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Talk Radio is No Place to Discuss Serious Ideas

2015-01-11T21:19:00.002-05:00

Talk radio. How exciting! A place on the commercial broadcast airwaves where people ruminate and opine on the important issues of our era. Everyone from academic experts to traveling salesmen sharing a forum to air their views.

This is how I viewed talk radio for many years. Only recently have I realized that talk radio is no place to discuss serious ideas.

As mentioned in my recent post "How Can a Tank Stop an Idea?," an Atlanta talk radio host posted on Facebook that America's answer to the Charlie Hebdo attack in France should be to put boots on the ground. "You are so on point, man!," one reader wrote, and overall his sentiment drew 36 likes.

I joined the conversation and said, as I did on my blog, that the radical Islamic threat is more complicated than that, and we already had intelligence agencies with data bases full of info who've been doing all they could do since the 1970's. I got three likes.

That's when I realized I would not have done very well in talk radio. Although the host used a lot of words to say it, his message was, "Let's kick their ass!" It was a simple sentiment that captured the mood of the moment and got the blood pumping. Now imagine a host saying, "This is a complex situation which requires a nuanced response. We're already doing the best we can. This may just be the new normal. Now, stay tuned for a message from our sponsors, folks!" A third of the audience would have hung themselves before the bumper music even started.

Over 10 years ago I was a guest a few times on an Atlanta talk radio show. On my first appearance, we discussed a local news story where a woman had started a new job, couldn't find a babysitter, and so left her child in a car in a parking deck, checking it during her breaks. The child died of heat stroke. Talk radio hosts and callers had been calling for her head, but I argued in her favor, saying she was exhibiting the "personal responsibility" that Republicans were always calling for, it had just turned out badly. The host told his audience, "This man is in favor of leaving children in hot cars!" But when the mic was off he said actually his personal feeling was that the woman had been through enough, which was my point. If he felt that way, why not say so?, I naively thought.

On my next appearance the topic was the Iraq invasion. I was introduced as a "liberal loser" who was against the fine efforts America was making to free the Iraqi people. After that intro, whatever I had to say was pointless, because the water had been chummed and the callers came fast and furious like sharks for their chance to slap a "liberal loser" anonymously over the phone. It started occurring to me that at least this particular show had more in common with professional wrestling than a real discussion.

I think it was Alison Rosen who once wrote an essay about her appearances as a talking head on TV, which I can't find now. In any event, she said the producers and directors will tell you to take on a more extreme viewpoint than you may actually have, and the counterpoint person will do the same. This way your positions can easily be told apart. Remove the details of your argument so that it can be quickly grasped by a channel flipper. And now -- be loud!

Simple viewpoints, served as emotional red meat to the listener. Cartoonishly simplistic viewpoints that no reasonable person would have. Volume and invective designed to entertain the masses.

So we turn on talk radio, or a "news" program on TV, and watch and watch, vainly hoping some sort of real enlightenment will emerge. We may as well turn on WCW and look for the meaning of life. Talk radio is no place to discuss serious ideas.

How Can a Tank Stop an Idea?

2015-01-09T21:24:00.001-05:00

Islamic extremists are now so bold they enter Western media buildings and off whomever they please. The mood in America following the Charlie Hebdo executions in France is almost like that in the days immediately following 9/11. Shocked and angered, some Americans are calling for boots on the ground. But are these Americans' memories so shortened by video games and Twitter that they forget we just tried that in Iraq and Afghanistan? And how can a tank stop an idea?

People are saying maybe this Charlie Hebdo incident will finally wake the Western world up -- as though 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, the London subway bombing, the Madrid train bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the stabbing of Theo Van Gogh, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, and too many plane hijackings to list -- didn't get our attention.

"If the U.S. doesn't lead a worldwide coalition to stamp this ideology out, who will?," an Atlanta radio host asked on Facebook. That it's an ideology we're fighting is the very reason military action won't work. Unlike Nazism in World War II, this ideologies' adherents don't bear uniforms, flags, and emblems to make themselves conspicuous. Instead, they hide amid moderate Muslims who disavow them. But some Westerners claim even those who disavow the terrorists with their lips support them in their minds and hearts. How can we know what ideology anyone follows, until they're blowing themselves up in our supermarket, or executing our favorite cartoonist?

Deciding the solution is to stamp out Islam itself is akin to the soldiers in Vietnam who executed entire villages. Maybe understandably, after you see a nine-year-old with a shoeshine box blow up your friends half a dozen times, the "Kill `em all, let God sort `em out" mentality arises. While we can understand the frustration, we must not condone painting an entire people with a broad, deadly brush.

This is not a war that will be won with fighter planes and paratroopers. The battlefield is not that clear, the enemy is not that obvious. This is a war that will require reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, special forces -- the things we've been doing since at least the 1970's.

The brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks were already well known to French authorities, and were on the American no-fly list, just as many of the 9/11 hijackers were also known quantities. No one needed to pick up a machine gun and board an aircraft carrier to stop the threat, they only needed to act on what they already knew.

Boots on the ground is a red meat slogan that gets everyone yeehawing and flicking their Bic lighters, but this two-millennium-old problem requires modern solutions, one's that are already in motion. We just need to give them time to work.

About This Series of Posts on California

2014-07-18T17:25:00.002-04:00

In hindsight, I think this last series of posts about my trip to California should've been titled "My Fall from the Turnip Truck."

California, Beta Test State, Part Six: On My Way Back to Georgia

2014-07-12T15:37:00.000-04:00

It had been a tiring week of making sweeping generalizations based on anecdotal evidence, but I had enough energy left to make just a few more.

We had made a stopover in Dallas. Dulles Airport has people on hand to guide you if you can't find your way around. They wear cowboy hats. I thought that was quite corny. But in the same synapse fire I also thought, "If Atlanta airport employees were to wear headgear from the same era, what would it be? Klan hoods?"

Atlanta is often described as a city without an image. That's because most cities promote themselves on some aspect of their history: Dallas is cowboys and the Old West; Boston is Harvard and Irish immigrants; New York is Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty; Milwaukee is Germans and beer.

Our town, unfortunately, would be somewhere between sharecroppers, plantations, and segregated lunch counters. Those are all tough sells if you want to attract businesses, tourists and new residents. Even any reference to Gone with the Wind is muted, because it harkens back to those other things. I only recently found out about Joel Chandler Harris, who compiled the Uncle Remus stories that became the Disney movie Song of the South. Song of the South, the first feature length film to combine animation and live actors, the film that won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song with "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," is now also buried, never released in its entirety on home video, because it's "racist." There's a reason I've never known about Joel Chandler Harris and his home here, the Wren's Nest, and that it wasn't the destination of an elementary school field trip: He's now portrayed as a white man who profited hugely from the theft of African-American folk tales, and so we must never speak of him.

So instead Atlanta is now a city that not only by appearance, but also by how much of its history it chooses to embrace, was essentially founded in 1970. The Allman Brothers, the B-52's and R.E.M. may as well have been the first residents. But if jettisoning our history means we aren't represented at the airport by people in dopey hats, maybe it's all worked out for the best.

(How did this conversation go at the Visitor and Tourism Bureau?

"Maybe we could promote ourselves on our agriculture. How about cotton? The Big Cotton Ball!"

"COTTON? WHAT?! THAT'S RACIST! SHHH!"

"Oh, sorry. How about, um, peaches, although California and South Carolina actually produce far more of them?"

"Yes! The Big Peach! I like it!")

"The City Too Busy to Hate" motto was invented after the climax of the Civil Rights movement to restore our tarnished image, and I would really be curious to trace the etymology of the phrase "Southern hospitality" to see if it isn't the same.

