Holding the Torch for New Orleans

There are very specific reasons living in the American South has its drawbacks. One only had to ask Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, or Thelonious Monk why their families moved them early in life north to larger more metropolitan areas. It is fair to say the feeling found in their music was forged in the South. One cannot escape the strong historical influence of “The Bible Belt.” The black church is unique in the South, and its roots in the blues are unmistakable. Hence Gospel, the Rhythm and Blues of both the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, and the jazz roots of New Orleans are all a part of the music of Bebop. Still these jazz greats did not hone and practice their art in the American South. They had to migrate north to Philadelphia and New York much like the burgeoning jazz musicians of New Orleans who traveled north on the Steamboats up the Mississippi River to St. Louis and Chicago. Those of us with homes in other areas of the South face a similar challenge if involved in the profession of music. While jazz music on a small scale does exist in college towns, it is scant in most Southern cities. We should applaud Branford Marsalis for relocating to Durham, North Carolina with a connection to Paul Jeffries at Duke University. Likewise Thelonious Monk’s son has been shopping the American South for a suitable place for his Monk Institute. The Arts do exist in some form in the South, but Jazz is not a major component of it. It reclusively hides in academia shelved for the examination of aspiring students. Why is this? Why is it our only truly American art form born in New Orleans from the sweat and blood of transplanted African-Americans, slaving to the sounds of street marches, funeral dirges, and Zydeco, is not appreciated on its native soil? There are reasons for this, and they are a major distinguishing characteristic of the American South. When one thinks of the differentiation between North and South or the demarcation of the Mason/Dixon line, one usually thinks about “Yankees” and “Confederates.” Unfortunately the Confederacy over the years has been ascribed negative connotations resulting from the Civil Rights Movement. Any geographical location that was the breeding ground for the Ku Klux Klan is going to hold tough memories for African-Americans. While social evolution has occurred, the tenants of slavery will remained etched in the soul of America because they created Jazz music. Would jazz exist without slavery? Most art is a survival instinct for an intelligent body of people. Jazz is no different, and the harsh realities of slave life miraculously transform into happiness via the vehicle of Jazz. Jazz represents freedom at its most base level, and that is why it is important to America. Without this quintessential representation of American freedom, society becomes lost. We are lost today, and a reexamination of jazz music could shore up our core philosophy of life in the United States. New Orleans was a metropolitan city of diversity. French Creole plantation workers from the Caribbean islands along with migrating Acadians from Nova Scotia made their home in this Louisiana port town. Hundreds of miles away from the guiding light of New York's Statue of Liberty New Orleans opened her doors to future citizens of the United States. One can imagine the excitement felt from the opportunities of prosperity, work, and freedom. Unfortunately the rural geography of the South is not suitable for such occurrences. What is was suitable for was the tradition of growing cotton and other staple crops necessary to sustain life in the U.S. Without an urban infrastructure upon which to grow, Jazz music cannot exist. Luckily man’s oldest profession provided this necessary foundation in the Red Light District of New Orleans. Many people do not know the basis of the American entertainment industry the Minstrel Show. Minstrel Shows were traveling emporiums of entertainment based upon the hypocrisy of slavery. Characters such as “Zip Coon” and “Jim Crow” were created to vent frustration over blatant violations of Civil Rights which occurred during the Slavery Era. Slavery is not only a precursor to Jazz but a precursor to our modern entertainment industry. When the country as a whole loses sight of these roots, our future becomes jeapardized. What specifically about rural life does not promote a feeling of freedom? The concept of private property as represented in the American South dilutes the prospect of fraternization. If wealthy landowners hold monopolies on real estate, it is difficult for any new seed to grow because there is no place to be planted. As one drives into the elegant town of Pinehurst, North Carolina a difficult paradox presents itself. Because it is located in a rural area far away from any metropolitan area, it could be difficult to construed it as such. Is an exclusive resort really metropolitan if it is isolated from the very things that make it so? It is possible to be exclusive and not metropolitan, and that seems to be the definition of the South. If a group decides to be exclusive then the possibility exists that their connection with and representation of the philosophies of American life may become jeopardized. This most likely is occurring in modern day America as simple wealth becomes more powerful. When faced with the vacuum that only is survival of the fittest, where does art go? If purely monetary value becomes the only qualification of life, then the essence and soul of America are lost. Even if wealth, looking into the darkness of the abyss, wanted to fill it with enlightenment how would they? It is impossible, because only those interested in art can do so. It takes in interest in, the study of, and the subsequent creation of art to sustain humanity and enlightenment. That is why Jazz music and New Orleans are crucial to the survival of America. If we as a nation cast New Orleans into the wind like media has abandoned tradition, then we are destined for the same fate, a soulless, selfish, superficial society of heathens. How can it be a youthful generation in a few short years have all but destroyed the models of broadcast media? Radio, Music Television, and News are but dim shadows of what they once were and represented in America. It can’t be fathomed that the population of America has been stricken with a plague that has rendered them mindless and soulless. More plausibly it has been the dramatic shortcomings of television production that have short-changed the American people.

Hope. Life, and Television

My recent assaults on television are aimed at tabloid, reality, and talent oriented shows. Only uneducated young people will be gullible enough to enjoy their fodder. Longstanding icons of late night comedy should not be included in my scathing reports such as Late Night with David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and…. Well that’s about it I guess unless you want to include the “jerk off the public” type shows that aren’t interested in cutting edge entertainment. What has happened? I base my analysis upon shows of the past that far supercede anything that is being produced today. Shall I list them?

Dallas
Love Boat
Love American Style
Mannix
Hawaii Five-O
Barnaby Jones
The Wild, Wild, West
The Waltons
Apple’s Way
Family
Man in a Suitcase
Zoom
Knot’s Landing
The Hitchhiker
The Night Stalker

Somewhere along the line television producers decided humoring and including the masses was more appropriate than teaching them. You don’t have to work as hard to be ahead of the “In Crowd.” You just regress to the lowest common demoninator and call that your show. The problem is when everyone in the public eye sells out, there is not much left to lead the public in the right direction. Television has always been a large influence on the American people. In the case of the shows listed above, the major difference is… Well there are a lot of things that are better, but one in particular is live music. Live music “back in the day” consisted of a composer that scored each show weekly. It is a serious schedule, and not every composer is cut out to score television. Jan Hammer commented on what a rigorous job scoring TV is. There have been many an article in the earlier Keyboard Magazines that talked about producing music for television. The biggest difference back then was the producers used live musicians. Each studio had a “sound stage” that was set up to record LIVE music. That meant either an orchestra or a smaller compliment of musicians consisting of a rhythm section and a few horns were set up to be recorded weekly. Live players had to come in and read the “cues” the composer had written. Now it is all done by a computer. A computer? How can a computer replace the heart and soul of so many talented individuals? It can’t, and that is why today’s television is suffering. Where once a show included a plural interpretation of the drama, now it is taped in a vacuum like the rest of life. The youth of America have come to believe sitting in a dark room alone in front of a computer is the appropriate way to live. “Back in the day” things were done in the public forum. As a result the product spoke to a much larger group of people, possibly the mainstream. Small productions written and produced in a vacuum are unlikely to produce art. The writer of The Yearling produced nothing until she, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, actually moved to Florida and experienced something other than her own shortcomings. At our local regional theatre they are preparing the musical Oliver. My next door neighbor got the part she wanted but largely was disappointed to find out instead of having a live orchestra they were using prerecorded “tracks.” I know something about this, because I have been playing in the Showband on cruise ships for the last five years. We play production shows “with tracks.” That tracks are provided because nine times out of ten the musicians hired are not competent enough to play the shows. A production show on a ship is a different affair than a musical theatre performance. Theater is about live interpretation and interaction. When you use a prerecorded track that means there is NO room for improvisation. Not only do you have to do the performance the same way each night, there is no emotional contribution from the live music. Few moments will be created except the moments that are created by the producer of the “tracks.” Those are large shoes to fill. Luckily Carnival has a competent arranger who usually is at the deepest level of the music. He used to play for Buddy Rich. Another line I will not mention is comfortable at the “pop” level, meaning the drama that is inherent in the music is not actualized. That means there is vast room for improvement in the shows, but the performers get brainwashed into thinking a half-assed effort is good enough. The connection that can be made between stage performers and musicians in the pit is gone, reducing the product to nothing more than TV. I have had to fight tooth and nail to salvage the live theatre aspect of production shows. Often I am jeered by my fellow musicians for trying to hard to make the show better than it actually is. Since I have been involved in academia for nine years, I don’t know how to contribute less. Not having live music is like the way life is today in America. Everything is programmed. There is a diluted formula for life that translates into despair, because nothing is being left to spontaneity or hope. Without the prospect of new things being able to happen, life becomes bleak. Even for those of us that know about depression first hand, we eventually realize basking in darkness is no answer. You rely on the prospect of hope for salvation. Without it then you would be left stranded in darkness. In this way the possibility of new achievement and accomplishment is crucial to our lives. Imagine the way those stranded occupants of New Orleans feel with no lives and no seeming hope. At the moment there seems to be a huge, demonic, monolithic hand with a hammer that is shaping the way things are. Whether this is big business, big government, Al Qaeda, or the devil is not readily apparent. The American people feel it, and it does not feel good. The prospect of prosperity was a defining element of America when she was first born, and we as a country need to work hard to discard the rigid little black box in which we are being forced to live and rekindle the idea that someone wants the heart of the American people. Who is this demon?

Today’s Second Top Ten List of Farces in America

1. Melanoma Is Caused By the Sun (How did millions of Africans survive all these years with NO protection from the sun. It seems their BLACK skin was never a problem. Conversely it allows them to tolerate harmful effects from the sun. Microwaves in the Electromagnetic spectrum fall directly below INFRARED waves in frequency, which are the same as HEAT. Heating the tissue in the body has never been a good idea. Ask any of the survivors of Nagasaki or Heroshima.)

