This is my debut article at Gakwer. Let me know what you think. If you think it’s awesome.
“Television is going to be big, or it isn’t going to be at all.” The crack staff at Popular Science said this in 1944, and beyond the seeming obviousness of its either/or scenario, there’s a lot to think about here.
The Jetsons promised us flying cars and sentient robots by 2062. 2001: A Space Odyssey promised galactic travel - beyond today’s dinky power wheels stuck in mud up in Mars - that’s now already a decade overdue. And while I’ve jumped into damn near 300 hot tubs since I first saw the trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine, Duran Duran is still socially unacceptable listening. Technology has totally failed us.
Except for the television. Where all other advancements have come to a grinding halt in our grayed, spark-less, impotent and crumbling-from-the-inside science and technology sector, television has, by all measures, delivered on its promise.
Looking back on 70+ years of Popular Science Magazine, we can trace the timeline of the TV as it grew from pipe dream radio descendant to the reason why people like Snookie and Dog The Bounty Hunter are rich instead of in jail. Think of it as an HD History Channel special. Just don’t think of the alternative history.
This is the most insane thing I have ever read. The sheer psychosis that informs each of these thoughts, the ever-increasing insanity of each sentence, baffles and in some ways excites me more than anything I have ever seen.
Here are some highlights, but it HAS to be read in full:
Animals give me life. I like to eat them, ride them, pet them, wear them, grow them, watch them, and know in my pure aboriginal predator heart and soul that the health and condition of the animals in our lives are direct indicators of our own quality of life. The wildlife on the sacred Nugent hunting grounds, like all across North America, is thriving, naturally wild and spectacular. Our three Labrador retrievers and stupid old cat are clearly the happiest pets on earth. I love animals, and they love me. Perfect….
And yes, Eloise, that is an American buffalo between my legs. Isn’t he adorable? See the snot flying and enraged fire in the eyes? And the bison ain’t bad looking, either…
Here, after declaring his love for wearing and riding animals, he compares his penis to an angry, mucus-spitting buffalo.
My relationship with wild animals is as pure as it gets. I am a hunter, and surely there is no wiser use of renewable wildlife resources than killing them and grilling them.
Ted Nugent: animal activist, hunter, griller.
And though I do hop aboard for a thrilling ride, I am not so stupid as to forget that my buffalo is, and always will be, a wild buffalo. You know, the kind that would just as soon trample you into a bloody puddle of snot and hair than look at you.
Admitting this truism is why I carried a 10mm handgun in my belt during those stage rides, just in case the beast decided to go buffalo on me. A quick 200-grain armor-piercing slug through the back of his head would have made the difference between a momentary increase in entertainment value and a few dozen or more trampled rock fans. I knew this, and I was prepared. I am such a radical pragmatist.
Ted Nugent: armed in concert. Also, he seems to love to ride animals, which is curious given this:
Remember the circus lion tamers of yore, a chair in one hand, a pistol in the other? Prudent and respectful during a time before dangerous animals somehow became cute. The Bambi curse is to defile the wildness of beasts. They are killer whales, not show whales. And don’t tell me that grabbing alligators by the tail promotes conservation. Wise use? I think not. Shame on you.
Now, I can get on board with the whole not using animals for show thing. But I’d think that would disqualify riding a buffalo on stage.
The real moral of the story is that Ted Nugent is insane, and I’m even more insane for trying to argue back and decipher his message on my personal blog.
I haven’t been here in a while, which is cool, because it meant the Lennon entry lived on at the top, the eternal headliner.
Two thoughts:
1. I’ve never had a mustache. In all my near 24 years, a mustache has never been on my face past completion of a shaving session. In the 80’s, that’d have been remarkable.
2. Cete: –nouna number of badgers together.
After a hellish travel day up the east coast, I made it to Brooklyn Academy of Music for a special performance by Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. The show billed a ton of “special guests,” including Eric Clapton, Paul and Harper Simon, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Scissor Sisters, Bette Midler and more.