We landed in Atlanta. I went to baggage claim. Rather than appearing excited to be home, everyone stared silently into the distance, looking rather glum. An airport employee leaped onto the baggage carousel and shouted, "These bags are coming out at a high rate of speed! You could be injured! Step back! Step back!" Really? Some canvas bags going one mile an hour are a threat? I mused the absurdity of this to a fellow traveler, who continued staring forward, barely grunting an acknowledgement I'd said anything. No one was glancing around at each other so as to say, "Is this woman serious? Who put a bug up her butt? Why is she shouting at us?" Maybe they were just quietly grateful they weren't being mortally wounded by one pound fabric bags full of socks. I collected my luggage without breaking any bones and went outside to look for a shuttle to the parking lot.

Listening to N.W.A. and Ice-T, I'd always heard about the foreboding presence of the LAPD. Granted I was in Hollywood and not Compton, but I noticed I would only see a police car every two or three hours. Here at the Atlanta airport, there were five vehicles sitting by the curb, apparently waiting for friends, and three Atlanta police cars, blue lights on, edging up the driveway, the lead one angrily commanding through his loudspeaker, "Move your vehicle! Move your vehicle!" There was also a sign on the curb that said, "No standing." This would sound like a big joke if I didn't have a cousin who's doing 20 years on a standing rap (okay, NOW I'm joking). I started feeling less like I was returning home than being channeled into the penitentiary system. Morgan Freeman was surely somewhere in the shadows taking bets on how long I would last in this joint.

I saw a really pretty black lady on the curb, and did a double-take. Her eyes instantly dropped to her iPhone and her body language stiffened, because of course she was in danger of being raped right there in the no-standing zone.

After 10 minutes no shuttle appeared, so I called the number on my receipt. The attendant said, "Where you at? I got two buses out there right now!"

"I'm here on the curb where I was dropped off. I'm right here under the sign for American --" The signal went dead. That bitch had hung up on me in the middle of my sentence! I called back four or five times and no one picked up. After an hour I deduced the shuttle wouldn't pick me up where it had dropped me off, I had to go across the street, down the sidewalk, around the hill, to space number 12. Because no one could decide what kind of hats they would wear, there was no airport help staff to hip me to this.

As the plane had been descending in the night and the lights of Atlanta came into clearer view, I had just hoped that as I returned to familiar surroundings and routines that the broader perspective I had gained over the past week wouldn't quickly fade. That's why I'm writing it down now. Thanks for reading.

California, the Beta Test State, Part Five: Putting It All Together

2014-07-11T18:36:00.002-04:00

*A photo of L.A. I did not personally take.*

Though I had been to Los Angeles twice before, it was on this trip I felt I finally understood why so many pop cultural and social phenomenons start in California.

Perhaps chiefly, the state attracts a different make of people. At home I was reading a page of people thinking of moving there and looking for tips on neighborhoods. One person posted they were thinking of moving there without even a job, "just to live a little." Another poster responded, "'Live a little' is the worst reasoning in the world. Making sure you have a job first is the adult thing to do." A third person claiming to be an actual California resident responded, "We moved here the same way. What's wrong with living a little? Your idea of adult sounds boring, and I wouldn't want you for a neighbor."

Jumping in without a plan or net (not my personal style) is a personality trait of entrepreneurs. The Europeans who landed on the East coast had already taken the biggest leap, and the Western pioneers could have stopped in Nebraska. Anyone who would persevere through hundreds of miles of what, from an airplane, looks like an ash tray, cheerily passing the bones of the Donner Party, certain there was something grand on the other side, is made of something else. This is the instinct that also exists in people who will throw themselves behind something like the personal computer, originally perceived as a Radio Shack toy for hobbyists, or think that there could be billions of dollars in nickelodeons. More often they probably fail, but the few times they succeed, they change the world.

Conservative cities like Dallas and St. Louis pride themselves on being business-friendly, low regulation, low tax states (the term "conservative" isn't being used in a political sense here, but to describe a mindset). So why is it the most tranformative technologies of our time have come from San Francisco, where the taxes and regulations are highest? Because the conservative mindset says, "Let's save money by letting someone else do the research and development. Let's see how this idea pans out. Let's be adults." Therefore, no one is looking toward Dallas or St. Louis for the next big thing, no matter how low their taxes are. The city that attracts the most dreamers wins.

It plays out in every sense: the middle of the road become the middle class in the middle of the country.

(As an aside, the impression I got was that while the white people between the Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills were doing great, Mexican families were working for $8 an hour making beds, attending parking lots, and waiting tables at Denny's, cramming themselves into small houses in the valley. I was only there five days, but it didn't seem like there was a middle class.)

You can hear bands that sound like Slayer all day long in Georgia, but Slayer could not have started in Georgia. If it was 1979 and a bunch of shaggy Georgia guys were practicing their Foghat covers, then one of them said, "Guys, I've written a song for us. It's called 'Angel of Death.' It's about Auschwitz. It goes like this: AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEAAAAUUGH!!!," they would've been worse than laughed out of the room, they would've been social pariahs. But since Slayer is a success, Slayer-ish bands can be found anywhere.

An Atlanta friend of mine, who's always envisioned herself as part of the New York art set, says she's going insane from her co-workers' conversations. She says they're without exception about their kids, what's for dinner, and football. These are middle class concerns, and they're fine. But this is also why the Hula hoop didn't come from Stockbridge.

Mark Twain explained it all in "Corn Pone Opinions." He said anyone of high profile and social status -- in Twain's time European royalty, today a Hollywood celebrity* -- can introduce most any new concept in fashion or culture, and the masses, who have "a natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority," will follow. Twain gives the example of the hoop skirt: When someone from European royalty introduced the hoop skirt, it was radical. Only the fringe would dare wear one, and when the hausfrau who had sworn she would never wear such a thing finally caved in and put one on, the hoop skirt was suddenly over. And that's why, though my friend's co-workers may be primarily concerned with their kids, dinner, and football, if someone on Oprah mentions gluten-free diets, iPads, or the Church of Satan, they'll give them a try.

Maybe readers in other states will be offended by this characterization, but I ask you to put down the sushi, step out of the hot tub, bookmark your L. Ron Hubbard novel, and look around!

During my stay in California as much food for thought had been consumed as sausages and pancakes at Denny's (the finest of L.A. eateries, for my money). Now it was time to return to my hometown of Atlanta with fresh eyes.

* But how about a congressman or senator? I'll have to think about it.

California, Beta Test State, Part Four: Have a Beer with FEAR

2014-07-10T15:27:00.001-04:00

The question, "Why does every fad, trend and social movement come from California?," was quickly being answered.

The Whisky A-Go-Go. I would read the name in Circus magazine articles about Van Halen and Motley Crue. As I got older and developed an interest in earlier bands like The Doors and Led Zeppelin, the name was there again. Any rock n' roll bar you ever walked into had some spiritual connection to the Whisky. Despite that I read that it was also the Ground Zero of the shitty pay-to-play movement, and had become the home of bands with dubious talent but the $1,000 to buy their "pre-sale" (pay-to-play) tickets, and had killed the Hollywood music scene, I had to see the space where the Lizard King once ruled the stage!

I researched the bands that would be playing that week, and am pleased to say I found one that was actually fantastic. More on them on a future podcast.

After the band I came to see, who played first, the other bands were miss-miss-hit-miss, in that order. As I was preparing to leave, I saw an older gent in the crowd, and immediately thought I recognized him. But there was no frenzy around him, no one was even taking a second glance, so could I have been wrong? Should I approach him and check if I was correct, or would I be bothering him? Hey, the guy got into show business to be recognized, so maybe if someone knew him, it would make his night!

I approached. "I don't want to bother you, but I just have to confirm, are you...," he smiled in anticipation of the question as it rolled off my lips, "...Lee Ving?" He proudly said, "Yes I am!" I was right, it was Lee Ving of FEAR, the very band I saw on USA back in the `80's that made me wonder what the hell was going on in California! "What's your name? Where are you from?," he asked, extending his hand. When I told him I was from Atlanta he even offered to get me tickets for his next Atlanta show!