2. The Death of FM Radio Was Caused by the Payola Scandal (FM radio is dead because there is so much interference in the electromagnetic spectrum from competing technologies. Even cablevision is experiencing the adverse consequences of pollution in the electromagnetic spectrum, because interfering waves manifest themselves on preexistent wiring. This is why your computer runs slower than it should most of the time and your cable reception is poor)

3. Doctors Are In Control of Medicine (HMO’s and large drug companies are pulling the strings. That is why we continue to treat symptoms rather than seeking cures.)

4. Toilet Paper Is an Effective Way to Clean Your Anus (The Europeans have known for centuries the BIDET is the most effective method for cleaning your genitalia after defecation. Are we cheap in America or what?)

5. The OBDll Test is an Effective Way to Control Your Car’s Emissions. (Ask your dealer's mechanic why, with the most current software, he can’t get that infernal light to go out.)

6. Congress is an Effective Body for Creating and Implementing Legislation (No qualification needed)

7. FEMA is an Effective Body for Providing Relief to Disaster Victims (No qualification needed)

8. The President’s Actions Represent the Desires of the American People (No qualification needed)

9. Congress Doesn’t Deserve Term Limits (Tenure is supposed to exist in academia, not politics. What have you published recently, Mr. Senator?)

10. The HMO is an Effective Body for Providing Health Care to the American People (ask the millions of Americans bankrupt by medical bills, even when they have insurance)

Today’s Top Ten List of Sexual Preference on Late Night Television


1. David Letterman / Straight

2. Carson Daily / Gay

3. Conan O’Brien / Metrosexual

4. Craig Ferguson /Straight

5. Jay Leno /Metrosexual

6. Jimmy Kimmel /Gay

7. Becker / Straight

8. Bob Saget /Gay but in the closet (well Saget does rhyme with...)

9. John Stamos /Recently Gay

10. Anderson Cooper /Straight

Spider Man lll, Camp or Comic Book? Today's Top Ten List of Drag Queens in Spider Man lll

1. Peter Parker- Hillary Swank in Drag. (Spider Man doesn’t cry, or does he?)

2. Mary Jane- Steve Buscemi in Drag (Reservoir this!)

3. Aunt May- Stacy Peralta in Drag (She should bust out some Bones Brigade moves on that Green Goblin scooter!)

4. Harry- Jennifer Love Hewett in Drag (Let’s see the boobies)

5. The Sandman- Mike Rowe as Himself (How about an aria from La Boheme?)

6. Eddie Brock- James Spader as Himself (Maybe Holly Hunter will be up a "Crash".)

7. J. Jonah Jameson- Melissa Etheridge in Drag (Where was the guitar?)

8. Bryce Dallas Howard- Bo Derek Thirty Years Ago (Suddenly I hear Bolero playing in the background.)

9. James Cromwell- Lyle Lovett as Himself (“She makes me feel good…)

10. Bill Nunn- Eddie Murphy as the Nutty Professor (Where is Tri Phase?)

Today's Top Ten List of Things I Would Do as President.... of the DMV

1. Enforce the Speed Limit (Everyone speeds, at least in Fayettenam)

2. Humanize the Interstate Highway System (Right now Interstate Rest Areas are a Mecca for lewd homosexual behavior. The Interstate is a Daytona Speedway for coked out truck drivers. It is dangerous for passenger vehicles.)

3. Enforce the Window Tinting Laws (the majority of drivers in Fayettenam have illegally tinted side windows. The state stands to make a lot of money if they only would enforce this law.)

4. Regulate Wheel Rims and Tail lights (Vehicles should be functional. When aesthetics come before safety, people’s lives are in jeopardy)

5. Eliminate Open Pipe Harley Davidsons (How can there be such as a thing as an OBDll Test, when hundreds of straight pipe Harleys roam freely on the streets with no muffler and no catalytic converter?)

6. Get Rid of the SUV (It is a visual atrocity. It sits up too high to see the driver. It blocks the view of the highway from behind. In 70% of crash tests, people die in cars that it hits.)

7. Require All Gas Stations to be Be Mechanic Shops (Who decided buying gasoline, cigarettes, and cookies was a good idea? Let’s keep gas and oil separate.)

8. Get Rid of the State Inspection (It is hypocrisy personified. Let the law enforcement community take care of it)

9. Enforce Noise Ordinances in Relation to Sub Woofer Systems (Bling is out. Keep it in the hood.)

10. Limit the Size of the Automobile (I’m tired of driving behind lunar landers.)

Melanie and the Juice Machine

Like Melanie was an accomplished lover, she was also an accomplished cook. She was a recluse and often reiterated if she had a choice, she would live on a desert island alone and read books. Through her schizophrenia that also connected with the idea of “going back to school.” In her mind it was almost figurative, because I am not sure she understood the term “going back to school” simply meant working on a Master’s degree. Because she felt stranded in her everyday life working for the Anti Defamation League and editing a month rag in Columbus, Ohio, the prospect of “going back to school” meant some kind of escape. Her other prison was the man that she worked for on their monthly arts publication wanted to marry her. The only drawback to that was he was almost eighty years old, and she was only forty-four. She felt strongly his selfishness at wanting to acquire a wife outweighed the reality of him being able to take care of her. What does an eighty year old man have to offer a younger woman? Children? Money? A Stable Home? He could offer none of these, but he did offer love. That love she found out was in the spiritual realm, because age also takes it toll on one’s effectiveness in bed. It was a tangled web, but she did her best to keep disconnected from it. It wasn’t easy, when someone was preying on your emotions. In spite of all these complications we hit it off and started living together. Our first night together, or maybe second, I cooked for her. I have a special recipe I learned from another D.M.A student at Ohio State. Todd Marvey cooked Italian sausage, mushrooms, zucchini squash, and sweet onion and put them over a bed of fettuccini. I liked to blacken the sausage, which she insisted was carcinogenic. She did remark that it was a tasty meal and ate it. Melanie was rather set in her food habits, as anyone with intelligence should be. “You are what you eat.” Behold the day she bought the immortal “grill pan.” This ingenious device was a ribbed grill that sat on top of the burners on the stove. Now it became possible to “grill” vegetables producing an aesthetically pleasing brownish hue, especially on the zucchini. I was a proponent of the “stir fry.” I had learned this a few years earlier, and in my quest for good nutrition this and the “wok” became indispensable for providing healthy nutrition for this bachelor. The “grill pan” was the holy grail for Melanie, that along with the “juicer.” The juicer appeared along with the need for an immense variety of fresh vegetables. We were all ready buying food from Wild Oats, the local organic grocery store. It was an easy departure to add a few more vegetables for use in the juice machine. We tried various concoctions of mixed vegetables, and she forced me to drink them. Personally I felt no better after drinking the healthy cold porridge, but I did it because she asked me. I was an avid supporter of the barley grass supplement, because it had protein. That and the other seaweed stew that was advertised on television. We alternated cooking, but ultimately she ended up, as the woman should, making what she wanted. I was willing to go along with her choices, because they were healthy. One of Melanie’s specialties was “snacks.” Snacks was a component of romance where with the realization you would be making love later, you got to eat aphrodisiac-type foods that were pleasing to the palate. There were various combinations of cheeses, crackers, jams, fruits, and fruity drinks. Even on occasion a beer would be had to help ease her into the mood. There was one particular cassette tape she liked by a recently emerging jazz pianist that had notable ECM-like influences. Like Keith Jarrett it was romantic in nature and provided the perfect backdrop for our lovemaking later. As one other Masters student at OSU said, “If you can’t eat well, it is not worth being alive.”

In the Year 20.....10

Conan says... "The Jack in the Box fast food chain will go bankrupt when people discover "jack" is a verb, not a noun!"

Kat Von D and the L.A. Ink

Here’s a tip of the hat to Kat Von D and the new TLC show L.A. Ink. How refreshing it is to see a place where skateboarding is part of the mainstream and not against the law. It is also refreshing to see artists. While Miami Ink was a starting point, staging a show in L.A., the mecca of skate and surf activity, brings just the right amount of karma to T.V. California definitely is cooler than the the East Coast. It has been a while since anything Goth, Punk, or Flower as been in vogue. As the gang at L.A. Ink pens away suffocating glam-pop imagery, a tip of the hat also needs to be given to Jeff Ho, Skip Engblom, Craig Stecyk, and Wes Humpston for their pioneering concept “Debris Meets the Sea.” Finally featuring a show centered around hip, creative, and sexy women should be able to make us forget about the actresses in rehab. It is easy to feel Kat’s strife, as she loses her job in Miami and has to hoof her way back to L.A. homeless. Starting from scratch, even an artist with talent gets kicked when they are down. Having no roots could be the most difficult thing for a human being, and we should applaud her for making the trek and making the show a success. Cheers!

Photo of the Leopard

If you want to see a pic of Pedro, go to the links section below the listing of archives. (This is my first successful link!)