Of course, given the band’s original conceptual nature, with declaring founders Yoko and John Lennon declaring anyone in the room at any given moment a part of the band, the “special guests” seemed redundant and technically inaccurate, but that’s marketing for you. With poster and t-shirt sales outside, it was obvious that that aspect didn’t escape the bed peace veteran Ono.
There was a natural tension, of sorts, between the audience and Yoko, though it had nothing to do with the silly and fading accusations that she was the reason for the Beatles’ demise. While John had put out much of his solo, post-Fab Four work under the flagship of the Plastic Ono Band, this was very much a Yoko-centric concert.
Fans knew that going in, with her face dominating the poster and her artwork (including the wish tree, new for this performance) lining the entrance, and they were enthusiastic and warm in their reception. In fact, the audience sang Happy Birthday to her near the end of the show, and laughed at all of her funny, nervous-energy comments. But there was no doubt that John’s almost Messiah-like standing with the audience, clad in its old Beatles shirts and listening for any reference to the slain icon, blanketed the night.
It was a natural reaction, and one not intended to take away from Ono and her body of work. Indeed, the opening mini rock-documentary itself made clear her avant garde genius and the crucial role she played in the post-Beatles activism that raised John’s status from rock and roll legend to dear leader to Imaginers world wide. Tributes to her ‘60’s staples such as “Ceiling Painting” and “Cut Piece” as well as her ability to lead international protests, with and without John, were rightly celebrated in the piece.
The first half of the show continued its Yoko-centric mission, with the nearly 77-year old artist warbling, gyrating and, every so often, sweetly singing through a number of the better tracks off her new album, Between My Head And The Sky. But still, the specter of John was too great to escape:
Sean Lennon, his cherished son, the boy he retired from music to help raise, the little boy who marked all those late 70’s house dad videos and who broke hearts with just a glance at the 1981 Grammys — Sean led the band.
With his shaggy hair, daddy-trademarked glasses and signature black pea coat that gasps of Sgt. Pepper with its pins and stripes, it was an eerie sight to see this almost-John on stage. He stayed quiet through most of the first half of the show, alternating between leading the band on his six string and bass guitars.
But his silence providing no evidence to the contrary, and with lanky gait and loose mannerisms so reminiscent of his father, a quick look would have convinced someone in a thirty year coma that a young John was on stage marking forty plus years with Plastic Ono Band.
Sean took the lead in the second half of the show, introducing the guests and providing commentary and banter between songs. Given Yoko and John’s very public support and usage of therapy and counseling, I would imagine that Sean has worked hard to understand the mindless stealing of his father’s life, taken from him when he was just five years old, and that he has spent years learning to properly cope with the heavy legacy he left.
It’s been thirty years since his father’s death, and while I’d be daft to even pretend to have the foggiest notion of where he’s at in life, his friendly demeanor and own musical output paints the picture of a strong man at peace with the world that took so much from him. He certainly seemed so last night, bopping along to the music and showing a light touch of the sly wit for which his father was so famous.
But for the audience, or for me at least, it was a jarring sight, watching Sean on stage, as he casually mentioned “my dad” like he was standing backstage or even really just the average Working Class Hero that John fashioned himself in song. It was a shock to the system to hear “my dad” because, every time Sean casually let it slip, you were reminded that here stood the flesh and blood of John Lennon, the descendant of The Rock Messiah. Here stood the boy we saw in all those House Daddy videos, all grown and, they were hoping, ready to take the sword from the stone as the one true king.
This all sounds far too revering and sycophantic, but I’m trying to capture the spirit of the audience in those three hours. Of course, there were people wearing crosses and all sorts of other religious insignia around their necks, and there was no true feeling that Sean had any cosmic powers beyond a well-inherited talent for guitar and a face that conjured up memories.
But for the hundreds in the crowd that grew up with the Beatles and John’s words and music and legacy, for that brief time, Sean meant more than just a 35-year old rock scion.
Perhaps it was the heartbreak in watching Sean play a number of his dad’s cherished songs that gave the room’s its silent, almost genuflecting tone. Sean, accompanying Gene Ween, performed a touching version of “Oh Yoko,” a song he simply labeled as one “my dad wrote for my mom.”