That was the perfect end to my trip, I determined, and left the Whisky to prepare to fly back to Atlanta the next day. Everything had come together. I had "gotten" California. Final conclusions to come in the next post.

After some YouTube searching, I realized my memory of what I saw on Night Flight that night was fuzzy. Since our story opens and closes with FEAR, I feel it's important to get this right. Plus, you may get a big kick out of the videos.

The clip of Lee Ving brawling with the audience was from the movie The Decline of Western Civilization, which did air on Night Flight, but not that night. The segment below is what aired. The band plays "New York is Alright if You Like Saxophones," "Fuck XMas" and the romantic ballad "Mengele." The quote I remembered, "God exists, but he's gay. He lives in a Jaguar on Santa Monica Boulevard," is at 6:10.

That was immediately followed by the Dead Kennedys playing "Holiday in Cambodia." Note the same "vengeance is FEAR" line in both clips, and it looks like it could have even been the same show, or at least venue.

Really I had heard FEAR even before this. I was tuning around on my radio and found college station Album 88, the student station of Georgia State University, the highest-powered college radio station in the country with 100,000 watts. They played Saccharine Trust, Black Sabbath and "Bomb the Russians" by FEAR. I taped it and played it for my friends. This just sounds funny now, but in 1985 or `86, it sounded scary!

"Have a Beer with FEAR" was a song on FEAR's second album, thus the title of this entry.

California, the Beta Test State, Part Three: Pasadena Dreamin' (Show Me the Money)

2014-07-08T17:30:00.002-04:00

*Where Eddie Van Halen grew up. He hasn't been home since 1981.*

The mental image of California many of my generation hold was planted there by the state's unofficial ambassadors, Van Halen.

The address of the Pasadena house where Eddie and Alex Van Halen grew up, and where Eddie built his iconic striped guitars, and lived until after the band's fourth platinum album, had been posted on Van Halen forums a few times. I wanted to go there and hear the birds in the trees and feel the breezes myself, soaking up the atmosphere where the guitar stylings my peers and I had struggled to emulate in our teens were born. (Finger tapping? California.)

The house, as seen above, fits the cliche, "It's so small, you'd have to go outside to change your mind!" However, according to the real estate site Zillow, the house is valued at over $500,000! And not because the Van Halens grew up there; there are no historic markers, it's just over $500,000! (Don't mention the Van Halen thing if you're negotiating to buy it.) I drove a few of the surrounding streets, as well, and some of the houses are much larger and more ornate. If the former Van Halen shoebox is $500,000, what do these other houses cost? I'd heard Eddie Van Halen describe his family as "poor," but I started thinking maybe they were poor relative to their neighbors, who were in the 1%*! These people would make anyone feel poor!

All of Pasadena looked as though it was pressure washed and painted on a daily basis. I couldn't help noticing every lawn had the same kind of grass, the same emerald shade of green, and cut to the same height. It was as if one landscaping crew was in charge of the entire city.

*City college where Van Halen formed.*

Pasadena City College was the site where the Van Halens joined forces with fellow music students Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth to form the band. I had always read they met at "community college," and I pictured a few concrete bunkers like my Atlanta community college. Not so! The building would fit in on the mall in Washington, D.C. (it looks kind of like the Treasury), and even the parking garage was clean as a whistle. If Pasadena City College were in Georgia, I think it would be prestigious and people would be clamoring to get in.

Pasadena Civic Center, where the band performed one of their last pre-fame shows (captured on Pasadena Civic `77, one of their most prevalent bootlegs), is much more fit for Architectural Digest than the concrete box civic center I grew up near that I imagined it to look like.

Such fine public buildings and institutions require a robust tax base to exist.

After the Van Halen tour it was over to the Ice House comedy club to see Adam Carolla do his podcast live. Inside the Ice House, the flamboyant red shirt I had thought looked cool in Atlanta suddenly seemed a bit much for the upscale, Dave Matthews-ish vibe at the Ice House. (But in hindsight -- I looked awesome!)

Paul Rodriguez was Carolla's guest, and he talked about Mexico and Mexico City. He also mentioned that it was the anniversary of D-Day, and that he was a veteran himself. He said, "Let's give it up for our soldiers!" I couldn't help noticing the applause for the troops seemed more hesitant from the Ice House crowd than I think it would be in Atlanta. My reasoning: If you're a Pasadenan that can afford a million-dollar house, military service is an abstract concept to you. Saying "give it up for the troops" is like saying, "Give it up for the people who sweep your driveway and make your bed!" I started feeling like I had more in common with a Mexican guy like Paul Rodriguez than the wealthy white people I was surrounded by. (I'm sure Rodriguez is a zillionaire, too, but I think his roots are in "my world.")

*Pasadena Civic Center*

A couple of nights before this Pasadena adventure, I had gone to open mic at a comedy club in Burbank. The girl on stage had said, "When I was in school, our field trip went to Dachau. Did anybody else go there?" A guy at the bar said, "Bergen Belsen." Umm...those are in Germany. Your school field trips went to Germany? Mine went to Rock Eagle. It's a pile of rocks Native Americans made that's supposed to look like an eagle, but looks more like a penguin. (The Indians didn't have the benefit of an aerial view, so...nice job, Indians.) No passport or expensive plane ticket is needed to get to Georgia's Stonehenge.

Now I understood what people in Georgia meant when they would say, "There's a lot of money out there." They meant there's a lot of money out there. If someone in California achieves their dreams and the money rolls in, not only can they afford $2 million for what might be a moderately-sized house in St. Louis or Atlanta, but they've got money left over to travel internationally, or the leisure time to do a lot of reading. This is how a trend in Europe migrates to America, or an old idea like the Hula hoop or Kaballah gets reinvented for a mass market. Conversely, if the breadth of your cultural exposure is between your job and the mall, there's nothing to surprise America with. So this answers, in part, our original question, "Why does every fad and trend seem to start in California?"

More on this later, but let's go to the Whisky A-Go-Go on Sunset and have a beer with...

* Sure, the home prices in Pasadena were no doubt lower in the `60's when the Van Halens moved there, but I bet they were still pricier than rest of the country.

California, the Beta Test State, Part Deux: Social and Spiritual

2014-07-02T15:34:00.001-04:00

So I was in California looking for an answer to the question, "Why does every trend and movement seem to come from California?"

Via Twitter I had become acquainted with an aspiring actress (correct term: actor) from Toronto, and a guy from Brooklyn who's trying to break into stand up comedy, both now in Los Angeles. I arranged to meet up with them to say hi in person.

Upon meeting I thanked each of them for taking the time to say hello to me, because I knew I was just some guy off of Twitter, and I didn't mean to impose. They both asked why I would even think it was an imposition?

In Georgia, I think it would be seen as an imposition. Why the difference?

In Hollywood, the people are generally under 35, a very social time of life, and they're there from somewhere far away, so everybody's looking for company. They also know the maxim, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Therefore, meeting strangers and networking are not seen as unusual, and it creates an open environment. The comedian guy told me he'd even written to writers with the Conan O'Brien show and had a lunch! In Georgia, everyone gets a job by applying on Monster.com or going to a recruiter. To write to a stranger and say you'd like to meet to discuss the shift supervisor position at UPS would be seen as bizarre. The only person off of Twitter who would say, "Hey, where can I find you?," would be a drifter with an ax. My perception (which someone out there will leap to tell me is wrong) is that in Georgia, if people don't know you from school or work, they don't want to know you, the end.

The Toronto actress (actor) told me I needed to read a motivational book called The Four Agreements. A couple of days later I met up with a girl I had known in high school who's now married with kids and living in L.A. She asked me if I'd ever listened to a certain motivational speaker. She also asked, "What kind of scripts did your parents give you?" I said wow, now I really felt like I was in L.A. My "scripts?" She said, "No, not like a movie script, like..." I said yeah, I understood, but that was Dr. Phil talk. Nobody in Georgia talks about their "scripts."

