Thursday, August 14, 2003
WHAT ARE WE, CHOPPED LIVER?
Here is some fast-breaking news. Some magazine that no one has ever heard of has concocted some sort of list of the 50 worst rock and roll bands of all time. At the top of the list is Insane Clown Posse, which has to be the best news the band has had in quite some time, although their website expresses exasperation and disdain at the announcement. Hey, dudes, use it to your advantage! I haven't seen the whole list but #2 is Emerson Lake and Palmer and #'s 41-50 are Whitesnake, Rick Wakeman, Mike + the Mechanics, Manowar, The Gipsy Kings, the Spin Doctors, Goo Goo Dolls, Master P, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Iron Butterfly.
So it is apparent that the magazine has been doing its homework.
Still, Blender, as they call themselves, has a lot of cheek to be bagging on bands that, let's face it, have way more cache than they do. What has Blender ever done for pop culture? How many more months before their advertising base withers away and dies?
And while we're at it, where the hell is the D-Squad on the list anyway? If Insane Clown Posse gets the grand prize for writing about "40-ouncers and venereal disease" what about us? We have a line in "I'm an Asshole (For Rock and Roll)" that goes, "Throw her a donut/She's all mine." That's not sophomoric enough for these brainiacs? I mean, I have to figure either Foreigner or Bad Company is somewhere buried on that list, and our lyrics match theirs on the Moron meter on any day.
Well, I shouldn't be surprised. We didn't make Spin's Cool List either, so we lose either way. And then, of course, it hit me - "We're too much of losers to be on either list!" 25 years in the biz and we can't even get arrested in this town.
Okay, fine. I guess we know what the problem is here, and if you want a culture war, baby, you've got it. And we'll even ignore (like everyone else) the 100+ songs we've written over the years and concentrate on the very newest volley that we intend to toss in the ring. It's what I intended to post all along until I came across the ICP story, because I was in the supermarket late last night, and the line was being held up by this woman who was buying about five bucks worth of groceries and paying for it with her credit card. Normally I wouldn't have noticed her, but she was forcing me to do so, and in so doing I made an observation (translation: song idea) about her, that she appeared to, back in the day, be a pretty hot mama, but that was a long time ago. Now who knows what kind of daily drama she goes through, but to me it is probably something along these lines:
She Used To Be Cute
Check her out in the grocery line
She used to be cute
She was really something, once upon a time
She used to be cute
Now she's using plastic to buy cottage cheese
It's been quite a while since she was known as the "Tease"
She used to be cute, she used to be cute
But not anymore
Staying blond, even though it doesn't matter
She used to be cute
Done all the diets and still getting fatter
She used to be cute
Quite a goddess in the days of heavy metal
Never thought the time would come when she would have to settle
She used to be cute, she used to be cute
But not anymore
And even if a few drunken, hard-up guys think she's hot------------!
Well, she's not
Not anymore
Footnote: The term, the "Tease" refers to the old Nixons Revenge/D-Squad classic written by Pete Moss called "Reenie's A Tease" (although I can attest that the real-life Reenie is still pretty hot).
So, I don't know what this will do for us, probably get us labeled cruel and vindictive, although it's been a while since I've set the daggers to full throttle. Honestly, it felt pretty good, and I haven't put in the line about the sagging boobs yet.
And we're not the worst or the coolest? C'mon, you people out there just aren't looking hard enough!
Here is some fast-breaking news. Some magazine that no one has ever heard of has concocted some sort of list of the 50 worst rock and roll bands of all time. At the top of the list is Insane Clown Posse, which has to be the best news the band has had in quite some time, although their website expresses exasperation and disdain at the announcement. Hey, dudes, use it to your advantage! I haven't seen the whole list but #2 is Emerson Lake and Palmer and #'s 41-50 are Whitesnake, Rick Wakeman, Mike + the Mechanics, Manowar, The Gipsy Kings, the Spin Doctors, Goo Goo Dolls, Master P, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Iron Butterfly.
So it is apparent that the magazine has been doing its homework.
Still, Blender, as they call themselves, has a lot of cheek to be bagging on bands that, let's face it, have way more cache than they do. What has Blender ever done for pop culture? How many more months before their advertising base withers away and dies?
