Grammy Groan

I've just been reading through the horror, angst, and disgust registered by a zillion music fans over the results of the Grammy Awards. Jeez, what do people want? You give them the American Music Awards, you give them the People's Choice Awards, and you think that their hunger to have a recognized opinion would be sated. Nope. Fans want to co-opt everything. Grammy Awards are voted on by musicians and others actually involved in doing the work of making music, trying to sell it to a fickle public who thinks they should have it for free, and hanging their very survival on the outcome. Fans sit on their asses and watch and listen. They don't write songs. They don't play. They don't have the guts to walk out onto a stage and face a crowd. They don't dedicate themselves to years of study and practice. They just demand. Now they're demanding that their opinion matters with respect to the Grammys. Wouldn't you think that at some point, some untrained person might turn to a musician and say, "You're a musician. What do you think?" No. That's not happening. They'll ask an accountant about an investment. They'll ask a doctor about a medicine. They'll ask their gardener about which brand of weed-n-feed is best. They'll ask a mechanic THEY DON'T EVEN TRUST about what to do with their car. Ask a musician about the quality of music? Forget it. Popular music has become vaudeville lately, with "dance numbers" taking the place of the actual playing of instruments. Maybe this devolution is the ultimate fate of the masses. Maybe the masses will never appreciate music for music's sake. The masses are drawn to flashing lights, jumbo video screens, abbreviated clothing and pre-show baby-oiled skin, and, just like in the movies, explosions. Explosions are VERY big. Just ask Michael Jackson. Oh, right, never mind. Anyway, if the fans can't grasp the value of an opportunity to find out what actual musicians think, then maybe that explains what "stars" that have NOTHING to do with music are doing taking up the seats at the awards program. Kim Kardashian? SNOOKI? I'm still having trouble understanding why these two are even famous in the first place! Eva Longoria? When was HER last recording released? Never mind. The Grammy Awards remain, at least for the time being, a chance to pick the brains of actual musicians, producers, engineers, and others in the business of making music (all of whom get to hear more unheard-of stuff than you can imagine) and wind up with an earful of what the professionals think. I'd think that that would be deemed a thing of value. It should be protected from the ratings-crazed demands of television. Television, after all, could screw up a junkyard. More later.

Slick Vick

OK, so Michael Vick gets welcomed back into the fold by the NFL with open arms and a few caveats. What in the world does somebody have to do for the NFL to think that they're giving the league a bad name? I suppose the NFL would forgive Hitler if they thought he would sell tickets. Well, the average football fan can no longer afford tickets to the games, but they can afford beer, soda, pizza, chips, burgers, cel phones, deodorant, trucks, and a lot of other stuff that gets advertised on TV. I suppose the sponsors think that nobody is noticing. I suppose the entire football culture is so inured to the violence that even the fans don't care-even dog owners. After all, more women get beaten by their spouses and boyfriends on Super Bowl Sunday than any day of the year. So who really does care if Vick did all these hideous things to dogs. I don't belong to any organizations regarding cruelty to animals, but I recently signed a petition in regard to the re-hiring of Michael Vick. I personally think he should be washed up. Finished. He had the world handed to him on a plate and he pissed on it. He had his chance to be a hero and instead chose to be an ugly little coward. But that's just me. If you would like to make a statement, look for the petitions online. Do a search. Snoop around. It'll take all of five minutes. Sign one and click on the send button and you'll know that at least you are the kind of person who has faith that each of us can make a difference. Let some sponsors of the NFL know how you feel. Do you know how you feel?

Doc

I just, once again, read Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's "Better Than Sex - Confessions of a Political Junkie". Released in 1994, the book recounts the '92 Presidential campaign during which, the Republicans dumped George Bush the elder (guessed the economy would tank and better to have it in the Democrats' laps) and the Democrats shoehorned a good ol' boy saxophone player into the White House and slapped themselves on the back for doing so (didn't guess the Republicans were bailing out to regroup for '96 and letting them eat the ugly mess for four years, after which, they would come back as fiscal saviours). Funny how it worked out. By the time Slick Willy left office, there was a huge surplus of black ink in Washington for the first time since Eisenhower. Go figure. HST's two-year-later take on all this-plus Ross Perot-is even more fun in the squint of the longer perpective after it's long gone. The campaign, the administration, the legacy, and the surplus. If you've never read it, pick up a copy of "The Great Shark Hunt" and his view of the Watts riots, meeting Muhammed Ali, Jimmy Carter's speech hosting the Governors' Conference in Georgia, and other pieces will distill for you some of the moments of the day down to great clarity.
That was Hunter S. Thompson. Don't let the blurbs referencing "gonzo", "drug-addled" satire fool you-he was precise as a laser between the lines and left you with a more truthful rendering of a candidate's character-or lack of it-than you knew you had until it sunk in. Or until the pigeons came home to roost. We will always need someone like him. In a free-speaking, free-thinking nation, as we sometimes like to flatter ourselves that we are, a Hunter S. Thompson bravely points out to us that we're bullshitting ourselves again and again, buying into sound-bites and photo-ops praying against hope that some candidate lies to us so skillfully that we can feign being duped when the shit hits the fan. Then we can act "shocked and dismayed". Doc would never let us get away with that-at least if you had the guts to read his stuff. If you didn't then you deserve what you get. It takes guts to be a free people. We have to think on our feet. Things turn queer and ugly real fast in this world and if we're not sharp, we'll have Presidents lying us into wars for the sake of their family business, despite the protestations of their own intelligence and advisors. Wait...that couldn't happen, could it? Not without our complicity. I'd love to read what Doc would have to say about what's going on in Iran on this summer solstice. We're already being blamed for the uprising of the Iranian people in public by the bastards that were put into power by the same kind of protest. The Iranian people already know they can kick a tyrant into the street-and they don't even HAVE a Hunter S. Thompson. They're not even allowed to have one. What the hell is OUR problem? I miss Doc and I always will. You will too, even if you don't know it, because there will now be a big, irritating, pearl-forming grain of truth missing in what's left of our blessed wreckage of a democracy. There's always hope and a way, but we've lost a treasured member of the coaching staff.