With that, another California difference was illuminated.

This is why so many show business people talk about their therapists, and why self-help phenomenons like EST and Scientology take hold. People in California are shooting for something big. They're either trying for fame as a movie star or director if they're in Hollywood, or to take the world by storm with a tech company if they're in Northern California. As they do this, they have plenty of voices in their head (scripts) from back in Michigan or Idaho telling them they're nuts, deluded, stop putting on airs, and chasing unicorns. So they reach for anything to beat those voices of self doubt back, and they may choose Kaballah, past life therapy, or sometimes drugs, so they can continue their climb.

In Georgia you're more likely to hear, "My motivational guru's name is Jesus Christ, and His book is called the Bible!" For Californians, the voice in their head from back home telling them to get back in line probably belongs to someone who was a Christian, and that's where the mistrust of conventional religion comes from.

But this stereotype of the New Age-y Californian is not the whole picture! My grandmother in Tennessee belonged to what, in her time, was an extremely strict Protestant sect called the Church of the Nazarene. Women were not to wear makeup, jewelry, or skirts above the knee. Dancing, going to the movies, and even owning a TV were forbidden. (They weren't into snake handling, though. That would've been nutty.) I was really shocked the day my Dad told me that my grandmother's preacher -- who I had seen dissolve into tears in the pulpit when I was a child, he was so wounded to have seen women wearing bikinis on Daytona Beach -- was a transplant from Southern California! After my Mom's passing I did some reading about the Church of the Nazarene, and it had been started by a professor from the University of Southern California. So even the most uptight, socially-conservative theological movements have roots in California.

A big picture was forming, but there was more to learn.

California: the Beta Test State (Part One)

2014-07-01T20:13:00.001-04:00

When I recently traveled to Los Angeles, I had the same aims as any tourist: to see Jimmy Kimmel's theater, Amoeba Records, and the Hollywood sign. But I also wanted a question answered. Specifically, why is it every fad or trend in entertainment, food, health, spirituality or culture seems to come from California?

Hippies? California.

Bikers? California.

Hot rods? California.

Body building? Aerobics? California.

EST, Kaballah, Scientology, Church of Satan, the Jonestown cult? California.

Frisbees? Skateboarding? Hula hoops? Hacky sacks? California.

Operating systems, apps, iPhones and iPads? California.

Solid body electric guitars? California.

Thrash metal? California.

Gangsta rap? California.

Van Halen? California.

This curiosity was piqued when I was 14 or 15 years old, watching the old USA Night Flight. They did a show about California punk rock, and featured FEAR and the Dead Kennedys. In my fractured memory, Lee Ving of FEAR was brawling with a female fan, then saying, "God exists, but he's gay. He lives in a Cadillac on Santa Monica Boulevard." They then performed a wretched "harmony" on "I Love Living in the City," a song with references to sluts, rats and puke. The Dead Kennedys were next, playing "Holiday in Cambodia," kids running in circles and flying off the stage. For a Georgian used to watching Duran Duran videos, this was weird as hell! It looked like the whole thing was happening in some forgotten warehouse somewhere in L.A., or maybe even under a rock.

Then a year or so later, a kid at school was wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. Where did he even hear of that band, let along get the shirt?

Another year later the new mall opened. There was a sporting goods store called Robby's that sold skateboards, but not the narrow, plastic kind I remembered my Tennessee cousin having in the `70's. These boards were long and wide, and had brightly-colored graphics. DogTown was the maker. Robby's also sold Thrasher magazine, which covered skateboarding, but also California punk bands with names like Gang Green. Suddenly tons of kids at school were wearing Misfits t-shirts and skateboarding. What had looked so weird on Night Flight a year earlier was now being done by kids in Georgia.

But why? They weren't staring at a pine tree in their front yard when they decided to do this. How had this idea filtered in from elsewhere? And why did it have to start there before it happened here?

I went to find out.

By the way, don't bypass that FEAR clip above. All these years later, that's quite...astonishing.

Back to .net

2014-06-26T17:07:00.002-04:00

Longtime followers of this blog (all six of you) will remember that it was originally located at ArtsBarAndGrill.net. Unfortunately I missed a domain renewal years ago and lost the name and had to switch to .us. However, the renewal period is here again, and the .net was once again available, and for half the price of the .us! So in summary, use ArtsBarAndGrill.net to get here in the future. Thank you.

More Than Soldiers are Gone

2014-05-25T14:22:00.000-04:00

*My grandad's house. It looked much better in his time.*

For the past couple of years I've confined my Internet musings to either my podcast or, realizing even 140 characters might be more of my company than most can stomach, Twitter. Finally I had some thoughts that didn't fit in either of those formats, so I'm taking the Wayback machine to 2008 when I used to post here several times a week.

You have to wonder if it's not only the soldiers we should be memorializing today.

Around the 24th of May every year I make a trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee. My mother died just before Memorial Day in 2009 so I drive to Chattanooga to visit my parents' resting place in the town where they were born.

The past couple of trips I've also driven to the neighborhood where my aunt and uncle and grandmother and grandad, who are also all gone, lived from the end of the `70's to the mid-`90's. The neighborhood is now mostly African-American; the majority of the houses are run down and have bars on the windows and doors. But in my nostalgia I half expect to see my uncle washing his MG in the driveway, and to walk in my grandad's house and see him and my grandmother on the couch among a nest of Chattanooga Times-Free Press newspapers and National Enquirers watching golf. (Even before the Golf Channel, my grandparents could somehow find a golf game on a UHF channel any time of day or night.)

Each visit I've taken out my camcorder to try to capture the experience of driving up to their houses as I remember it when I was a kid. Then I'll notice a current resident out in their driveway or yard taking note of my activities. Given that, as I mentioned before, there are now bars on the windows and doors of most of these houses, they probably think I'm either a narc or a burglar casing the neighborhood.

So I stopped to explain to the elderly black gentleman who now owns my grandad's old house that my grandad had lived there, and my uncle lived across the street. Somehow the ensuing conversation wound around to the man's previous employment as a labor union representative.

He told me that the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, a United Auto Workers job, pays...well, let's pause here. UAW? An automotive union job? Hmm, let's see. $30 an hour? $40? Surely those union guys are lighting cigars on $100 bills and buying rounds of Grey Goose for their pals on Saturday night, right?

The top pay on the assembly line is $12 an hour. Repeat: the TOP pay. $12. Some jobs are paying as little as $8.

My grandad and uncle, both welders, were members of the Boilermakers union. Grandad grew up sharecropping, leaving school in 6th grade and coming to Chattanooga from Alabama when he was 18 to be trained in welding by Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority. One welder's paycheck pulled the weight of a wife and four kids. Grandad owned his home, as well as two others that he rented out. Every three to five years he would buy a brand new car. And they were among the first on their street to own a TV set. As for my uncle, his paycheck covered a wife and three kids, and one of my cousins once said, "Going to Uncle Max's house is like going to Circuit City!" In the `80's Uncle Max had one of those full-size NASA style TV dishes in the back yard, and always the latest model of VCR, stereo receiver and projection screen TV. Welders!

But for any man in Chattanooga today, even one who may have a college degree, this is what he's looking at: $12 an hour. On the high side. I can imagine my grandad and uncle would've been first in line for a good United Auto Workers job a few decades ago, but there wouldn't be any houses, new cars or satellite dishes to look forward to today. In fact, the pay would be so bad it might make sharecropping look tempting again.

Driving around Chattanooga, I also couldn't help noticing the closed storefronts and lack of traffic on the road on a sunny spring Saturday. No one heading out to keep the local economy afloat with their week's earnings.

So on this Memorial Day you have to wonder if not only the soldiers have passed, but so did the kind of America they fought for.