Today’s Top Ten List of Shit America Needs Now


1. Fewer Cable Channels (I can remember NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS)

2. More 7/11’s Run by Americans (I’d like an Icee, please)

3. Fewer Strip Malls (Whatever happened to Sears, Pennies, and Belks?)

4. Fewer Coffee Drinks (I prefer black, de-caf, and Sanka)

5. Fewer Drug Commercials (Pharmaceutical companies should be ashamed. Their adds are no better than the cigarette ad’s of the l970’s)

6. A Renewed Reliance Upon Japanese-Made Cars (My Toyota logged 275,000 miles before the body rusted out)

7. The Global Extermination of MIDI-based Commercial Music (If Pop is the only QUANTIZE groove you motherfuckers can come up with, then go back to music school)

8. Drinking Water Free of Harmful Chemicals (You should speak to Don Pellegrino. He is the Mob Boss of Lower Tuscany)

9. Legalization of Prostitution (I’m sick and tired of American’s women trying to make you pay for it on the low down. I’d rather pay up front if I so choose)

10. The Transferring of George Bush’s Presidency to the county of Iraq (How can he turn down a post in the cabinet? He created the situation. Let him handle it)

The Subversion of the American "Infrastructure"

The subversion of our infrastructure began… Well I can remember when Pop was going to lose his job, because his skill set had suddenly become outdated. “You have to learn a NEW set of skills to exist in this job market,” the campaign said. Devry University in Columbus, Ohio began a series of advertisements offering degree programs more intune with this newly emerging market. It seems dad’s skills, the ones he had been using for twenty or so odd years, are now out of date. He had to learn how to multitask. He had to learn to catch Attention Deficit Disorder. He had to learn how to drink lattes. He had to buy a cellular phone. He had to learn how to dress like a Metrosexual. Who devised this model? They must have been gay. “Ladies and gentlemen, the homosexuals have taken over the United States of America.” It is bad enough Women’s Lib came in and literally took the pants off the male gender. We haven’t recovered yet, with too many models in Sitcom America floating around. The guy is stupid, and the woman wears the pants in the family, why? Because she is smarter? How is it that all those lawyers, all those “Ad Men,” and all those politicians suddenly became more stupid and women just came in and took over? Okay, it was appropriate to have a Sexual Revolution. Let’s here it for women becoming sexually liberated. I’m all for that. Sex with multiple partners. Sex out of wedlock. Sex, sex, sex, like the l980’s. Studio 54. Cocaine. Disco Dancing. The de-masculinizing of the male gender was a mistake. God said Adam was the head of the household. This is the way it is in the Bible. God didn’t say, “Eve will wear the pants in the family.” He said woman is supposed to be vulnerable. Woman is supposed to be sweet. Woman is supposed to look pretty. These have always been the traditional characteristics of femininity. If the female race doesn’t carry the torch for these attributes then who does? Oh my God!!! It is the Metrosexuals, the men that want to possess those characteristics. When was the last time you can remember seeing a role model of a man seducing a woman? I will recant that. When is the last time you saw a role model of a man truly in love with a woman, and being successful at convincing her she should love him in return? It is an infrequent image, because society through pop cultures has changed for the worse. Call it gay rights. Call it whatever you want, but the confusion of gender linked to the confusion of occupation has created a black hole in the United States. My head is spinning so fast I can barely keep up with the presidential election. (Oh, maybe that is the point!) The rich Republicans with money out of their ears can afford to stir up the stew for the rest of us. They don’t have to get up everyday and search for truth, stability, health care, or a future. Their way of life has been set since birth. The rest of us are the ones that have to struggle, and THEY are not making it easy for us. Oh, I should be a “greeter” at WalMart. What a noble occupation that is. I should be a fucking bag boy at a grocery store. Maybe I should be an anchor on the national evening news, because evidently somehow everyone seems to have forgotten what a profession is and what defines it. To be a news anchor you need a “voice.” If millions of Americans are supposed to LISTEN to you every night talk about the news, then your speaking voice should be several notches above the average Joe Blow. In fact you should have had to have taken several semesters of Speech class in college. A degree in Broadcast Journalism is a plus. When pundits including Ted Koppel wonder why Katie Couric is failing as a national new anchor, ask yourself, “Does she have a voice.” Rest assured the stupid motherfucker that continues to slur the words “Credi- Repor-“ is not qualified to be a news anchor. You have to know how to speak, and I mean the King’s English. Even everyday English you used to learn in our public schools would suffice. That was before some insane token politician decided something as ludicrous as “Ebonics” was put into place in our public schools. Yes, let’s re-write our SAT exam to include the poor, ghetto, blacks that can’t speak English. Fiddy Cent. Def Moe Dee. Slim Shady. What have we come to as a country? Back to the original point. What is this new set of job requirements we are supposed to possess to obtain a well-paying job in America? Well for one you need to be adept at sending E-Mails on a palm pilot. Owning an iPhone is a plus. A Blue Tooth equipped wireless headset for you cell phone looks good. Serving the web five hours a day helps. Chat rooms, Flicker, My Space, Lidikin, and the rest of the cyber short cuts to sanity are all a plus at becoming actualized in today’s American society. I think I preferred it when I knew what dad was going to do everyday. He got up, had breakfast, put on a suit, drove to the office, worked on manufacturing, sales, advertising, or education-related topics, then came home to a nice dinner prepared my mom. She stayed home taking care of your brothers and sisters. I don’t know what the fuck it is now.

Pedro the Kangaroo

Pedro was black with a white chin. He had flanks that were large, and his posture was like that of a leopard. His back was arched downward in a rocker, and his shoulder blades reciprocated like cylinders in an engine when he walked. Pedro was a good hunter. His first game prize was a small mouse that with a family was living upstairs underneath our bathroom floor. With valor he dropped the mouse at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. I thought to myself, “What better pet could their be than a cat that catches mice like a cartoon?” Melanie insisted that Pedro go outside. Since we adopted him from Cat Welfare a few blocks from our house, Pedro had been an inside cat. He slept with me in my big, green, double bed. He hung around when I was programming music on the computer. He liked to sit on the third tier of my keyboard stand, where I had put a blanket for him. After Pedro did go outside, he changed. The awe of Mother Nature was grandiose and complex. There were baby rabbits in the yard. There were birds, and there were other cats. This became Pedro’s new home, and he wasn’t interested in being an inside cat anymore. In winter with snow on the ground, Pedro slipped out the front door as Melanie came in from work. We didn’t know he had escaped, until he didn’t appear for a few days. It was below freezing outside, and we were worried about him. Melanie was the one who speculated he had slipped out beneath her feet at the front door. On the third day he was missing, I discovered his paw prints in the snow on the front porch. I followed them to the back of the house where they disappeared underneath our large wooden deck. Without a thought Melanie dove underneath that porch and retrieved a dirt covered Pedro. The dirt had acted as insulation against the cold. It took several baths to get him clean again. On the second occasion he disappeared again for several days. Melanie was the one that found him trapped in our neighbor’s garage a few doors down. The third time I found him in a tree next door in Mabel’s backyard. I had to climb up and rescue him. How could this cat be so curious? Letting him outside created emotional angst for me every time he would disappear. This was what I did not enjoy about having a cat. I liked it when he was an indoor pet. When we first adopted him the muscles in his back legs were atrophied from lack of use in the steel cage in which he lived. As he emerged from the cat carrier, he stumbled. He felt at home almost immediately. I taught him how to jump and use his haunches. Spontaneously he would jump into the air like a kangaroo often landing on a nearby wall. It never phased him one bit. He liked the little toy mice I bought at the grocery store and happily would chase them around the living room. I put one on a fishing pole and after this he would jump like a pogo stick our of his own control. One time when I had over 900 pages of music manuscript sitting at the top of the staircase, he jumped onto them sending them cascading down the steps like a log jam. There he sat, dazed and confused, but happy with his achievement. I on the other hand had to re-alphabetize the whole stack. Pedro like to catch birds, and he would drop them off on the back porch as presents. The baby rabbits were a problem, because they lived in a burrow underneath the soft mounds of grass in the backyard. How could they escape his clever eye and scent? I had to pull them out of his mouth. When I left Columbus I took Pedro with me. We had a cat at home, but Rodney did not mind Pedro’s presence. It was Tybalt, the cat next door, that took offense to Pedro. Appropriately like Romeo's foe Tybalt used his claws as his swords. He scratched scratched Pedro several times. The second time he caught him under the chin, and Pedro’s head swelled up like a pumpkin. He was not happy, and roaring like a wounded tiger he stalked our den floor in search of relief from the pain. I had to take him to the Urgent Care Center, where magically overnight they cured his swollen head. Pedro was never happier upon realizing this was not a permanent condition. I guess if you are a stray, as Pedro probably was, an injury like this could last. He was elated that I took him to be healed. Although I kept him locked up in my mother’s sewing room for a week after that, he rolled around on the cool carpet with not a care in the world. I had to make a permanent decision about Pedro, and it didn’t seem like he was going to be able to stay here. Two trips to the doctor in only a few short weeks? What was to come? I loaded him back into my green Nissan pick up and drove him nine hours back up to Columbus, Ohio where Melanie was waiting. Reluctantly she agreed to keep him. On the trip Pedro patiently sat in the passenger seat, but most often enjoyed lying directly on the dashboard where I held him steady with my free hand. Several times he tired to crawl underneath my legs, but I had to coach him control of the vehicle was more important. He was extremely well-behaved on that trip, unlike his subsequent one to Cleveland. After I had left Melanie had to make the decision to find a new home for Pedro. She worked long hours and didn’t feel good about him being stuck inside the house all day alone. Her sister and neice lived n Cleveland, and they agreed to take Pedro. She unhappily relayed to me that he cried the whole way there from the backseat. The trip to Cleveland is not a pleasant one. It is mostly interstate, and there is road construction. Cats instinctively know when they are going to get ditched. The trip was painful for Melanie, but Pedro adjusted to his new home quickly like he did with us. Although he immediately crawled out a second floor window into the woods, he came back later for dinner. He was quite adept living in different places. We had no choice in the decision about Pedro, because I began working cruise ships and Melanie lived alone. I think about Pedro from time to time and wonder if he is doing okay.

The Bullshit That is Television

What kind of superficial, bubble gum, poppy cock nation are we? While you can’t use TV to represent the mainstream anymore, the rest of the world is still programmed to think so. What must they think? We know they don’t like our politics. If television were next in line for evaluation they wouldn’t like it either, because it doesn’t represent anything. How have we become so far removed from the human condition? It seems we need some lessons from Bill Shakespeare. What happened to literature? What happened to drama? What happened to music? The most grievous mistake has been made to think art or good entertainment will come from what is now a tepid, selfish, and shallow existence. Mr. Sandler and company are not really helping much pumping out adolescent farce comedies one after the other. In the not so far distant past children in America were forced to grow up by being exposed to adult content, and I don’t mean pornography. TV, movies, and music dealt with real life adult issues. That was before adults stopped buying media. When the youth of America became the greatest buying force quality in entertainment stopped. The education of our youth through media stopped. It seems the essential need to educate our youth in the public schools also has stopped. The family unit has all but dissolved. What does that leave? The abyss. The void. Rock bottom. A black hole. There will be a Renaissance, because there is so much in existence to be happy about. It’s just that it may not be all about making cheap money. The Beatnik or Hippy movement in the l960’s may not have been off base. Discard your material needs for the greater love. We are probably taking the same amount of prescription drugs as all of Woodstock, but we are doing it in denial and hypocrisy. The Republican right has P.C.ed us into thinking human desire and emotion is taboo. How could that be when a major school of colleges and universities is call The Humanities? Who decided that the human condition is something of which to be ashamed? The purpose of religion and the Bible especially is to document the real history of mankind. When this ridiculous far right faction successfully and covertly has indoctrinated America with bullshit, where are we to turn? Media has made a CONSCIOUS decision as Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel l984 to create Newspeak. While they may not be rewriting the news, they systematically have made a decision to disguise recent history. How have they done this? Time/Life music for one has bought the rights to the majority of radio music for the last seven decades. The drama of the struggle of the American people as represented in our radio music is no longer being reinforced. You have to buy it, and it is expensive. Why have MTV, VH-1 and BET stopped playing music and turned to trite reality programming? Someone has to provide the example of enlightened existence.

