma, and the bicycle is a nice touch, don't you think? With that giant coffee cup on the handlebars, is that a coffee cup? Maybe it's for donations. Oooops! There goes my cynical streak again. I can hardly keep that thing down. 

At least the good bishop is giving value for dollar. An hour or so interspersed with some good tunes would be worth a couple of bucks in the basket. Say Amen, somebody! Visit that Osteen guy's church, which looks like Madison Square Garden, and all you get is shitty music and religion that is a fake as his smile. Old Bishop Bullwinkle's heart might actually be within hailing distance of the right place. Stranger things have happened.

Guitar Slim "The Story Of My Life"

In May, 1954, people were not accustomed to so much gain in the guitar sound. Not by a long shot. Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones showed the world how it was done. 

It must have been a real "eureka!" moment. "Let's turn this thing all the way up and see what happens." I'll bet that some other guys had tried it, but backed off right away. Eddie, and a couple of other trailblazers, played that way for five or ten minutes and decided that it sounded pretty damn good. 

And the rest is history. 

Our Awful New Record Business

Lothar and the Hand People: The Fate of Off-Beat Bands

The record business completely changed somewhere along the line. In the 1980s, was it? It started in there somewhere. There was a giant shake-out of record companies, and the total number was sharply reduced by mergers and acquisitions. The companies controlled the radio business by then, through corporate mergers, and what can people buy but what they hear. The new breed of executives created a world where there were no longer millions of fans of hundreds or thousands of acts buying millions of records. The new model was tens of millions of Michael Jackson fans all buying his newest record, or CD at that point. It was so much more efficient! Along the way, those guys ruined the record business and degraded music itself, not just the music business. It’s still pretty awful.

It’s hard to imagine by now, but there was a time when there were many, many record companies, and they all kept big catalogs, featuring a great number of acts that offered a great variety of musical styles. Of course, the big companies already loved the big acts, like the Beatles, that were loved by huge fan bases and sold millions of records, but they kept a lot of bands in the catalog, producing records, for a lot of reasons that now sound sentimental or foolish. Maybe they were waiting for the band to finally produce a hit; maybe they had great faith in the band and felt like their high quality would eventually be realized. They kept these bands alive with small salaries and support services, buying equipment, organizing tours, and providing studio time, producers and engineers. It all seems quaint now, doesn’t it? A band like Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods had only one hit, but they could make a small living touring college towns and fans could still buy, or at least order up, their back-catalog of several mediocre LPs.

Our modern record business is not like that. Small time, dubiously commercial bands now are on their own. They must produce and manufacture their own product (CDs, t-shirts, etc), which fortunately is much easier to do now. They must buy their own equipment, buy and drive their own van, for crying out loud, find their own gigs, and sell their own products at their shows. That would be the modern fate of a band like Lothar and the Hand People.

I saw this band one time, warming up the crowd for whom, I do not remember, at the Café au Go Go, on Bleeker Street in lower Manhattan. 1968, it would have been, they had one LP out, but they were not on the radio yet. They were very good, I thought, not the usual fare, but not so odd as to be inaccessible. Their set consisted of more or less conventional songs, in recognizable keys, performed with very novel instrumentation and presented in a lighthearted manner. My friends and I enjoyed their set, and I bought the LP the following week.

They were too far outside the mainstream to make it in 1968, ’69, and they passed unnoticed from the scene. Listen to this song, though, and you’ll here hints of things to come. Silver Apples at almost the same time, Kraftwerk in the early 1970s, Devo in the mid-1970s. Those are bands who themselves influenced a lot of acts that followed. Listening to “Machines” today, it still sounds fresh and it reminds me of a lot that has happened since.

A band like this could make it through two or three years of almost zero sales and very little radio play because it was possible to find a record company that would support them in their quest to find an audience. Today, that would be impossible. Today, they would be what I call “KXLU” music, because that Los Angeles area college radio station plays a lot of music that is self-produced and obscure. People say that there is no good music today, not like the old days. It’s not that simple. It’s just harder today to find the great, new music. And people are such sheep that they continue to support the few crappy acts that the few giant companies push down our throats.

Thus endeth the lesson.

The Secret Of Being Lucky

Some people think that they are lucky, and I’m sure that it’s because they tend to remember the good things that have happened to them, while tending to forget the lousy things. That’s a good habit, and anyone who thinks like that really is lucky.