And while we're at it, where the hell is the D-Squad on the list anyway? If Insane Clown Posse gets the grand prize for writing about "40-ouncers and venereal disease" what about us? We have a line in "I'm an Asshole (For Rock and Roll)" that goes, "Throw her a donut/She's all mine." That's not sophomoric enough for these brainiacs? I mean, I have to figure either Foreigner or Bad Company is somewhere buried on that list, and our lyrics match theirs on the Moron meter on any day.
Well, I shouldn't be surprised. We didn't make Spin's Cool List either, so we lose either way. And then, of course, it hit me - "We're too much of losers to be on either list!" 25 years in the biz and we can't even get arrested in this town.
Okay, fine. I guess we know what the problem is here, and if you want a culture war, baby, you've got it. And we'll even ignore (like everyone else) the 100+ songs we've written over the years and concentrate on the very newest volley that we intend to toss in the ring. It's what I intended to post all along until I came across the ICP story, because I was in the supermarket late last night, and the line was being held up by this woman who was buying about five bucks worth of groceries and paying for it with her credit card. Normally I wouldn't have noticed her, but she was forcing me to do so, and in so doing I made an observation (translation: song idea) about her, that she appeared to, back in the day, be a pretty hot mama, but that was a long time ago. Now who knows what kind of daily drama she goes through, but to me it is probably something along these lines:
She Used To Be Cute
Check her out in the grocery line
She used to be cute
She was really something, once upon a time
She used to be cute
Now she's using plastic to buy cottage cheese
It's been quite a while since she was known as the "Tease"
She used to be cute, she used to be cute
But not anymore
Staying blond, even though it doesn't matter
She used to be cute
Done all the diets and still getting fatter
She used to be cute
Quite a goddess in the days of heavy metal
Never thought the time would come when she would have to settle
She used to be cute, she used to be cute
But not anymore
And even if a few drunken, hard-up guys think she's hot------------!
Well, she's not
Not anymore
Footnote: The term, the "Tease" refers to the old Nixons Revenge/D-Squad classic written by Pete Moss called "Reenie's A Tease" (although I can attest that the real-life Reenie is still pretty hot).
So, I don't know what this will do for us, probably get us labeled cruel and vindictive, although it's been a while since I've set the daggers to full throttle. Honestly, it felt pretty good, and I haven't put in the line about the sagging boobs yet.
And we're not the worst or the coolest? C'mon, you people out there just aren't looking hard enough!
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
POPULISM OR DOORSTEP DEMOCRACY?
The California Recall election is being portrayed by its supporters as true democracy in action, a grass roots effort to reclaim some modicum of accountability of politicians to the "people." To its detractors, the recall effort is an example of democracy in reverse, a hijacking of what the people actually want.
Is any of this true, or is this just politics as usual?
A recent letter in the LA Times asserted that far more voters are motivated to cast their ballots than ever before. Personally, I doubt this but let's say that it's at least partially correct, that suddenly, for whatever reason, the "people" of California have finally woken up to political realities in their state and have decided to do something about it. Their is certainly nothing wrong with trying to change a process - hell, I've written scads on how the entertainment industry is in need of a massive face-lift. However, I also know full well that the chance of actually challenging the status quo, and emerging victorius, is a million to one shot. And therein lies my question about the motivations of this campaign and its supporters.
How did they, since the last chance they had to vote the bum out, which was only a few months ago, come around? What got them fired up?
The recall did indeed start as a grass roots effort. The problem was, at that level, it had absolutely no chance of succeeding, and no one outside a few political reporters took much note of it. The original supporters of the recall had no resources to effectively rally large scale support. What changed? Well, there was at least three major factors: the Internet, talk radio and Darrell Issa. Of these three, my observation is that without Issa, even the combined power of the web and the media would have fallen short of the mark or taken much longer to come about. This a basic truism, at least in art: without support and resources you can achieve mainstream success, it will just take longer and cost more money.
So what really propelled the recall, and no one disputes this, is Darrell Issa providing the money, in the form of paid petitioners, who stood outside of malls and super markets and pestered you for your signature. This is the first problem with the populist theory - populism usually doesn't come financed and well-organized. Also, the petitioners themselves were guilty of a bit of disingenuousness in their sales pitch. They did not confront voters with an opening line of "Would you like to boot Gray Davis out of office?" They asked them if they wanted to 'save the schools'.