* I should've mentioned, my uncle dropped out of high school to get married shortly before he was to have graduated. As well as the family and houseful of electronics, he also had two trailers he rented out, and owned a house boat just like Crockett had on Miami Vice for a couple of summers. If a high school dropout managed that lifestyle, I could hardly wait to see what my state college degree would get me. Ha!

Everyone is in Fantasyland

2012-07-23T05:52:00.000-04:00

I did some reading about the psychology of those who go on shooting rampages, the quiet guy who suddenly appears with a machine gun or hunting rifle and begins picking off total strangers without warning. Reading this stuff, the Aurora, Colorado The Dark Knight Rises shooter is easy to understand. Like most of these cases, he was a guy who was previously thought to have tremendous prospects, so depressed with what his life had become that he decided he was going to go out in a "blaze of glory." His choice of the Batman movie was not casual. Reports said he told police he was "The Joker." Frustrated and helpless in reality, he spaced out into a comic book/movie fantasy land, and since he had failed to be the hero, he chose to be the villain. Or maybe he felt his Joker role had been chosen for him.

But I don't think he's the only one stuck in fantasy thinking. How about the people who say even more guns on the street could have solved this?

It doesn't take a lot of Internet surfing to find some right-wingers saying allowing concealed carry in the theater could have solved this, more gun ownership would have stopped this, etc. The posters talk about, "I have a right to protect my person," "I'm ensuring the security of my family," up to and including, "The forefathers wanted an armed citizenry who could take down tyrants," "They'll be going neighborhood by neighborhood collecting guns any day," etc. (Read this page for loads of the latter nutso talk.)

Maybe the movies are to blame. While the Aurora shooter was in a Dark Knight fantasy land, these guys are constantly preparing for the day they'll be Charles Bronson or Dirty Harry. The predators are everywhere, the threats come from every direction, but they take warm comfort in the mental image of how cooly they'll one day pull their sidearm from its holster and save the day, probably getting off a witty, memorable line before they pull the trigger. They'll have to work hard to be humble when the TV crews ask them how they so expertly saved the day, maybe working in a quote about the founding fathers and how great America is (that's the part of the speech they still work on while they sit stuck in traffic in the mornings). Yeah, that's going to be a glorious day.

Maybe if we all turned off the TV's and went out into public and shook hands and looked everyone in the eye, stopped living in some sound stage-created neverland of movies and TV, we'd be better off and Aurora, Colorado scenes wouldn't happen.

Or maybe I'm in fantasy land.

Let's Politicize This

2012-07-21T22:08:00.001-04:00

Since I've started doing a podcast, where you can hear my voice and that of my guests and the audio I collect of my world, I've wondered exactly what to do with the blog. With recent events, I've realized that whereas with the podcast I'm having apolitical discussions with people with creative/show business aspirations, this is a good place to comment on real world things. So in other words, if you're a conservative who likes my podcast but doesn't want to be exposed to my just-left-of-center world views, then don't read this.

Aww, who am I kidding? Nobody of any political stripe is reading this, anyway!

Only minutes earlier I had heard that RottenTomatoes.com had closed the comment section on the movie The Dark Knight Rises because readers were writing death threats to reviewers who gave the movie a low score. Then I turned on a local morning show and heard the news that several people had been shot and killed during a midnight screening at an Aurora, Colorado theater. (The two events surrounding the movie don't seem to be related.)

That afternoon, I was listening to conservative talk show host Bill Carroll from KFI-AM in Los Angeles. Carroll was talking about the shootings, saying, "Let's not politicize this. Let's let the families mourn."

Then I got on Facebook and an Internet friend of mine, who is unfortunately a conservative despite being apparently bright otherwise, was echoing the "let's not politicize this" meme. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et al., all used the "let's not politicize this" line.

Were they calling on their conservative peers not to politicize this? Hmm...is there any way conservatives could take this event as an example of why we need less gun control? Is there any way the events in Aurora could be used as Exhibit A in why we should have more guns on the street, shorter waiting periods, less testing? No. So it's doubtful the "let's not politicize this" phrase was aimed at their conservative brethren.

No, "Let's not politicize this; let's let the families grieve," was aimed at Democrats. George Bush, Jr. used this same phrase immediately after the Virginia Tech shootings. That wasn't the time to discuss gun control laws, it was time to let the families grieve. And a couple of weeks later the story was out of the news, out of most people's minds who were not directly affected, and the gun control issue was swept under the rug yet again, just as the conservatives and National Rifle Association lobby wanted it.

"Let's not politicize this; let's let the families grieve" is nothing but a tactic to quickly frame the situation as, "Any Democrat who brings up gun control right now is being insensitive to the aggrieved." It's a way to shut us up, because to bring up gun control at a time like this is to initiate a debate conservatives can't win! Of COURSE they don't want to discuss gun control now! This is yet another flagrant example of how wrong their firearms philosophy is! The Aurora shooter got his guns legally at retail gun shops. He stockpiled 6,000 rounds of ammo online, all legal. By all measures he was just another American exercising his right to bear arms, only he wasn't sane.

"You think he couldn't have gotten those guns illegally, Mr. Liberal?," the pro firearms-for-everybody guy says. Maybe he could've gotten them illegally, but there wouldn't be so many illegal handgun purchases if there weren't so many legal ones. The Smith & Wesson truck doesn't get hijacked to put illegal guns in nutjobs and criminals hands, they start off as legal sales. Only later are the guns sold under the table, serial numbers removed, etc.

And what about the pro firearms-for-everybody sets' argument that more guns on the street means a more well-defended citizenry? Well, where was the would-be Charles Bronson who dropped this guy in Aurora in two shots before he could do any real harm? Maybe the concealed carry laws didn't extend to the theater, but here in Atlanta, a Dairy Queen was robbed during the week at lunch time, and it's less than half a mile from an indoor shooting range where the parking lot is always full. Weren't any handy shots having a Blizzard for lunch that afternoon?

It's not Democrats being insensitive to grieving families when they bring up gun control after a moment like Aurora. The insensitive ones are those who want even more lax laws than the ones that let this happen, which will result in more grieving families down the road.

Let's politicize this.

Facebook Fan Page

2012-04-10T09:48:00.004-04:00

You can't be a real multimedia celebrity and/or insane narcissist these days without a Facebook fan page. Rather than wait around until I won some legitimate fans, I just went ahead and created a Facebook fan page and figured if I built it, they would come.

Here it is!

Note I put "official" at the beginning of the URL to distinguish it from all the imposter pages set up by my non-existent but well-meaning, overzealous fans.

Friend of the Famous #2: Perry Farrell

2012-03-28T13:03:00.002-04:00

Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction and two fans in Atlanta

When famous people come to town, they phone their agents and ask, "Where is that guy Art? I MUST meet him before I leave Atlanta!"

I was happy to oblige Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction with my presence when his band came to town. It's only been in recent years that I've become a fan of Jane's Addiction's early `90's albums, and also bought one of their more recent efforts, Strays. On Twitter Farrell had said they were planning a theater tour, and when I heard they were going to be at The Tabernacle, with general admission seating, and for only $50, I practically snapped my neck getting a ticket. This was unusual, because I only had to sit in a recliner with my laptop and poke a couple of keys to buy one.

The show was far beyond my expectation, as I recently stated on my podcast. Most bands out there today are charging $150 for even a mid-priced ticket, and when you get to the arena, there's nothing there but a bare stage, some amps, and maybe a cloth backdrop. Jane's Addiction's show had the kitchen sink treatment: two dancing girls, a guy dressed as a bird who swung from the light rig, video screens everywhere showing short films that communicated the themes of the songs, and even some Alice Cooper-ish skits.

After the show I was hoping to catch up with my pal Don at the side of The Tabernacle where the buses park and the performers sometimes give autographs. I didn't see Don, but Dave Navarro, JA's guitarist, came out and signed guitars and took pictures. Then Perry Farrell came out. I had decided that I really wanted to thank these guys for putting on such a massive production at such a low cost, because most bands these days are visibly pinching pennies, and Jane's Addiction's reputation is such that they could've done a lot less and still left their fans totally happy.