Pop

Why can’t I stop talking about the “pop?” I guess it is because it took me over a year to analyze this musical style and put into some kind of historical perspective. “Pop” music is not just a general term to describe easily digestible, commercial, radio-oriented music. Pop music is a rhythmic concept. It is a style of music just like Rock, Reggae, or Afro-Cuban. It comes from the strum of the acoustic guitar. When the first android picked up a guitar and started strumming, Pop music was born. The only problem with the strum of the guitar is you can’t reproduce it on a keyboard instrument. Believe me, I have tried. After playing on a myriad of cruise ships were the band only knows how to play in Pop style, I have had the eternal challenge of trying to salvage my keyboard position while accommodating this musical ignorance. Maybe that is why today you only here Pop music. It is far easier to know only ONE musical style than all of them. I am lucky, because I dedicated two years of my life to the study of musical styles. I mean all styles, not just one. In the second half of the l980’s Pop was not big. Disco had been big in the 70’s. Hair Metal was big. Never was I ever faced with having to try to play a music that was based on a rhythmic concept not playable on the piano. Well, you can do it, but it looks ridiculous. (To play Pop on the piano, you must play alternating 8th notes between your right and left hand) The notes are so close together with the given rebound time of the piano key, you can’t duplicate it without using two separate hands. It looks moronic, and I quit a cruise line because the band insisted on playing in only this style. Why was I there? Can you believe there is an army of so-called professional musicians (cruise ship musicians) that think this is the ONLY way to play. It took me a long time for some reason to understand the Pop concept. It is most easily explained by the placement of the 8th note in relationship to the quarter note. Pop concept replaces the traditional “feel” of quarter notes by displacing the 8th notes above the quarter notes. Let me see if I can find characters to draw what I mean.


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Here are four quarter notes. (They are called quarter notes because there are four of them to a bar) The asterisks are the 8th notes. Weird huh? It is like every downbeat is really an arpeggiated strum, which it is. There is not a downbeat defined by one solid note. You have to roll the chords, and the downbeat is not as important as the little grace note that comes before it. As you can see real time can not be expressed in this way. As a result it GETS RID OFF the personification of time as we know it. There is time happening in good Pop music, but it is not being defined by what the band is playing. Essentially they are all playing a complex game by where they are placing the beat. That is why it took me a long time to figure it out. It is not that complex once you understand it. You can’t feel the time and play normally where you would in classical or jazz music. You have to know the feel ahead of time which determines where IN RELATION to the real time you are going to place your beat. You have to choose cognitively whether you are going to play on the top side or the back side of the beat, because no one is playing in the middle where the time is defined. Often on cruise ships the piano player is the one left to this task. Imagine playing jazz music where your job is to play 1 of each bar. It is insane. As a result it is a JIVE concept, because it is relying upon smoke and mirrors to produce an effect. Why spend your time thinking about this concept, rather then just playing the music the way it would be normally? Music was given to us by God, and all God’s “chillin” got rhythm. Any style of music that disguises this process is not right. To me Pop is akin to the Solfege system of sight-singing. I never committed to learn Solfege, because why would you learn a system that makes it more difficult to learn to sing? If you know your intervals, how they sound, and are able to recognize them in written music you can sight-sing. Trying to remember a syllable name for a pitch is secondary and more difficult. Hence this process also is jive. It is attempting to exclude humans from the process of music making. Modern day America is being represented on a massive scale by this kind of music. As a result no one gives a shit. It doesn’t move you to listen to it. It doesn’t engage you. It instead promotes its own self-serving message, that of being a pop star. Most pop singers are not capable of singing in any other style, because they have not taken the time to learn them. You have to be able to FEEL. Different styles of music are defined by different feelings. Now because of the payola scandal radio has become plagued with only ONE feeling, that of pop. Both radio and television are huge influencers of our people. Because of this notorious short fall Americans are being turned into non-thinking, soulless, autonomotons. (As Craig Ferguson so aptly put it) We as the human race need and deserve to feel different things. Brainless ear candy is a huge disservice to the American people. It’s times to Rock out.

Infected Hemorrhoids

The media circus that is the televised American presidential campaign is a mockery. As Barack Obama told Jon Stewart on the Daily Show on Comedy Central, “We all know it is a game.” When did life in the United States become a game? For millions of Americans without health care, homes, and security for their future how could we let media turn our presidential election into a game? It is so far fetched almost to be unfathomable. It now appropriately is dubbed the “Game Show” campaign, where contestants line up to win the prize of the presidency of the United States. What juvenile, adolescent, irresponsible minds could subvert out political process so greatly? I can barely stomach the process. Life in the United States has never been a game. After the cataclysmic event of September 11, 2001 you would expect a greater appreciation for the sacrifice of human life. Likewise as soldiers continue to die in Iraq President Bush merrily continues to stump for his War on Terror. There was nothing more horrendous than a president visiting his troops at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. With the perfect opportunity to say thank you to the brothers and sisters of hundreds of men and women who have sacrificed their lives, Bush instead chose to promote the welfare of the people of Iraq. It was sheer blasphemy. Staring into the eyes of our Army being sent into war to have their arms and legs shot off, Bush spoke only of the welfare of the Iraqi people. This man’s responsibility is to be the new president of Iraq. He should resign his post as the President of the United States and volunteer to lead the nation of Iraq. That would be a fitting job. Let’s see if he can handle that job with or without Karl Rove. It may be a second generation of slackers who think the presidential election is a useless game, a front for the true power in the United States. Do they know something that we do not? Is one of those few families that controls the world with their money casually laughing at my writing? “You really think young man it is possible to live outside of our little black box?” Think again. That is why we had the mob. Although I have respect for Rudy Giuliani for cleaning up New York and prosecuting the Gambino crime family, I miss their presence. We as a country needed them. At least the Italian mafia was distant enough from the American bullshit they could see through the hypocrisy. We need organized crime as a system of checks and balances for our federal government. Without them you get what we have now. “Keep it real.” The mob was real enough. What could be more real than murder, money laundering, extortion, gambling, and drugs? In this Republican led right wing hospital of a country, every bit of soul has been extracted like carcinogens from a diseased body. Someone decided human beings are no longer allowed to feel. Who decided childlike optimism is the proper attitude of our mainstream? We must be crazy. Religion and the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross is what gives us our soul. Without the realization and appreciation that God sacrificed his only son for us, there is no soul. Many people think a God that would do that is not worthy of representing them. They don’t get it. They don’t understand humility, and the sacrifice the human race must make to earn their keep on God’s planet. There is no free lunch. There is no welfare. There are no short cuts. If we must get taken back to the Dark Ages for the world to understand this concept, then surely it will happen. The process has all ready begun.

Condition This...

I am still stymied on a second to second basis by the pure fiction that is being lobbied as real life by what must be media in America. As hundreds of soldiers continue to die the extra-sensory message we are receiving through America’s airwaves is one of complete hypocrisy. Whether the message is being broadcast from Washington, DC, Afghanistan, or China, it is a false and disingenuous parade of useless propaganda. It seems the fate of the United States has been sealed with a wax of bacteria laden with evil. As new diseases continue to emerge, as our air continues to become tainted with carbon monoxide, and as our fresh water supply dwindles there seems to be no direction. A misguided and self indulgent administration working a plan mined from a foreign planet should be relieved of their power. There is no other solution. If a miracle could happen like a giant hand from heaven casually reaching down and zipping up Washington, DC placing them in a quarantine subject to the same sterility that is today’s everyday life, we might be saved. If that could only happen erasing the “pop” propaganda. Why is it television has become so mentally retarded that their interpretation of American life is that of a Dick and Jane picture book from primary school? Pop music is but nursery rhymes, yet the American people are adults. Why are they pitching this fodder? Is it really the severe underestimation of the intelligence of the American people? Whence came this ridiculous model of Barbie dolls and “Paper moons under a cardboard sky?” Why is it necessary to “Give us the old Razzle Dazzle?” It is because the American government is incapable of giving us the real thing. George Bush doesn’t know what it is. When your entire life has been a spoiled child coming from a family with money, when would you have ever had the opportunity to “become real?” The American people made a grievous mistake electing this man, a false prophet and a future figurehead so out-of-touch with the human condition, our country has stumbled down a jack-legged, red-clayed, gravel pitted country road bordered with barbed wire. We are lost in our own briar patch being burned by the dangerous ultra-violent rays produced by multitudes of modulating electromagnetic waves searing our skin, infecting our minds, and desensitizing our senses. Like lost lambs the American people are sick, over-weight, and running out of time. Unless we begin to understand the grave state of our country, like the Fifth Element, that newly discovered neutron star with all its mass may at God’s hands shatter the earth into oblivion. With disgust God should cleanse his hands of the hypocrisy our American government and media has created. How long can it go on? Deceit, deception, and delusion administered by everyone in power. We have become so brain-washed that no one seems to know the difference. We are being poisoned on a daily basis by medicines hawked by self-empowered drug agencies no more capable than your local corner drug dealer. We are better trusted to buy from them, because at least they are in the same condition as ourselves. The majority of Americans are not financially stable and secure. We are your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the reality of America. Stop pitching us the “pop,” because it nothing. The black hole that could be the destruction of our planet is in Washington, DC.