Well, it obviously worked, as they got a million people to sign. How many of these signers voted in the last election, there is no way of telling. How many of these signers have voted in any election is also unknown. And how many of them will actually vote in the recall election remains to be seen. However, it is pretty apparent that if you want to get voters involved in the process, any process, going to the supermarket and sticking a petition in their face is a lot more effective than anything else they have tried.
In other words, it appears that if you make the democratic process as easy as it can possibly be, you will get better results. I am going to call this Doorstep Democracy. If democracy was always this simple, if you could just take two minutes at home and take care of business, then we wouldn't have voter turnouts in the 30% range - it would be much higher and lots more voters would participate.
That's the problem. Democracy, to be effective, requires work from the voting populace. It requires that information be sought out, to make informed choices on very important issues, and has to be done constantly and continually. Democracy is work and by design the process is not convenient. This is why democracy is dying out in the United States. People generally view the process of being informed, and not simply led by the nose, as something they don't have time for. So they stay out of the process. When things turn bad, they feel disenfranchised and maybe they want to do something about it and - BAM - suddenly they are at Wal-Mart and a very slick young kid is making them feel that they can be part of the process in they just sign on the dotted line.
So, no, in my mind, this is not populism, it's just the end result of shameless laziness on the part of voters. I've voted in 90% of all elections for the last 25 years, and I try to keep an oar in the water of the issues. So these "populists" are just now figuring out that they can change things? Great. But it won't last. If the only change is to stick an actor in the governor's office, even at the expense of having no clue what his platform is on anything, and wanting it that way, then I say the process is not being changed at all.
It's still stuck in reverse, perhaps permanently so.
The California Recall election is being portrayed by its supporters as true democracy in action, a grass roots effort to reclaim some modicum of accountability of politicians to the "people." To its detractors, the recall effort is an example of democracy in reverse, a hijacking of what the people actually want.
Is any of this true, or is this just politics as usual?
A recent letter in the LA Times asserted that far more voters are motivated to cast their ballots than ever before. Personally, I doubt this but let's say that it's at least partially correct, that suddenly, for whatever reason, the "people" of California have finally woken up to political realities in their state and have decided to do something about it. Their is certainly nothing wrong with trying to change a process - hell, I've written scads on how the entertainment industry is in need of a massive face-lift. However, I also know full well that the chance of actually challenging the status quo, and emerging victorius, is a million to one shot. And therein lies my question about the motivations of this campaign and its supporters.
How did they, since the last chance they had to vote the bum out, which was only a few months ago, come around? What got them fired up?
The recall did indeed start as a grass roots effort. The problem was, at that level, it had absolutely no chance of succeeding, and no one outside a few political reporters took much note of it. The original supporters of the recall had no resources to effectively rally large scale support. What changed? Well, there was at least three major factors: the Internet, talk radio and Darrell Issa. Of these three, my observation is that without Issa, even the combined power of the web and the media would have fallen short of the mark or taken much longer to come about. This a basic truism, at least in art: without support and resources you can achieve mainstream success, it will just take longer and cost more money.
So what really propelled the recall, and no one disputes this, is Darrell Issa providing the money, in the form of paid petitioners, who stood outside of malls and super markets and pestered you for your signature. This is the first problem with the populist theory - populism usually doesn't come financed and well-organized. Also, the petitioners themselves were guilty of a bit of disingenuousness in their sales pitch. They did not confront voters with an opening line of "Would you like to boot Gray Davis out of office?" They asked them if they wanted to 'save the schools'.
Well, it obviously worked, as they got a million people to sign. How many of these signers voted in the last election, there is no way of telling. How many of these signers have voted in any election is also unknown. And how many of them will actually vote in the recall election remains to be seen. However, it is pretty apparent that if you want to get voters involved in the process, any process, going to the supermarket and sticking a petition in their face is a lot more effective than anything else they have tried.
In other words, it appears that if you make the democratic process as easy as it can possibly be, you will get better results. I am going to call this Doorstep Democracy. If democracy was always this simple, if you could just take two minutes at home and take care of business, then we wouldn't have voter turnouts in the 30% range - it would be much higher and lots more voters would participate.
That's the problem. Democracy, to be effective, requires work from the voting populace. It requires that information be sought out, to make informed choices on very important issues, and has to be done constantly and continually. Democracy is work and by design the process is not convenient. This is why democracy is dying out in the United States. People generally view the process of being informed, and not simply led by the nose, as something they don't have time for. So they stay out of the process. When things turn bad, they feel disenfranchised and maybe they want to do something about it and - BAM - suddenly they are at Wal-Mart and a very slick young kid is making them feel that they can be part of the process in they just sign on the dotted line.