There was this guy in line, probably late 40's, who looked like he must have done 10 tabs of LSD. His eyes looked ready to launch out of their sockets and into the parking lot across the street. His girlfriend, probably nearly half his age, was staggering around, drunk as a skunk. The guy had a loud personality, and had nearly gotten in a fist fight with one of the panhandlers that was drifting around, which is another story. These were the first fans Farrell had to deal with. He gave them full eye contact and actually bantered with them a couple of minutes and smoothed them right out, and sent them away happy. At that moment, I realized how Farrell has earned his status as an entertainer. I don't think many people would've had the patience to deal with those two.

This being downtown Atlanta, yes, there were three panhandlers drifting around annoying the crap out of, and scaring, everybody. You looked and saw a panhandler, then turned your gaze three feet to the right, and saw an internationally famous rock star. Most unusual.

One of these panhandlers got in line and wanted Farrell to sign a dollar bill. Apparently he had already gotten one signed, because Farrell had already told everyone he was doing one autograph and one picture per person, and when this guy got in line, he said, "Didn't I already sign one for you? Well...I'll do one more." I'm confident this guy had no idea who Jane's Addiction was, he probably hoped he could pay off the debt to his crack dealer with that autographed dollar, but I was once again impressed how Farrell had people skills with a guy most were desperate to avoid, and with the eyes of hardcore fans upon him, also. Play a big rock show with full energy for two hours, then go deal with LSD nuts and panhandlers with grace. Wow.

My turn in the line came up. I don't like to think I have any special reverence for the famous, because I regard myself as a talented, worthwhile person, also, but I admit I did get just a little dry-mouthed. You don't want to look like a tool box the one time you get to meet someone who's music you've enjoyed.

So I got to shake Mr. Farrell's hand, and told him I appreciated him bringing out such a lavish production, and doing it at a price that people could afford in "this economy," as everyone says. Right away I thought what a dork I must have sounded like next to the pink-haired alternative rock groupies who were squealing at his slightest touch, but anyhow, he said, "Thanks, man. It means a lot," although maybe he was thinking, "Oh, my God! Get this dork away from me and bring back the homeless guy!"

Another thing that should be pointed out: these days a lot of bands will charge up to $900 for you to meet them for 10 seconds and shake their hand and tell them they're great. I'm further impressed Jane's Addiction offered this opportunity free of charge.

Jane's Addiction makes every other band out there look cheap. Go see them when they're in your area.

Friend of the Famous #1: Emo Philips

2012-03-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

Emo Philips

Although I don't brag about it, it should be no surprise to anyone that, being the Internet's most beloved blogger and podcaster, I hobnob with the high-profile and influential all the time, particularly when I can ambush them in an autograph line where they can't get away. I got to shake hands with a couple of stars that way lately, including the legendary comedian, Emo Philips.

Back when I was about 13, I had a friend tape an hour or so of the Playboy Channel for me. Where the movie ran out, there was the remainder of a HBO or Showtime special from Emo Philips. It was the first time I had ever heard of Emo, and his off-the-wall one-liners were way up my alley. I may have actually forgotten about the pornography, even (how many people can say they found Emo Philips by way of Ginger Lynn?).

I had never gotten to see Emo live,but he was appearing at a comedy club downtown called the Laughing Skull. The club only holds 75 people, and I was attending a Thursday night show (I like to catch these guys away from the weekend crowd, fresh off the plane).

Emo Philips entertained the crap out of us, which made a big mess for the janitor, and then he reappeared through the curtain to meet his public. As I went to shake his hand, he would have been happy to know that I've washed my hands several times since first seeing him on that Playboy Channel tape when I was 13. "I just want to brag to a friend of mine in Minneapolis that I got to shake your hand," I said, extending my clean hand. He gave me a nice shake.

Philips had also very tentatively edged into political humor, but clearly had misgivings. I had seen "Bobcat" Goldthwait and Marc Maron in this same venue recently, and they also veered into political humor, but seemed to believe that since they were in the Southeast, they must be standing before a crowd of hostile, far-right Republicans. I hated seeing these guys, for one, stereotype us Southerners, and also hated seeing them feel uptight when there was really nothing to worry about. So I told Emo, "Please tell the other comedians, we're not all on the far right down here! Don't be afraid to do political humor!"

Emo said, "Downtown, maybe." Yes, downtown Atlanta is a lefty enclave, and the further you go out into the suburbs and beyond, the redder it gets, generally speaking.

"Yeah, that's true," I said. "I don't know what happened. We used to all be Democrats. But we're working on it."

He asked, "Is there an Occupy Atlanta?" I said yes, there was, but then felt embarrassed that I didn't know whatever happened to it. The last I had heard about it, the mayor was giving a curfew for the 10th time for the demonstrators to get out of Piedmont Park (or was it Woodruff?). It hadn't been on the news for weeks, though, and for all I knew, Occupy Atlanta had given up. "Maybe when the weather gets warmer," Emo said, and I laughed.

From there, I shook his hand again with Emo saying, "Keep up the good work," and I departed, aware I had probably become that guy who overstays his welcome in the autograph line. Very nice man, though, that Emo.

By the way, I hope I'm not giving anything away that Emo seems to favor the Left.

I've also got a Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction) story, but I'll save that for next time.

EPILOGUE: I have still never met Ginger Lynn.

Still Behind the Keyboard

2012-03-23T14:24:00.021-04:00

Some tools of podcasting.

Hello, blog readers!

Unless you're one of the 16 people who've subscribed to my blog feed, and are then one of the fraction who actually checks your Google Reader anymore, there is little chance you're going to read this post. So for the two of you left, how are you? Sorry I've been remiss in posting.

As previously mentioned over a month ago, I've been occupying myself with the world of podcasting. The At Night podcast is going all right. I get about 50 listens per episode, which is pretty good, considering myself and my guests are not on any big-time TV shows, don't have a national newspaper column, or write for a big magazine. I've also gotten a fan letter from a guy in Poland, and a $30 contribution from a guy who does professional radio voice production in North Carolina. And on Podomatic.com, the site that holds my MP3s, I've hit #7 in the Spoken Word category a couple of times, and there are definitely more than seven podcasts in that category.

This is all great and I'm appreciative, but I'm still not satisfied. I don't want this to be a "hobby;" I dislike the word "hobby," and I generally loathe the concept of hobbies, because "hobby" means "frittering your life away." No, I want thousands of people enjoying this, discussing it, voicing opinions on it, and THEN...maybe I can get advertisers, and go pro!

For all of this to happen, I need to get better at it, and generate material that makes people eager to hit the Send and Share buttons and get others into it, and then they should follow suit. However, what constitutes an "improvement" in the world of sitting around and talking? I don't know.

If you've listened to any episodes and have any ideas, feel free to share them.

Have You Listened to My Podcast?

2012-01-25T01:32:00.013-05:00

Hello, blog readers!

No, I haven't forgotten the ol' blog. I've been busying myself with the podcasting world of late.

How did I get sucked into the realm of Internet audio, when I had been a man of the written word for so long? Well, it's an uninteresting story, as my readers have become accustomed to (am I self-deprecating enough?).

Back in September I was at Barnes & Noble and happened to leaf through Adam Carolla's book. He had a couple of pages in there I found to be blazing with insight. I went home and reported on Facebook that the book was hysterical. A Facebook friend and former local DJ suggested I check out Carolla's podcast. Though they've been around for years and I love morning shows and talk shows, I had never listened to a podcast.

The Carolla show I dialed up was an interview with Andrew "Dice" Clay. It had been suggested to me as far back as `97 or `98 that I could record a radio-style show and put it on the Internet for downloading, years before Adam Curry came up with the term "podcast." I had many misgivings about the idea, but they began melting away upon listening to this Dice interview.