Girls Gone Wild

While some may find the “Girls Gone Wild” series of subscription video tapes a turn on, this production company like others in TV have pumped out a product with little forethought of its long term effects on America. There may be a visceral titillation over a group of drunk, attractive, collegiate women partying and exposing themselves. Alcohol and sex make for bad experiences. If you want to be sexually active alcohol is not your solution. While it sometimes favorably does lower inhibitions and was used to this effect in the jazz world, irresponsibly having sex today can result in death. It wasn’t until a few decades ago this scenario existed. First there was Herpes. A disease you can never get rid of and one that you can give to others in the act of sex is a menace. Whence did this come? Then there was AIDS. In an evolution of the severity of the seeming penalty for irresponsible sexual activity, HIV appeared. Who knew a disease could emerge that had the power to kill you for having sex in the wrong conditions? You cannot overlook the other ramifications of HIV. Intravenous drug use and homosexuality were major transmitters of the disease. Was this a wake up call from God? While the homosexual community might not like that idea, it is still factual that HIV was spread largely by homosexuals. Sodomy is a word and it still applies. While “Girls Gone Wild” may seem harmless, tempting young women to pose nude while drunk is a bad idea. Sexuality is complex enough. Our youth do not need to be Respondently Conditioned by horny and greedy videographers. It is simple exploitation. While the producers may tout their actresses (if that is what they are) are over the age of eighteen, suggesting women perform this way is problematic. The traditional porn industry has a clear line between amateur and professional production. While certain lower class production companies may be housed in seedy hotel rooms or apartments, the larger more successful companies are mainstream and proud of their product. There are no hidden, subversive, or evil messages in their product. They are providing adult images and video of erotic content purveyed by seasoned performers. There is no exploitation, except that years ago Traci Lords was clever enough to make some scratch doing a few movies underage. Even the courts decided to let her off, because she was smart. Internet porn on the other hand has crossed that boundary in a major way, because the internet mainly is a tool of our youth. Its origins are in academia and the Department of Defense, but since its mainstream accommodation into American society the internet has been a playground for our kids. Adolescent sexual activity is a byproduct. Has this been a good idea? In the case of “Girls Gone Wild” the producers are providing an example of taboo behavior. As an adult you can make the distinction. To vulnerable children with little moral or ethical guidance at home, this can be detrimental. Children may not be able to see the difference between reality and fiction. Certainly getting drunk and flaunting your naked body with female homosexual overtones is not exemplary, and the internet has become littered with similar lesbian content in erotica. Most of it is being portrayed by teenagers. One notable example of this is in the “Random Pic’s” category of one particular teen-oriented pornographic website. The majority of these images are “Girls Gone Wild” type photos of beautiful young women exposing themselves and engaging in lesbian type behavior. Rarely in these photos are there men involved. It is becoming a marked trend that our teenaged girls are being exploited by their sexuality, and that is bad. When the line between reality and fiction becomes blurred or the line between social and recreational gets confused with business, you are in for trouble. It is easy to exploit people when their desire to have fun is at play. Business is business, and it should remain so even in the porn industry. Stirring puberty and adolescence into internet porn is a sensitive issue. Porn of this nature shouldn’t exist, because the age of consent has not been reached. It is wrong for a handful of internet production companies to be schooling our children in the craft of sex. Even if parents are incapable of providing this guidance, it should be left to real life experiences rather than video games. Someone is behind the curtain pulling the strings of the evil Oz, and chances are it is just a horny Cuban man. This should be taught by adults just like the traditional educations of our children are taught by teachers in the public schools. The internet erroneously has slid through this loophole in the law. Too many American teenagers have websites and are performing sex acts publicly for money. While prostitution may be the world’s oldest profession, marketing teenaged sex on the internet is a mistake. Kids should be encouraged to find it in real life like we did! Maybe our quaint bars and clubs will become important to American society again. Everyone has the need to be around their peers, and after graduation from school these opportunities dwindle. Let’s not allow the internet to become the social mechanism of our future in America.

The Curse of Artistry

The curse of being an artist is inescapable. You may be able to ride incognito for a while. You may be able to disguise your own true feelings for a short time. Even in that situation you are asking for trouble, because the suppression of one’s own feelings is a major cause of depression. You have to probe your own soul to find out what is ticking. Sometimes that is hard. Sometimes it is harder. Probably it never is easy, that is if there is anything really there. Even if you understand yourself we live in a plural world, and it doesn’t make it easy for one to become actualized. Just the opposite the human race is filled with greed, jealousy, contempt, and hatred. Why would anyone want to revel in the actualization of another, except that in the process they might receive similar benefits? That is what an artist does. In the attempt of seeking self-actualization, they help others who have experienced similar things. It used to be movies provided that service to the American people. Cinema was a platform held in high esteem which attempted to be artistic. Movies were reserved for a higher function than just providing light diversion. That is what makes them sustain over time. Art transcends and stands the test of time, because it deals with real, live, substantial, and timeless human problems that will always be. Wisdom about recognizing and solving these problems is useful, and that is what makes the connection with the human race. Art really is not about casual physical pleasure. It is not about mindless escapism. Art faces the real issues of existence as human beings, and the more we recognize the difficulties facing us as the human race the more successful we will be at creating a world that will serve us. As a whole we have lost sight of those challenges. Only recently in the news are the real issues of survival becoming known again. Flood. Fire. Famine. Disease. Infrastructure. Health Care. No matter how great the threat of an invisible and menacing sect is, it will never surmount the needs of the human race. We now are failing at balancing the two. Spend our time chasing Al Qaeda or spend our time nurturing and taking care of ourselves? After we have spent all our time and resources capturing or destroying our enemy, what will be left? Let’s not create a black hole of which we will not be able to climb out.

Selma and Animal Chemistry

Selma and I had heat. She was one of the few, if not the only one, that had vibes and hormones raging so violently that we connected at an animal level. We would practice together, but she was always shy about playing trombone in front of me. I’m not sure why that was. Back then she was a flailing graduate student unhappy with her choice of Ohio State. She wanted to play, not study. I liked the way she looked and her body. To begin with we had chemistry, and both of us gave romance a try. The funny thing was, at that particular time she just wanted it. I was still in my semi-despondent, emotionally needy period, so I was looking for a commitment. This as many know is a grievous mistake. The “C” word! When I was a freshman in high school I had the affections of a beautiful young flutist that became interested in me at All State Band auditions. She went to Alexander Graham Junior High, so we were at different schools. For some uncanny reason she took a hankering to me. She would come over to a mutual friends house and ask me to meet her there, which I did. We would lazily stroll up and down the street holding hands, all the while she was wearing the pants. I didn’t know what was going on, but I went along with it. I did finally ask her to go steady, but she replied, “How would we see each other?” Our next year in school settled that, because we both ended up in my father’s band at Terry Sanford High School. Rachel continued to write me notes, until I made that grievous mistake. Who knew those three little words would instantly kill a woman’s interest? I had no idea, so I wrote those words, “I Love You” in really small letters on the bottom of a note I sent to her. She completely freaked out and that was that. No more interest. It was a good thing, because shortly thereafter I met and hooked up with my first true love. That is a story in itself, and I am saving it for later. This story was similar to Selma, because she didn’t want love obviously. I guess at that age girls are afraid of that word. I have always had love in my life with women, and it never was a deterrent of any kind. In the primordial stages of pre-sex I learned to stay away from those three words. Women want sex, not love, or at least to qualify that in a humorous way they want to see if the sex is good first. It is a hypocrisy, but it is better to call a spade a spade. They will tell you they want you to love them first, but it’s not true. Scamps! The common definition is, “Men love women because they have sex with us. Women love men for agreeing to give them the romance they desire.” Simple. No matter how involved you think you may get, don’t stop asking for sex. Just be nice about it. It flatters women to know they are desirable in a sexual manner. Selma was new to the dating world and she wanted to learn. How could I have been so emotionally needy to let a comment like, “I want to learn how to give a blowjob” slip by? Today I would jump at that opportunity. Back then I wanted to be loved. She wanted me to be sexually aggressive, and I wanted love back from her which she was unable to give. Of course, because it was too early to expect that. After having been through so many long term relationships, I just wanted to jump to the middle having forgotten about the courtship period. Our animal chemistry was strong, so strong in fact that we had to postpone practice sessions to walk back to my apartment to be alone. Here we kissed, and I fumbled the ball in a major way. She wanted to have sex, and I was being polite. To this day I regret having passed up that chance. “Sometimes Joel you just have to jump their bones!"

What Exactly is a ManEater?... a Purple People Eater?

Do you know what a "Maneater" is? I beg to differ with the illustrious Hall and Oates, but a "Maneater".... Well, if you don't know by now. "If you don't know me by now...," as the song goes. A "Maneater" is not a woman that likes to destroy men. It's a woman that likes to eat men.

Confucius Say...