But the reality was, with his dad dead just beyond his fifth birthday, there were no guitar lessons in a quiet Dakota building or Central Park or away on holiday, no dear old dad to introduce his boy to the songs from the inner reaches of his soul that set the world on fire.
Like the rest of us, Sean discovered all these things on his own, with the extra unimaginable burden of having to contemplate that it was his beloved father that had produced them. Imagine finding such an intimate record of a parent’s soul, memorized by the world over, and having to try to understand what it all meant, all on your own.
With John’s old friends, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman (whom had known John since his rocking Hamburg days and played on his solo albums), Sean seemed to channel his father in an electric version of “Yer Blues,” one of his dad’s most desperate and soul-bearing songs.
Throwing off the yoke of his soft, American lilt and wailing in a more familiar Scouse tone, he sang of his father’s suicide wish while trying to match the grinding guitar work that was laid down all those years ago at Abbey Road. It made it clear that, while all the earth inherited John’s songs, Sean was the one true owner.
John’s ghost hang heaviest over the encore finale, a group sing of “Give Peace A Chance” starring Paul and Harper Simon (who sweetly sang “Hold On”), Bette Midler (rousing “I’m Your Angel”), Sonic Youth (accompanying Yoko on Mullberry Tree), Justin Bond and the rest of the guests. It was a moment where, even if it no longer seems that we can change the world with a protest song, it was still obvious that people could come together, united by a song, in love and brotherhood.
At least until they slipped out into the cold New York night and went their own ways, reflecting on the higher meaning of the show and how to make their lives as wonderful as Yoko insists they can be.
Haven’t been writing here much, as I’ve been spending time writing satire and screenplay, and staying out all night at Bruce Springsteen cover band shows and Dave & Busters, but I thought I’d point this out:
Ex-Met Edgardo Alfonzo, who played with ex-Yomiuri Giant Hisanori Takahashi, likens Takahashi to Tom Glavine. Alfonzo said Takahashi throws 88 or 89 mph, tops out at 91 and possesses an effective screwball. He also called Takahashi “the stud of the (Yomiuri) staff.
My boy Fonzie talking about the Mets’ new Yomiuri ace. Could anything be more perfect?
Pretty funny. Well played.
If only we fought them with such tenacity on thing that actually matters, like jobs and healthcare policy, though.
Following President Obama’s surprise appearance at the White House press briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs garnered laughter from the press corps by holding up his hand to reveal that he had written notes on his palm in black marker.
Gibbs’ move was a jab at Sarah Palin, who was shown to have written notes on her hand at a speech at the Tea Party convention Saturday after making an implicit criticism of the president for using a TelePrompTer.
Gibbs quipped that he had made the notes in case he and his family are snowed in by the storm approaching Washington. He said the words written on his hands included “eggs” and “milk” and that he had written “bread” but crossed it out.
A close up of the palm also revealed the words “hope” and “change,” which Gibbs said he included “just in case I forgot that.”
I submit this without comment, beyond the fact that sometimes, I think about how fucked up and backwards the United States is, and then I read things like this and realize it’s a shared trait amongst all mankind:
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.
I’d love to see what Wes could do with her. In a script.
Reacting swiftly and with the compassion it is so often accused of lacking, Wall Street’s top CEO’s and bankers rallied to the aid Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein, announcing a weekend fundraising telethon for the industry trailblazer in the aftermath of his devastating 2009 bonus.
Just hours after his firm announced that Blankfein would be receiving just a $9 million bonus, housed in 58,000 shares of the banks’ ever-climbing stock, other top bankers on Wall Street released a statement urging every American to “give what they can” to help Blankfein “weather this recession.”
“It’s almost as if he’s taking a bullet for everyone else,” said Mark Borges, a principal with Compensia Inc., a Northern California compensation consulting firm.***
***This quote was actually uttered by a real “human”
I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche. Dada m’dada. Dada mhm dada da. It’s a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don’t want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people’s inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz’s words are only two and a half centimetres long.
It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows … Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn’t let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers’ hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn’t I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.