When the initial recommendation to do a show on the Internet was made back in the late 1990's, I thought it was a silly idea. I was trying to get to a 100,000 watt station in a glamor capital like Los Angeles or Chicago, with the attached six-figure paycheck, not make fuzzy-sounding audio files (these were the Real Audio days, pre-MP3) for free. After the podcasting format was solidified and named, I still believed you needed a morning zoo crew of five "laughers," a stunt guy to take poops in public parks, and a green room filled with A-list celebrities to interest anyone. Who would listen to me sitting in a room talking to myself?

The Carolla/Diceman interview reset my perceptions. This was just two guys talking for an hour: no sidekicks, no forced laughs, no station IDs or traffic, no sound effects, and apparently it was extremely successful. From there I investigated the other big names: Marc Maron's WTF, Chris Hardwick's Nerdist, and Uhh Yeah Dude (yes, that's the name of a very successful show).

I've also discovered that outside of those few, the Internet is teeming with half-baked, unlistenable dreck, and it's not even coming from amateurs, it's big-time showbiz names you know producing this shit. It's worth noting that the hosts of the top three shows, Carolla, Maron, and Hardwick, have substantial radio experience, and many other podcasters don't, so maybe that's why their shows are more listenable and subscribed to.

Comedian Marc Maron of WTF was in Atlanta this past week, and was on the cover of the local alt-newsweekly, Creative Loafing. The article frightened me. It explicitly details that Maron is pulling big numbers in terms of listeners and ad dollars. Until now, in my world, anyway, podcasting has been an underground phenomena; none of my friends listens to even the biggest shows, or seems familiar with the hosts. But when the news of the dollars the top shows are drawing gets out there, every butt face in the world who isn't already doing a crappy podcast will want to join in. A gold rush will ensue. Soon it will be like the L.A. hair metal scene, with a thousand worthless bands all vying to be the next Van Halen, while something new sprouts elsewhere, off the radar.

But my real point here is my podcast truly sounds better than a lot of what's out there, and you should go listen to it.

New Podcast

2011-11-10T21:49:00.008-05:00

As well as the blog here (which has regretfully gone neglected of late), I've started an audio podcast. If you're so inclined, check out Art Howard at Night.com. Thanks!

When Girls Were Girls and Men Were Men

2011-07-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

On Headline News they had a feel-good human interest story about a teenage girl who had been accepted onto her school's baseball team. There she was, breaking down those boundaries, because boundaries are only ever erected by old fuddy-duddies who are interested in keeping one group or another down because they secretly fear them, not because they exist in nature. Right?

As I watched this girl playing in the dirt with the boys, it occurred to me that I've yet to see the story about the boy who proudly wins the county bake-off. There the boy stands in his apron, holding his spatula high in victory as he shows off the tallest, non-floppingest cake around. His parents beam and cheer to news crews about how he's breaking down the barriers, showing boys can cook and sew as good as any girl, and finally men's time has come.

You only see women trying to compete in a man's world, very rarely the other way around. This even extends to names. I've actually stood before someone with obvious breasts and high cheek bones who told me their name was "Pete." Working in a call center where we talk to the customers over chat, I'll see the names Billy or Johnnie and presume I'm talking to a guy, only to be corrected that it's Miss, not Mister, as though I'm an idiot to presume those names would belong to a guy.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that women have an inability to take an interest in anything for it's own sake, they only take an interest in it as a way of attracting a man. Maybe in Schopenhauer's time that was so, but these days a different approach is taken: women want to assume the masculine characteristics outright, from clothing to names to trying to throw the ball harder than Tom Glavine.

It's really about power. Man are perceived to have power. No one wants to be powerless. Everyone wants to "wear the pants," but they size them different for men and women, and not because they're trying to oppress anyone. Men and women are different, and much to my joy, some aspects of life are strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

A Ballsy Move

2011-07-13T20:10:00.002-04:00

You know the economy is down. You're lucky to have a job at all these days. Houses aren't selling. The dollar is weakening. Costs are skyrocketing. The United States is on the verge of being overtaken by China. This is the time to hang onto what you have, certainly not to throw it away and try to grab something new.

Well I know a guy who has said "fuck that" and is reaching way, way out for something new!

Brian, known here and elsewhere on the Internets as BClark71, has spontaneously moved to Jacksonville, Florida.

Brian has been a manager for a couple of pretty big corporations lately, and his wife had a job in sales with a golf equipment company that had helped keep a roof over their heads and those of their two children for about eight or nine years. But they both found themselves without jobs and rather than saying, "Oh, Lordy Jesus! We better apply at Target and hope for the best!," they just put their house up for sale in a down market, took a weekend trip to Jacksonville and decided they liked it, and the rest is to be history. The house is sold, an apartment in Jacksonville is rented, and nightly walks on the beach are a fact.

I wrote to Brian to ask for details on how he did this, and he had a great line, as befits a fellow Lewis Grizzard fan: "In Atlanta, I feel pressure to get another corporate management job. In Jacksonville I don't care what I wind up doing, as long as I can get poolside after I do it."

I've often described Atlanta as trying to strike a book of wet matches for years and years, and I think I'm about down to the last match (no implication of General Sherman intended). When my current job goes belly-up, which I expect any ol' day, what's next? Apply at any one of the many Publix/Target/Best Buy/Longhorn Steaks installments throughout the metro area? Maybe I should've been in Los Angeles long ago. Or maybe I would just be working at the Santa Monica Target...if they would have me.

How will it pan out in a year's time? Who knows. They say time loves a hero.

"Spends his days in the sun
and his nights in the casino
He left the States many years ago
Took a fishin' boat to Puerto Rico
Now my aunt, she is sad and lonely
She'll never know that she drove him away
As a coward I admire his courageous ways

They say time loves a hero
But only time will tell
If he's real, he's a legend from heaven
If he ain't, he was sent here from Hell"

-- "Time Loves a Hero," Little Feat

Hooters of Georgia 2011 Bikini Finals

2011-07-08T09:00:00.007-04:00

A few weeks ago I went to the Hooters of Georgia Bikini Finals (I think that's what it was called. Is it really important? No, there were ladies there with fit bodies in skimpy outfits, that's what's important).

I've gone to this event twice before, but this is the first time I threw caution to the wind and went into full perv mode and brought out my camera.

As well as enjoying the sights, something I always like about this is that the MC, Rock 105's Southside Steve, always tells you about the girl's backgrounds, and they usually have some sort of lofty dream they're going towards. It's always nice to encounter people with lofty dreams, especially when they have perfect legs.

The theme this year wasn't Village People outfits, but the military. I haven't been to the Army-Navy shop in a year or so, but I doubt I'll find these outfits on the rack.

Click for larger images.

Arachnids I've Known

2011-07-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

As many metallions are aware, Jeff Hanneman, guitarist of Slayer, has been undergoing skin grafts and physical therapy after contracting necrotizing fascitis. This means his flesh began eroding away. This is usually caused by a spider bite, most notably by the infamous Brown Recluse, a breed native to the Georgia here where I'm at, but also the Black Widow (another Georgia spider) and Hobo Spiders (Rocky Mountain states).

This news disturbed me, as I see all sorts of alien creepy-crawly things around here all the time, being in Georgia and surrounded by a lot of trees. I'm still not sure that I've seen a Brown Recluse, although I do know from some Googling that I'm supposed to look for a "fiddle back." (Who's going to have a magnifying glass handy and what spider is going to sit still long enough for you to examine it's tiny back for that kind of detail, I don't know.) I usually adapt a live-and-let-live attitude towards bugs, even spiders, just letting them go on their way, or putting them in a paper towel and taking them outside when I can.

However, if a arachnid looks like it might bare a fiddle, or even a mandolin or charango, I've gotta throw `em in the toilet. Here are a few I've had to execute lately. Click for larger images. What do you think? See any violin students?