Today's Top Ten List of Desirable Hollywood Actresses

1. Rebecca Pidgeon

2. Leelee Sobieski

3. Scarlett Johanson

4. Charilze Theron

5. Patricia Clarkson

6. Adrian Barbeau

7. Andie McDowell

8. Tahnee Welch

9. Jane Seymour

10. Jeanne Tripplehorn

Ellen Rabbit

Throughout my senior year of college at UNC-Chapel Hill, I dated the first flute player in the orchestra. I have written about her before but never in the context of a “ménage a trios.” We never really had a threesome, but as it ends up I was working three discrete women at the same time. One wanted me, but I didn’t want her because she also was a blond haired flutist. What do you need with two of these? The first one all ready was great in bed, so why risk going down the evolutionary ladder? The second was a trombone player we affectionately called the “L.D.” or “Li’l Darlin’” after Count Basie’s tune. (In jazz band all we played were Count Basie arrangements. Glory was the day we played a Woody Herman tune for the first time!) L.D. was short, plump, cute, and had a “Hamill.” I hit on her because she was available. How it transpired that both women were on the hook at the same time I don’t recall, and I put a stop to it as soon as Senior complained about Junior. I did the best acting job of my career when Lydia confronted me about the L.D. I completely turned the tables around and made her feel guilty for implying I could be such a low life pig. (although it was partially true) The oddest but funniest thing happened, because I used to park my ’69 Volkswagon bug in front of Lydia’s campus house. (the one with four women living in it) I conveniently left it there while I went to class the next day. (which was a no no in terms of city parking, but I didn’t get a ticket) Later in the evening the L.D. and I had chips and dip and a cold beer at our local watering hole. We were cautiously flirtatious. Evidently one of the brood of Lydia’s housemates was at the same place and saw us. She made it home first and alerted the troops. When I got there I received a peculiar reception, albeit one of deserved respect for being able to work two fillies at the same time. (It was a little exciting to them) Upon her complaint, I terminated the somewhat adolescent romp with the L.D. We went our separate ways over Christmas break, and I was met with disapproval upon arriving back at college the next semester. I hadn’t thought twice about calling her in New York. (I’m not sure why) I guess it was because I had my cake and was eating it too. As a sidebar I must include this little tale. One of the few nights the L.D. stayed over night at my apartment, we slept together in my small single bed. (I think it was my dad’s old army cot) I had checked the sliding glass door before we left to go out that night, but before we returned my roommate had unlocked and opened the door. He forgot to lock it. At three in the morning the L.D. began poking me in the ribs with her elbow. As I awoke she said to me, “Paul, there’s someone in the room with us.” I looked down and sure enough there was a figure on all fours crawling toward us on the bed. It abruptly rose and ran out the door leaving a trail of rainwater on the carpet. They had gone through L.D.’s purse but had taken nothing. One pair of stereo headphones was missing from my stereo in the living room. The sliding glass door was ajar and it was raining outside. The funny thing was I had a little Medieval club hanging on my desk next to the bed that had nails sticking out of it. What gruesome torture could have ensued. We never figured out who could and would have the audacity to perform this stunt, except for Ellen Rabbitt. Ellen was the “other” blond haired flute player that had been chasing me for much of our last semester. She hinted later it could have been her on all fours on my bedroom floor unhappy with L.D.’s presence in my bed. After Lydia and I graduated, I drove her back to Rochester in a rental car and spent some time at her mother and stepfather’s home. Unlike Geraldine, who would have nothing to do with public displays of affection, Lydia would perform her ritual nightly fellatio on me under the roof of her own parents. It didn’t seem to phase her one bit, but it did me. She got a little peeved at me because I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy it. As soon as I made it back to Chapel Hill, Ellen was waiting. School was over and the little college town of Chapel Hill was quaintly abandoned. These were the times you cherished in life. Robert Redford candidly says in the movie Havana, “Life is what happens in between conversation.” That is exactly what happened with Ellen and me. I wasn’t really ready to rebound out of something that was not yet over, but availability and proximity make a difference. The sexual overtones of an isolated college town, no school in session, with warm, peaceful, joyous nights was enough foreplay for the both of us. We went out for ice cream and ended up back in bed in the same bedroom. Who could say if she had been the one on the floor? As was appropriate back in l985, I asked her if she was safe. “Are you safe,” I asked sounding like the ex-Nazi in the movie Marathon Man. It had more do to with STD’s than diamonds. She said yes, but stopped me from performing cunnilingus. I have had two women do that and ask me what I was doing. Isn’t it obvious when you go down between their legs? Evidently that is not for all women. I didn’t know at the time the reason she had stopped me. (as a bit of foreshadowing, they seem to think disease is safer for your dick than your mouth!) That wasn’t the case with Ellen, but with one waitress later. We had a suitably good time and resumed the next morning. She couldn’t stop asking me what I was thinking. How could I say to her I loved her when we didn’t even really know each other, not to mention she had a boyfriend? This was my first hint that Ellen was a few cards shy of a full deck. I left for the summer to return to Fayetteville. A month or so later as I was riding my Honda XL-200r behind my parent’s home, my dad approached me on the playground. He yelled I had a phone call. Why in the devil had he walked all the way up there and chased me down to tell me this? Why not just take a message? I responded and took her call, Ellen’s call. She informed me she was pregnant with my baby. I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she was going to tell her boyfriend it was his and he was going to pay for it. She said she simply wanted to see me again. What!? We made the mistake of getting her pregnant, and she wants to see me again? The least I could do was do what she asked, although I thought it was crazy. I drove up to Cary to see her at her apartment. She was horny, but told me she was on her period and couldn’t do much. In complete shock and dismay I fled in my Beetle never to see her ever again, the only one ever to carry my child to this day.

Aretha and Nigel

I only remember having sex with Aretha three times. She was a recipient of the Presidential Fellowship at Ohio State, she spoke fluent German (so she said), and she was almost a D.M.A. candidate. I was a newly emergent doctoral student from the American South. Aretha recently had been dating our advisor, and he was not seeing his patients. (I mean students) That first quarter Ted put Alice out on the street. Seems the “Party Was Over” for some reason. I remember she said to me, “He just put me out on the street just like a dog.” Out with the old and in with the new, and the new was a blond graduate student from Belgrade, Yogoslavia. Aretha was pissed, but she got over it. I think it was more the loss of prestige of dating your professor than lack of sex that was more the issue. Ted had a Nazi blond comb-over. You couldn’t really tell, because his youthful energy and vitality made him appear more appealing. Aretha had said, “I would really look at him and ask myself why I was with such an unattractive older man.” There are a multitude of reasons why women prefer older men, but we won’t get into that. Aretha became fair game, but she was not a pushover. I was losing my eyesight while I knew her, so she was dismayed with my demeanor. I was no longer confident, cocky, and optimistic about life and music, because I was dealing with an unforeseen malady that was causing me to lose my eyesight. I didn’t know at the time this was the only thing causing unrest between us. All women are high maintenance, and Aretha was no different. There was no room for self-pity or even thoughtful reflection on one’s situation. It was “Seek and Conquer!” You better make up your mind 100% what you want and go after it. Sometimes that is what it takes to get a woman. Cruise ship women are similar, and the familiar joke about Italian officers is this. You must tell them over and over you want them. Then they decide when you’ve had enough and submit to having sex with you. It’s their game. The ball is in their court, and that is why I never have chased women on cruise ships. How can a man 44 years old with a successful past record of lengthy monogamous relationships submit to being manipulated by uneducated Eastern European women? The answer is only if your libido allows you. Aretha came before I made that decision, so I was still at the beckon call of intimacy. EEEuuuuoooowwww! Intimacy. Yuck! What’s that!? Oh, the bearing of your soul, all of your weaknesses, your desires, and your innermost secrets. Fuck that. In America the nice guy loses. You have to grow a tough skin to make it in America. I’ll never forget having played a few gigs at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Rob Ricin, the singer/guitarist that had the house lounge gig told me a D.J. was trying to work his way in. Damn! Just like the dreaded karaoke, Rob had to stand his ground and try to keep what was the last of only a few good steady paying music jobs. When the D.J. left his speakers in the back closet of the lounge, Rob unmercifully poked holes in his “woofers” with a pencil. “Sorry,” he said. All is fair in love and music. I didn’t have a tough skin back then, and I still wanted intimacy after reeling from my break up with Geraldine. I hadn’t made the necessary changes in my emotional and sexual psyche to heal myself from the four or so odd years of clinical depression that manifested themselves upon me with Geraldine’s help. Although it became a nasty break up, and I partly was to blame, she made the conscious decision to hurt me. I had not intended to hurt her. It just turned out that way. She on the other hand, like satan incarnate became a “Maneater.” She tempted me, then she consumed me like a black widow spider eating her mate after he had serviced her. Then she formulated some theory that I had been given everything on a silver platter. My good grades, my acquisition of a Graduate Teaching Associatship, and my diligent study in the field of music were no reasons I deserved success. Her new fiancé on the other hand, “Hit the streets everyday looking for work.” Good luck, Johnny. Have fun driving your shoes and pouring beer all over yourself while the band cooked red beans and rice at their Charleston gigs. It took me along time to figure out why she went with him, and I finally gave up. Who cared? Time to move on. I didn’t have bad feelings about Geraldine, except that I have to. She tried and succeeded in hurting me. I guess it was repayment for what I had done to her. Little did she realize it and a few other factors would contribute to four years of clinical depression and a nervous break-down. I didn’t know it was happening at the time, but I knew the world just ended after thirteen or so years of happiness and success. I had to re-invent myself and my life. Aretha unfortunately was the first woman I had after Geraldine, and it took a few years. Three years exactly without sex. Ouch. (There was one one night stand with a fat, African-American groupie, but that didn’t count) I was still vulnerable, artistic, and introverted as a result of this harmful process that occurred. I was living in a cerebral world of doctoral studies, and although I retained my ability to play jazz on the trumpet in somewhat of a happy fashion, inside I was wanting. I was unfulfilled, as my now next-door-neighbor uttered to me one night after a show we had done together. (She was married, so how was I to interpret that remark?) I should have fucked her, but my mind has always been in control of the little head. “Sometimes Joel you just have to say, ‘What the fuck.’” Although our relationship developed into something more substantial, Aretha and I never were meant for each another. She did not fulfill my sexual desires. In this relationship Aretha wore the pants. She decided when we had sex, and it wasn’t often enough. Of all the times we did fool around, I was never allowed to orgasm. This became like a Seinfeld episode where you were being tested to remain “Master of Your Own Domain.” After we drifted apart Aretha called me a few years later and informed me she was having a procedure performed at the Mayo Clinic where they were going to burn ten dimes worth of “material” off her cervix. She recommended I get tested. I informed her I had been clean for a while before coming to OSU, and her new found beau Nigel must be responsible for her ailment. That was the last time I ever talked to Aretha, but she still does send me a Christmas card every December.

Looks Like a Fish, Smells LIke a Fish, Must be a Fish!