Other people think that they are very unlucky, and I’m sure that something like the reverse is happening in these cases. They are remembering very clearly every single terrible thing that has ever happened to them, and discounting every time that fate delivered a fortuitous result. This latter is often the way of people who suffer from depression, although which came first, the depression or the bad attitude, is open to discussion.

I may be an interesting case study on this subject. I am certainly depressed, and I have been for six decades now, but I fall into the favored category described in paragraph one, at the head of this post. I remember every time it stopped raining fifteen minutes before I had to leave a building and stand at a bus stop, and so on down the line. I couldn’t guarantee it, but this tendency in me could be due to a conscious decision on my part. I question that conclusion because it flatters me, and it is not my nature to be flattered, but I do think that I have tried over the years to believe that I was a lucky person. I’d recommend that exercise of mind to everyone, because people who believe themselves to be lucky often create good luck for themselves.

Then comes another component to the mathematics of luck: when good ideas, or bits of luck, appear in front of your eyes, you must be able to spot them and realize their importance. Unfortunately, I lack this particular skill. I have, rather, a great talent for allowing great ideas to sail straight over my head.

Here’s an example. I recently taught a class at a remote campus where I had taught classes many times previously. It's a class in legalese, "English for Lawyers." Every time I had taught at this campus, and in fact virtually every time that I have taught classes at remote campuses, my class was scheduled for one p.m. to five p.m. on either a Saturday or a Sunday. There is a reason for this consistency. For the students, it is an eight-hour day studying the same subject. Two of them in fact, Saturday and Sunday. There is a regular Thai professor for the class, and I am sent in for one four-hour session every term to give them a listen to a native English speaker. My lesson is substantive, and it's part of the class material, but it's a chance for them to hear what the words really sound like. The regular professor takes the morning session on those days, because he can then either go to another city to teach the next day or return to Bangkok before the evening. On this occasion, I was scheduled for eight a.m. to noon.

As is my custom, I asked the students for a volunteer to drive me back to town after class, and as usual, a student quickly stepped forward. I was planning to return to my hotel, as always, awaiting my flight the next morning. We got into his car and he turned to me and said, “so, to the airport, then?” It had completely escaped me that since this class was ending at noon, I could proceed directly to the airport and return to Bangkok on the 2:00 p.m. flight. I would have been home by 4:00 p.m. that day, instead of late the next morning.

Here’s my excuse: teaching classes that end at 5:00 p.m. leaves me a bit fatigued, and I don’t feel like running straight to the airport and getting home at nine or ten at night. Without thinking about it, I bought my return ticket for the following day. I had missed a perfectly good chance to spot a good idea.

Here’s another bit of luck, though: I no longer get angry with my self for such oversights. I’m much more accepting of my imperfection these days.

To sum it all up, my advice is as follows:

1.   Be sure to remember the times when all of the chips fall your way. Every piece of good luck is precious, and its memory should be nurtured;

2.   Be sure to remain alert for any situations that call for a readily accessible good idea. Keep your wits about you, and keep your eyes open for ways to make your life easier; and

3.   Don’t spoil your equilibrium by getting angry every time it starts to rain fifteen minutes BEFORE you must leave a building and stand at a bus stop, or every time that you fail to realize a good idea until it’s too late.

Remember that good luck and bad luck are only states of mind. Our lives are almost certainly like a game of poker in which seven people sit around a table and play serious poker games* for many hours. In a game like that, everyone will take turns being dealt lucky hands of cards. Yes, everyone. Being dealt hands that are good, bad, or indifferent will fall into some kind of a bell curve, and the curve will be the same for all players. Unless one or more dealers is cheating, no one will consistently be dealt great hands while someone else is consistently being dealt crapola.

In our lives, like in the poker game, we will all experience good luck and bad luck to more or less the same degree. To be lucky, you must know good luck when you see it! There are guys who could lose a poker game after getting three eights in the deal, probably because they got bluffed out of the game by someone with a pair of tens. Sometimes we make our own bad luck, too.

*”Serious Poker Games,” like five or seven card stud, or five card draw. There are other good ones. These are games of skill. Avoid poker games that rely too much on bluffing, like Texas Hold ‘Em, or games that feature elaborate rules or gimmicks, like wild cards or pools of shared cards. Skill has flown straight out the window if you can lose with a full house. And never let a dealer call a game that you have never played before. Sit that one out. Oh, and never play poker with anyone who can do card tricks. Or at least, don’t let him deal, ever. Maybe I need to write a post exclusively about poker.

Husker Du - Eight Miles High

Nice cover! Thanks, Husker Du.