I Live in a Paradise

2011-07-03T23:23:00.007-04:00

The author's kick-ass drum set. Don't be jealous.
I think a year is long enough to go without any updates, don't you?

You have to appreciate what you have right in front of you. The things that pass by in your peripheral vision, you have to really focus in on and appreciate. You might pass by a dusty old lamp and a bar of gold and pay neither any mind, just because you shuffle past them all the time.

I've kept thinking I should be somewhere else. Something is not right where I am. I'm a square peg in a round hole.

Then I stepped back and looked at my hole. I live in the house I grew up in, that was passed on to me. I have an acre of trees behind me. It looks like a J.R.R. Tolkien forest back there. No neighbors to gripe if I want to turn up my guitar. The den has new hardwood floors, with a custom couch and a 1080p TV. Weekend nights, when I celebrate being away from work, I can sit on the porch with my self-mixed Lynchburg Lemonade and smell the evening air and listen to the crickets; I can only barely hear the highway sounds from here. In the basement, I've got a great P.A., a bass amp, a Ludwig drum kit, my Marshall, and a plethora of guitars (this is not an invitation to burglarize me...firearms are soon to join the scene. Don't be on the wrong end of them). The basement was expertly finished by my parents when I was only five, and there's a pool table and a second fireplace down there, as well as my kick-ass rock n' roll posters and bar mirrors.

Right here from the very chair I address you from, I can produce slick video productions (some of those to come), and mix music with a fidelity even Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin didn't have in the `70's.

In short, this is what people work all their lives for, and I'm sitting in it. I live better than some rock stars!

Tonight, the third of July, I only had to drive to the end of my street and park to see two different fireworks shows here in my little town, in a car I paid off a few years ago.

I say all of this not to brag, but to say, it's probably human nature and a good thing to strive and always wonder and wish for what else might be, but...don't let that distract you from the greatness that already is.

The Big Four

2010-06-30T08:30:00.001-04:00

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It's overdue, but I have to tell you that about a week ago I went to the theater and saw the Big Four: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax in concert. It was the most fun I've had in a long time, maybe a couple of years.

Back in high school, I thought I was too cool for "speed metal," as we called it then. It wasn't very melodic and didn't have a lot of dynamics; there was barely an acoustic guitar anywhere, and there sure weren't any keyboards or exotic folk instruments. It was just Marshalls and Mesa-Boogies turned up to 11 and coming at you as fast as the guitarists could strum. I only owned Metallica's Master of Puppets, which I had bought out of pure curiosity. Later on in my mid-20's, though, I bought most of the Metallica and Anthrax discographies and learned that if you took them for what they were, they were pretty good. Don't expect to hear "Since I've Been Loving You" out of these guys, but enjoy it as the sort of fun goof it was intended to be. (Later on I bought Megadeth's three recognized classics, as well.)

So last week I had three days off and read on my friend Don's blog that there was to be a satellite broadcast of the Big Four bands of thrash metal in theaters. I contacted my friend Darren, a thrash metal enthusiast, and off we went to Perimeter Pointe theater.

Darren was a little irritated with me because first I drove off without our tickets and had to make a U-turn, then I realized I was nearly out of gas and had to stop. Despite this we got to the theater 25 minutes early and despite our nightmares, there were plenty of seats. Maybe too many. There were only about 25 people there, 40 tops! I thought maybe it was because we went to a theater in a hoity-toity part of town, but I've heard it was the same scene all over the U.S. and Europe. A lot of people are wanting this Big Four tour to come to the U.S. but if this theater release is being used to gauge public interest, don't bet on it. It was only $18 + $1 service charge to sit in the air conditioning and see this on a big screen in theater sound, and barely anyone took them up on it. Jack the ticket price up to $200 and have everyone sit outdoors for eight hours and what do you expect?

The tickets said the show started at 7:30 p.m., but at 7:05 they were showing an interview with Lars Ulrich, Scott Ian and Dave Mustaine. If I had known they were going to be showing this I would've shown up sooner! Scott Ian said, "I knew these two guys when they were in a band together." I thought, wow, Scott! Rub that sore spot!

Anthrax was first on stage. They're my friend Darren's favorite and I'm like `em second best out of all the thrash bands. Despite being nearly 40, Darren and I were air drumming and singing along like 17-year-olds. I was afraid we might've been annoying people around us, but it was too much! Out of all the bands I would say Anthrax had the most energy and were the most fun to watch. There was zero enthusiasm out of the theater crowd when they took the stage, and the arena in Bulgaria where the concert happened was barely half full when they started, but I hope Anthrax's set reminds everyone how good they were before they had 14 lineup changes.

Megadeth was next. Megadeth was the first thrash metal band I ever heard in depth, but after all these years I still can't get into them. They mostly sound like a lot of solos around minimal songs, like a Mike Varney shredder band. Live, Mustaine just stood there like a wooden indian and barely moved. Impressive guitar playing all around, but I'm not a GIT student looking for a tutorial, I'm a guy looking to be entertained. Some have said Mustaine seemed detached and spaced out even in the interview, theorizing he may have had a drug relapse, and as I think about it they may be right, but I hope not, because I have been impressed with the charity work I've read that he does.

Third was Slayer. There had been zero noise for Anthrax, more for Megadeth, and Slayer got the biggest reception so far. I've never been into Slayer not only because their music sounds like cartoon bullshit, but I think these guys are really into Satanism and Nazism, no matter what they say. Being a big Jimmy Page fan I've of course done some occult reading, and read about how Satanism ties in with Friedrich Nietzsche, Nazism and white supremacy, and if you read Slayer's lyrics and the graphics they use it's all in there. I can appreciate "Angel of Death," a song about Joseph Mengele and the torture methods at Auschwitz, as an exciting song, but the stuff they're talking about with glee in their lyrics really happened to people!

Despite all of this, I put that out of my mind and enjoyed their set for what it was. I'll give them one thing, they were far tighter than any of the other three bands, mostly due to Dave Lombardo, who was ridiculously good on the drums. That guy's not just a good musician, he's a physical specimen. There's no way he's living a rock n' roll lifestyle and playing like that, he has to train like Lance Armstrong, I'm certain.

Last was the undisputed kings, Metallica. On the Internet everyone trashes Metallica and calls them sell-outs, says they've lost it, they can't play or sing anymore, etcetera, but the audience reaction when they appeared says no one believes their own B.S. Even in the theater there was a huge outpouring of excitement for Metallica. Of all the bands they did sound the most ramshackle -- Lars Ulrich must've felt the pressure of following Lombardo, because he was floundering behind the drums -- but they can get away with it because the quality of their songs is far beyond any other band in the genre. Songs like "One" and "Nothing Else Matters" show a sophistication in their arrangement that the other bands don't touch with a 20-foot pole. I'm kind of surprised the thrash audience can appreciate the difference since they just seem to want to hear something they can run around in circles and beat on each other to. James Hetfield is also a fantastic front man. On all the DVD's I've seen of them live he's a funny and engaging guy ("You're scratching like a maniac -- dick rash!"). On this night he said, "This will be out on DVD soon, so you can watch it at home and hear all the fuck ups."

The peak, though, was when he said, "We have some extra instruments out here," and the rest of the bands joined them on stage, and everyone went wild when they saw Dave Mustaine standing right there next to his old nemesis and singing "Am I Evil?" Only Lombardo from Slayer joined in, though; apparently Kerry King has a beef with Metallica and Megadeth still and so Slayer stayed off stage until they took a group photo at the end. It was always the Big Three to me, anyhow.

Some kid who must've been 17 or 20 kept leaning over and talking to my friend Darren. I thought back to when a friend got our Jimmy Page tickets in 1988 and talked about these old hippy guys recalling seeing Zeppelin in the early `70's. I guess to a kid today my friend and I are those guys. "Man, they're so old I bet they saw Metallica with Cliff Burton!"

So that was fun.