I much prefer the archaic and antiquate “sniffer test” to The DMV’s OBDll emissions test. Ever since I bought my ’97 Nissan Pick Up, the “Check Engine Soon” light has been illuminated. This daunting yellow iris in the eye of my control panel will never let me forget “Big Brother” has his hands in my pocket. Each year when my state inspection expires, the hoop la begins. First the state said you must spend a mandatory $500.00 to the dealership or private mechanic to try to get the light to go out. Why do automobile dealers and repair shops deserve a “Farm Subsidy?” Is it because they are not growing enough cars? Has there been a drought this year? Are larger foreign car makers putting them of business? $500.00 is not chump change, and many an American can not afford the five C note price tag to have their vehicle pass the OBDll test. I’m sure that is the reason why the previous owner sold this truck. It is an “Inconvenient Truth” that you will have to shell out your hard-earned dough for nada. The dealership is the only place capable of interpreting the codes spit out by the car’s onboard computer. Even with the latest upgrade in diagnostic software, they often cannot figure out how to get the light to go out. Days pass and hours are spent, and yet that pesky light stays on. Over time the state dropped the amount to $250.00, but the mechanics at the dealership want nothing to do with “paying off” Uncle Sam. That is a mark on their reputation as a qualified, dealer-certified, Nissan mechanic. Hence day three passes and no success. I would opt to ride my bicycle, but the powers at be in Fayetteville, North Carolina consider that as a crime. Hellfire and Brimstone would ensue, if I happen to traverse the asphalt of Westwood Shopping Center’s or Eutaw’s black parking lots. I spent the majority of my recreational time as a kid there learning how to skateboard. The 7/11 on the corner was an oasis for neighborhood kids in the heat of the summer. How did I become a criminal thirty years later?

Why Must We Move to Dubai for Our Slice of American Apple Pie?

An Out for Generation Jihad

What it is that creates a “Man Eater?” We should ask Darryl Hall and John Oats, since the music of the l980’s was almost exclusively romance oriented. That seems like a long time ago, and that particular social norm seems long extinct. During the l990's the "Grunge" movement in American music empowered itself and scoffed at what they considered a politically active, self-expressive, American-dream oriented generation. "Baby Boomers" are the generation of Americans born after World War ll roughly between l946 and l964. At the end of World War ll the United States had an unprecedented surge in economic growth. We became the mass producer of goods for export to war torn countries to rebuild their shattered infrastructures. (Sound familiar, Haliburton?) At that time the U.S. probably wasn’t politically savvy or demonic enough to mastermind a world war to boost the economy. Although the war did arise shortly after the Great Depression of the l930’s, there are few conspiracy theories linked to World War ll. The result of dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a bubble of economic growth that did not wane until l968. Likewise the G.I. Bill allowed an unprecedented number of Americans to attend college and earn a degree probably for the first time in their family history. This created higher incomes and thus the possibility of rearing more children. The Baby Boomer generation was the first generation to be highly influenced by television. For the first time in the nation’s history children from disparate parts of the country were watching the same television programs. In essence this created a “mainstream,” and shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” and “Father Knows Best” idolized the family unit a central in American cultural life. The Boomer generation best represented the “American Dream” and later evolved into “The Preppy” generation of the l980’s and the “Soccer Mom” generation of the l990’s. Government and academia failed to draw a line of demarcation for the end of the prospect of the American Dream. The Grunge movement in American cultural history adopted that responsibility and in one fell swoop created their own “Generation X.” Passionately (and probably with the help of drugs like the Jazz Movement) they created a bubble of existence in the Pacific Midwest that represented their own perspective of American life. It had nothing to do with the post World War ll optimism of the Baby Boomer generation. Instead bands like Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, and Hole vented their anger and frustration at not having the same seeming opportunities as their Boomer parents. Hip/Hop on the East and West Coasts in urban America similarly painted their grim violent picture of American life. Ironically after the extreme violent nature of 9/11, a newly emerging and extreme “Generation Jihad” became represented by a “bubble gum and sugar-coated pop” movement in American music. How could this event and a series of extreme television shows based on stark reality be represented in the “mainstream” by glamorous, adolescent, happy music? This could be considered the first real fracturing of the mainstream in America, because music for the first time failed to represent what was happening in real life America. While the happy optimism of Glenn Miller’s swing-oriented Big Band music may not have epitomized Normandy, it represented a patriotic and purely American sentiment that helped America through the war. “Pop” possesses none of these qualities offering only a shallow, sheltered, and adolescent escapism. Because of the current state of the federal government, it is time Generation Jihad be overthrown by mainstream America and this evil, foreign, empirical power be extradited and replaced with a more worthy and honest cultural American picture. Domestically like the end of World War ll shouldn't our current generation be reaping rewards from the grievous sacrifice of 9/11 and the war in Iraq? Why should Dubai, China, and India be reaping the manufacturing rewards of our retooled "Arsenal of Democracy" in the name of Haliburton? America deserves better. Our life has become defined by President Bush's ill fated "War on Terror." The American people are waiting for the Renaissance resting in the hands of the new President, and "Glam Pop" is not it.

The Passive Aggressive Chance Armstrong

My roommate on the Beagle Chincess was Chance Armstrong. Chance was a passive aggressive. That meant as a quiet guy he was working a huge premeditated self-serving plan all the time. The only catch was you didn’t know what it was. He didn’t talk much, and when he did he uttered self-proclaiming phrases that insinuated he all ready knew what you were going to say. As time passed I found out he was working on musical arrangements for the band. Lance had gland problems. That so he thought enabled him to demand certain things in the cabin. One was it was almost always quiet except for when Chance wanted it otherwise. “You wanna listen to some Dean?” he would ask. Dean Martin he meant, and there we would sit checking out the precursor to Elvis. Dean really was the model for Elvis, and it surprised me whenever I heard it for the first time. My choice of music would have been Miles Davis or something of that vintage. Dean is great, but his choice automatically sealed our fate as different kinds of musicians. Chance was a pure A-hole when it came to sleep. You couldn’t utter so much as a sigh without him having to say something to you in the middle of the night. Forget watching a movie on your miniature DVD player or listening to some music through you headphones. The bunks on Chincess were just that, chincy. There was no sound isolation from top bunk to bottom bunk. I resorted to stealing a piece of masonite from the carpentry shop, cutting it to fit, and inserting it in between the beds stuffed with towels. That helped isolate Mommy Dearest from my personal space. Chance’s largest flaw was also that of Franz Mueller. You see they were our two saxophonists. Both of them, under the leadership of Franz, tended to play in a rhythmic concept that doesn’t exist in the professional music world. I have never heard it ever until I began playing cruise ships. They, instead of playing swing 8th notes in jazz-oriented music, would play swing 16th notes in Ricky-Tick style. The rhythmic resolution was so tight as a piano player with a reciprocating key, I could not match their timing. Their notes were way too close together, and therefore didn’t define time as we know it. The cruise director did not like Franz’s playing, but that didn’t stop her from badgering me off the ship. I quit with only two weeks to go in my contract. That meant I couldn’t work on the Beagle Chiness for at least a year. As it turns out I have had no desire to ever work for their company again. The work load was unrealistic. Most seven day cruises have two production shows, an Intro Show, a Farewell Show, a Fly-On Entertainer, a Juggler and a few comedians. Chincess had four production shows, and the cruise director thought it funny that you couldn’t just sight-read the poorly written music. As was the case on my first cruise line, I ended up having to re-copy a majority of the charts. The copy work was that bad. I knew all four shows on the Beagle as well as having to play the singer’s shows on the last night of the cruise. It was labor intensive with a noon rehearsal almost everyday. Franz also manipulated the “In Port Manning” schedule so he could get off the ship in San Diego, drive his new VW, and collect the dough from his rolling coffee shack. Who would ever get married so your girlfriend could sail for free? That is a pretty high cost of a cruise. I think I would just pay the dough. Things hit a head when I had had enough of Chance. He had pushed me just a little too hard. One night when I was listening to a recording of our show with headphones, I accidentally said something outloud to myself as I was lying in the bunk. He was supersensitive, and interpreted my outburst as a personal attack on his character. (In fact it was about him, but you have to be aware of these things to play in a band and make it work) He curtly asked me if I had something to say to him. It was at least two in the morning. I was a little drunk, but I had no desire to say anything to him. I just wanted to finish listening to the recording. He provoked me again. “Do you want to say something to me?” I called him a fuck mother-fucker,, threatened to kick his ass, and went outside where he followed me. He asked me again, upon which Franz appeared at his door. A little friendly brawl in the wee hours of the morning on a cruise ship is not always a bad idea. In the end Chance and Franz’s poor playing, the cruise director’s antagonism, and the petty childish rhythm section that never learned the shows caused me to quit. Sometimes you just have to draw the line at Chance.

Today’s Top Three List of Staid, Self-Serving, Nazi, Merchant Groups (who with the City Counsel) Have Outlawed Bicycle Riding, Rollerblading, Skateboarding, and Scooter Riding To and From Their Businesses in Fayetteville, North Carolina.


1. Historic Downtown Fayetteville and 300 Block Investors (Menno Pennink, Tommy Bradford, Ralph Hugg, Mark Stout)

2. Stout Properties/Eutaw Shopping Center

3. Tri-Player Investments, L.L.C./Westwood Shopping Center

P.S. The County of Cumberland states it is illegal to do any of the above on their public property. Better stay out of their schools and parks, lest you be cited for trespassing.

Since when did it become a crime to ride your bike to the 7/11 to buy an ICEE in the smoldering summer heat? Glory Days are over… Nazi's. The city of Fayetteville is not a "gated community" or Highland Country Club, even if you would like it to be.