So, no, in my mind, this is not populism, it's just the end result of shameless laziness on the part of voters. I've voted in 90% of all elections for the last 25 years, and I try to keep an oar in the water of the issues. So these "populists" are just now figuring out that they can change things? Great. But it won't last. If the only change is to stick an actor in the governor's office, even at the expense of having no clue what his platform is on anything, and wanting it that way, then I say the process is not being changed at all.
It's still stuck in reverse, perhaps permanently so.
Monday, August 11, 2003
OF COURSE I HAVE AN OPINION ON THIS
I just don't have any time to post it on the web. This is a temporary problem, as soon enough I will be
A) no longer working so much and
2) benefitting from the start of school, which means that the library stays open longer.
This really sucks because there is so much going on in the media today that I ache to posit on. Plus, there's just little things (and big ones too) that happen that make me go, "Hey, I did that years ago!" For example:
I've written exactly two jokes in my lifetime, and that was 25 years ago when I was in high school. They are stupid and not really worth repeating, but I'll do it anyway. Here goes:
Q: What was the Siamese twin's reaction when they found out they couldn't be cut apart?
A: They were beside themselves.
Q: What did the girl tell her Siamese twin brother when she found out she had a crush on him?
A: I'm stuck on you.
Yes, I know, you don't have to tell me. When I was a kid I was quite the punster and this included even more absurd concepts like the album cover where I'm at the bowling alley and it appears that I'm leaving in the middle of a frame and the title of the album is "No Time To Spare."
So, imagine my surprise while I'm sitting in the movie theater watching the previews and the trailer comes on for the new Farrelly Brothers movie and it stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as Siamese twins and is called, you guessed it, "Stuck on You." I mean I'm not saying the stole the idea from me, I'm just saying it took 25 years for someone else to figure it out.
By the way, I was in Texas last week, and it was so damn hot there that all you can do really is find a cool place indoors and hang out, so I ended up watching alot of movies. Prior to the trip I had seen none of the "American Pie" movies but now I have seen them all, and I did it in whirlwind fashion, in a period of less than 24 hours.
So this means I have seen the latest, "American Wedding," and I thought is was pretty funny and not that I want to reveal any plot points but imagine my surprise when the bachelor party scene comes on and in the middle of it, a dominatrix demands that one of the characters find something she can "lick off your body!" Know where this is going?
That's right. The guy goes to the fridge and pulls out chocolate syrup and whipped cream! Since I've been doing this very thing live for over two years now, well that's the thing about jokes and gags, eventually someone will come up with the idea. I mean, Karen Finley was doing it long before I did, but the point is, I cannot help but be stricken with pride by being so on the cutting edge.
Finally, you may have noticed that their is a recall election in California, and I have to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the biggest hump of all time, with his "I'm not in anyone's pocket, I will be the peoples' governor" bullshit. Yeah, I guess that's why he has the same Pete Wilson team that boasts it will use "every political consulting trick in the book" to get their candidate elected, up to and including dreaming up Prop 187, the extremely divisive initiative that, even though it passed, pretty much turned this state into a Democratic Party stronghold. But more on Arnold later.
It's just that there is an extreme amount of media coverage and publicity on the dozens and dozens of "fringe" candidates on the ballot, porn stars and comedians and Gary Coleman and the "Poorman" and so on, and all I have to say is, eat my shorts, I am and always will be the "rock and roll mayor."
Yeah, I did this before too, ran for mayor of Pomona back in 1993, and I shamelessly hawked a D-Squad tape at the candidate's forum and I said all kinds of wacky things like this campaign promise:
"I'll put a boom box in the mayors office and crank tunes all day."
And, at least for this outing, I got lots of print in both the LA Times and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. I'll tell you one thing - my promise may have been the most moronic promise of all time but had I been elected I would have fufilled the promise on Day One. It wasn't no shallow completely undefinable deliberately vague promise like "I will be there for the people." What the hell is that?
But, of course, I'm just a bitter old man, as my friend Sue is eager to point out, and I might as well just crawl back into whatever pathetic hole I came from, because when you have to tell people how ahead of your time you are (and have always been), as opposed to someone just noticing it on their own, that casts you as some type of horse's ass that spends days on end digesting sour grapes and drunkenly mumbling under your breath about how you've been totally screwed by everyone and everything.