Railroad Nostalgia

AC traction is invisible as is a majority of America’s rail network. While our government relies upon the “Strategic Rail Corridor Network” for our nation’s defense, and the “Iron Horse” forged the brazen path from the Atlantic to the Pacific for pioneering settlers in a newly burgeoning America, AC Traction will hold no such place in the hearts of a nostalgic America. Conversely over time it will be discovered this technological “advancement” has been a plague to the world reaping benefits for rail companies only. It always has been understood the rail industry has been “in the pocket” of the federal government, or is it the other way around? With this current administration it is difficult to know. Is Haliburton “in the pocket” of the federal government, or is it the other way around? It is understandable that in times of crisis our national defense must rely upon rail. Looking at the choice of logistics available in the United States, a well-hidden and substantial means of transportation of heavy artillery is a plus. Otherwise the government would have to employ thousands of individual, self-employed, sleep-deprived, No-Doz addicted, interstate-employed “Rebels without a Cause.” We wouldn’t want our military’s finest and most technologically advanced weapons put in the hands of truck drivers like the rest of the nation’s products. Rail has always competed with trucking, but it wasn’t until CSX-T became determined to become a Fortune 500 company that AC traction became a problem on the East Coast of the United States. Their competitor Norfolk/Southern decided for personal reasons not to buy AC traction locomotives. They still use an army of C40-9W’s, the most powerful DC freight locomotive in existence. You will know if one of these is sitting in your back yard, just like you will know if a pair of AC-6000’s is anywhere near. Ft. Bragg, North Carolina employs a pair of these, and upon seeing a picture of them you can understand why they keep them hidden in a bunker. My question has always been, “Why use such powerful freight locomotives for switching applications?” Secondly, “Why did Amtrak, a small bankrupt passenger railroad with trains the average length of three to four coaches, begin using AC traction?” If one has ever embarked a cruise ship in San Diego, California at their downtown port, you will see their choice of motive power. They us the EMD F59 PHI. Unlike its East Coast counterpart the F40PH, the F59 has a separate diesel engine/generator combination at the rear of the locomotive to produce HED or “head end power” for the passengers of the train. The F40 has none, so even when it is standing still at the station the diesel prime mover has to run at a high RPM level (900 revolutions per minute) to provide electrical power for the rest of the train. Appropriately these locomotives were nicknamed “The Screamer.” At various times in the day when one of these Amtrak locomotives is sitting at the station in downtown Fayetteville, you will know it by the vibration created by that diesel engine. Likewise you know when a similarly equipped AC Traction freight locomotive is near. Whether the thrysistor/IGBT is producing the vibrating low frequency waves, or if the infrasound wave produced by the diesel prime mover is being modulated by the frequency of the inverter the sensation one feels on both the body and in the mind is negative. Studies have been done that documented the results of invading radio waves on brain activity. The brain, after a period of trying to resist, eventually “locks onto” the frequency bombarding it. That means any of this activity effects the brain and the emotions with the capacity to change your mood and thought process. People have been complaining about panic, anxiety, attention deficiency, depression, irritability, fatigue, and feelings of violence ever since the implementation of AC Traction in the mainstream of American infrastructure. Neither the EPA, the FDA, nor the Federal Office of Noise Abatement have taken one look at its effect to the American population. Maybe we wouldn’t need so many drugs if we brought back soda fountains, drive in theaters, and sock hops and got rid of AC Traction. Only history will tell.

Tesla and the Mine Collapse

On an episode of Orange County Choppers which aired a year ago, a phenomenon occurred that had the shop in disarray. An expensive and unfinished custom chopper that was designed and being built by the Teutul Clan inexplicably fell off the rack. The Paul’s were mystified, confused, and concerned. The bike, representing their livelihood, was in jeopardy at the whim of some unseen and misunderstood force. How could such a thing (Murphy’s Law) enter their shop and like an aeronautic gremlin wreak havoc on their highly coveted creation? What force had the characteristics necessary to make a bike weighing hundreds of pounds move and then fall off of its perch? What force could make a bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota? What force could cause the earth to move creating a cave in in a mine in Huntington, Utah? While other forces in nature could be responsible as well as the neglected necessary maintenance by man, it is more plausible the combination of a natural force irresponsibly misunderstood by man and his failure to manage it could have caused these things. The government has always known magnetic fields are not healthy for human beings. An electro-magnetic wave is a duality, a combination of an electrical charge and a magnetic field being propagated in the air. To look at a diagram of one of these waves should raise doubts, because like the windings in an AC induction motor, they just look demonic. It has taken man a long time to harness the power of the Tesla-derived AC induction motor. It was not until the early l990’s that General Electric, in cooperation with Siemens, began to mass produce low frequency drives for use in rail, marine, and industrial applications. The first example of their mainstream use could be represented by the “Taos Hum.” General Electric, undercontract by Molycorp, Inc., designed and built an underground conveyor system to haul molybdenum ore from the mine to the refinery. This replaced an existing DC rail system with a slow moving conveyor belt powered by these new AC drives. Unlike traditional DC motors with mechanical “brushes” whose speed is controlled by amperage, AC drives emply a rotating electro-magnetic field to turn the rotor with no contact between the stator and the rotor. The stator requires a complex series of “windings” to produce that magnetic field. The speed of these motors has always been the problem. It was not until the advent of the (P)ersonal (C)omputer a suitable method was found. A software program processes the electricity after it is rectified into DC. Then it is “inverted” back to AC with a new and complex circuit called an IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) or Thrysistor. The frequency of the processed AC current becomes the speed of the motor. In essence when the drives are turning slow, which is their main use and strong point, the AC power feeding them is the same frequency. Because there is a tremendous amount of residual electricity being “resisted” in the circuits, it creates a hum. I am not sure if these rotating electro-magnetic fields could be the corresponding source of low frequency electro-magnetic waves, or only if a radio transmitter oscillator can produce these. It would be worth researching. What is known is “The Hum” is being heard because its source is underground. Sound not only travels more quickly through solids than air, it also is a manifestation of radio waves. Otoacoustic is a term used to describe sound produced in the ear by a means other than external sound. It is most commonly thought of as radio-produced. There have been documented instances where people have been able to “hear” radio waves by the resulting otoacoustic sounds they produce in the human ear. Tinnitus may be the best examples of this. Phosphenes similarly are visual effects “seen” by people from increased electrical activity in the retina of the eye. It stands to reason radio waves at any given frequency are not going to produce positive effects in the human being. It is all ready common knowledge certain frequencies of electromagnetic waves are dangerous to humans. Ultra-Violet, Infra-Red, X-Rays, and Gamma radiation are examples of these. How could low frequency electro-magnetic radiation be any different? If infrasonic frequencies of sound are the most destructive could it not be extrapolated these parallel frequencies of electricity could produce similar effects? Magnetic waves pulsate. The brain uses electrical waves for thought and emotion. The human heart beats. Any extraneous waves effecting these systems could be detrimental to human functions. How could electro-magnetic energy effect a bridge and the earth like the human body? The universe is made up of space filled with rapidly oscillating atoms. If they are disrupted by another force that is also oscillating, then their all ready existing documented characteristics could be weakened. Just like the appearance of visible light could be being effected by modulation of its frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, the properties of elements in the periodic table could be being adversely effected by electro-magnetic waves. Humans crave “stability.” Bombarding our elements, our bodies, and therefore our minds with extraneous electrical energy is unmerited. The powers of the mind (creativity) can not be unleashed when “the power” is “empowered” by artificial, irresponsible, man-made means.

Today's Top Ten Most Desirable Hollywood Divorcees

1. Christina Applegate

2. Kim Basinger

3. Halle Berry

4. Lisa Hartman (just kidding)

5. Jennifer Connelly (just kidding)

6. Meredith Baxter

7. Linda Hamilton

8. Christy McNichol

9. Gretchen Mol (?)

10. Jennie Garth

Musical Shakespearean Tragedy

The “Eutaw Gang” in junior high school consisted of Joey, Peanut, Forrest, Pat, Tye, and me. Each of us down to earth guys had a motorcycle. My abused l971 CT-70H trail bike had seen better days. The front forks had been replaced, so the traditional folding handle bars that allow the machine to be tossed in a trunk were gone. The wiring didn’t work either. It did start and run most of the time. After mentoring sessions where my parents had to be present for the riding session, I finally graduated to freedom riding! They were strict that I obey the local laws, while the rest of our gang freely rode in the streets. You had to be aggressive, elusive, and quick to avoid getting caaught by a cop. I did not have these skills, and I did not have the majority of other skills necessary to be cool. I began to learn. Although I was “Junior” in this particular gang, I had been “gang leader” in our neighborhood before junior high school. Steve and Dwayne were in my gang, but they were younger than me making me “Senior.” I was “Paul Sr.” back then, but now I am “Paul lll”. My father, “Paul Jr.” is “Paul Sr.” My grandfather, the real “Paul Sr.” is dead, thank God! Don’t get me wrong. I miss him, but enough is enough. Although my father no longer works in music his reputation proceeds him. That has made it difficult for me to make my mark in the field of music. He still is clinging to the last remnants of his past musical existence, and that means there will be no “passing of the torch” until he has kicked the bucket. How I ended up back in my hometown being perceived as his child is beyond me. How can social strata in a particular town be so staid? I didn’t ask to be thought of as a child and therefore treated as such. It is just your existence as a child also was a major part of their existence as adults. You must not be able to ask aging people to learn how to relate to you as a grown adult. Until you staunchly proclaim yourself an adult and conquer their previous roles with force, they never will concede. This is the definition of “Old Money,” of which I hate so fervently. Welcome to the American South. Because it is far easier to fit in and, “Do as the Romans do,” it is unlikely to happen. “Until death do us part,” is more applicable. I lament and sob at my inability to become actualized as an adult in the eyes of my parents. How can you when the kingdom is so well guarded by their posts as guards? They consider me a failure, yet they keep me at bay by not allowing me to become who I am by exposing my love of music. My love of music does not coincide with my fathers, and that has always been his secret weapon in life. This is not how it was and should be in their eyes. Children are supposed to love their parents above everything, even if that means they become a failure in life. Your effort in music was always a gift for them, and this is what they expect it to be now. There is no room for personal indulgence. That is not allowed, because your areas of probable happiness are in direct opposition to theirs. They have no real happiness, but their eyes are upon you for using your life to provide that happiness by living their past lives through you. What a tragedy it is that your nurturing parents will never be able to understand, appreciate, and enjoy who you are through your own music. The ego is so big, that it won’t allow any other purveyors of the craft of music. What a tragedy a man thinks his son is the enemy, because it is a fight to the death to retain your own happiness.

William Shakespeare.

(not really)