By the way, Sue's engaging comment, which had the unfortunate consequence of exposing how lame my original comments board was (not that anyone uses it) is not lost to the ages and I will be re-posting it (and issuing by rebuttal) at my next convenience.
Or to quote Arnold, "I'll be back!"
I just don't have any time to post it on the web. This is a temporary problem, as soon enough I will be
A) no longer working so much and
2) benefitting from the start of school, which means that the library stays open longer.
This really sucks because there is so much going on in the media today that I ache to posit on. Plus, there's just little things (and big ones too) that happen that make me go, "Hey, I did that years ago!" For example:
I've written exactly two jokes in my lifetime, and that was 25 years ago when I was in high school. They are stupid and not really worth repeating, but I'll do it anyway. Here goes:
Q: What was the Siamese twin's reaction when they found out they couldn't be cut apart?
A: They were beside themselves.
Q: What did the girl tell her Siamese twin brother when she found out she had a crush on him?
A: I'm stuck on you.
Yes, I know, you don't have to tell me. When I was a kid I was quite the punster and this included even more absurd concepts like the album cover where I'm at the bowling alley and it appears that I'm leaving in the middle of a frame and the title of the album is "No Time To Spare."
So, imagine my surprise while I'm sitting in the movie theater watching the previews and the trailer comes on for the new Farrelly Brothers movie and it stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as Siamese twins and is called, you guessed it, "Stuck on You." I mean I'm not saying the stole the idea from me, I'm just saying it took 25 years for someone else to figure it out.
By the way, I was in Texas last week, and it was so damn hot there that all you can do really is find a cool place indoors and hang out, so I ended up watching alot of movies. Prior to the trip I had seen none of the "American Pie" movies but now I have seen them all, and I did it in whirlwind fashion, in a period of less than 24 hours.
So this means I have seen the latest, "American Wedding," and I thought is was pretty funny and not that I want to reveal any plot points but imagine my surprise when the bachelor party scene comes on and in the middle of it, a dominatrix demands that one of the characters find something she can "lick off your body!" Know where this is going?
That's right. The guy goes to the fridge and pulls out chocolate syrup and whipped cream! Since I've been doing this very thing live for over two years now, well that's the thing about jokes and gags, eventually someone will come up with the idea. I mean, Karen Finley was doing it long before I did, but the point is, I cannot help but be stricken with pride by being so on the cutting edge.
Finally, you may have noticed that their is a recall election in California, and I have to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the biggest hump of all time, with his "I'm not in anyone's pocket, I will be the peoples' governor" bullshit. Yeah, I guess that's why he has the same Pete Wilson team that boasts it will use "every political consulting trick in the book" to get their candidate elected, up to and including dreaming up Prop 187, the extremely divisive initiative that, even though it passed, pretty much turned this state into a Democratic Party stronghold. But more on Arnold later.
It's just that there is an extreme amount of media coverage and publicity on the dozens and dozens of "fringe" candidates on the ballot, porn stars and comedians and Gary Coleman and the "Poorman" and so on, and all I have to say is, eat my shorts, I am and always will be the "rock and roll mayor."
Yeah, I did this before too, ran for mayor of Pomona back in 1993, and I shamelessly hawked a D-Squad tape at the candidate's forum and I said all kinds of wacky things like this campaign promise:
"I'll put a boom box in the mayors office and crank tunes all day."
And, at least for this outing, I got lots of print in both the LA Times and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. I'll tell you one thing - my promise may have been the most moronic promise of all time but had I been elected I would have fufilled the promise on Day One. It wasn't no shallow completely undefinable deliberately vague promise like "I will be there for the people." What the hell is that?
But, of course, I'm just a bitter old man, as my friend Sue is eager to point out, and I might as well just crawl back into whatever pathetic hole I came from, because when you have to tell people how ahead of your time you are (and have always been), as opposed to someone just noticing it on their own, that casts you as some type of horse's ass that spends days on end digesting sour grapes and drunkenly mumbling under your breath about how you've been totally screwed by everyone and everything.
By the way, Sue's engaging comment, which had the unfortunate consequence of exposing how lame my original comments board was (not that anyone uses it) is not lost to the ages and I will be re-posting it (and issuing by rebuttal) at my next convenience.
Or to quote Arnold, "I'll be back!"
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