Video Integrity

Upon hearing some extremely contentious jazz music instruction, more the necessity of making money as an extinct "jazz artist," as a past college lecturer in the field of jazz studies I must call the bluff. Jazz music instruction while still unique today, because the music is only about a century old, has principles.  Only millennials would say, "Oh jazz is anything."  This merely is a loophole which allows the complex and in depth field of jazz music to disintegrate and cower to the auspices of a recently chosen pop music championed by novices.  Forget intensive music listening.  Forget music history.  Forget intellectual challenging.  Musical talent is for anyone!  It is a grace given by God.  This is why so many winners of both state lotteries and television talent shows become alcoholics, derelicts, or squander their rewards.  Singing a few songs on television in no way, shape, or form can possible prepare a musician to be a professional.  It does not matter, because there are few jobs for professional musicians left.  The majority of them are in orchestras and churches and have nothing to do with jazz or popular music.  Television talent shows like YouTube videos are welcome shortcuts, immediate gratifications, but with dire educational circumstances.  Allowing users to post artistic material, or rather material of the arts, briefly was rewarding.  Often consumers can offer integral content by nature of being cherished.  On the contrary try looking for an instrument review on YouTube.  There are a number of factory representatives doing presentations selling instruments.  Nothing says they are artistic, enlightening, or enigmatic.  Most are torture.  The playing is poor, the sounds demonstrated are mediocre, and the content is shallow.  I have seen a few quality instructional videos.  Mostly they are my own.  Once I was a college instructor.  A more appealing title is adjunct professor, but let's be honest.  Instructor is more appropriate.  You get no benefits, no tenure, and no poo nanny.  I take that back.  Being an adjunct professor does merit some attention from the opposite sex, just like being a rock star once did.  That is before the world became LGBT, and the heterosexual dynamic waned.  The world never has recovered.  I have posted instructional videos, because it is important to me to remember useful musical information (and otherwise), and because I don't want to forget the process of both learning and teaching.  I have been asked why I post music videos.  This is the reason.  When I design and implement a home MIDI/Recording studio, it is complex and difficult to remember.  Talking about the process is helpful, and sharing it with others is considerate.  Why should I want to hoard the information for myself, seeing as popular music today and its so-called talent is bird seed?  It is not tangible enough to sit on the shelf without a corporate-manufactured plastic sleeve.  I strive for musical excellence, and when I achieve it I like to archive.  Video is a stellar choice.  On the downside video, especially YouTube video, is rife with B.S, but then again so is America.  When public education is smitten by the notion that students will be easier to teach because you give them their way allowing personal computing entertainment devices into the classroom, it was over.  It has been over since that decision was made.  While I do use a laptop computer for educational porpoises, and it is indispensable for quick research, never has it ever served as a substitute for music education.  All of the applications on the planet intended for music production cannot create art and as such I do not use them for that.  I use them to record and document my own artistry.  Since the industry as sidestepped the artistic educational process as has public education in general, we have Zombieland.  Staring at the phone will not build you a house, grow you a vegetable, fertilize an embryo, write you a song, or make you a dollar.  You must figure it out yourself first.  

The White Supremacist's Swing that is Not King.

Briefly I watched today a Youtube video of a B list jazz pianist giving a lesson to a student.  I heard this musician live in Raleigh, North Carolina back in the day at the Frog and Nightgown.  He was the pianist for a notable A list saxophonist.  He was impressive, but I remember he didn't swing.  The topic of his instructional video upon which I happened today including the concept of "swing."  I do not want to open pandora's box at this juncture in my evening.  I know what swing is.  Swing is what swing does.  It is tangible, and it is the discernible quality that makes or breaks a jazz artist.  You can feel it.  Most of the music today we hear has no real feeling.  America no longer is set up for that.  Musicians exchange files, download beats, and collaborate.  They do not stuff into a three track studio in Motortown and play live.  They do not engage in the process that created artistic American music.  The likes of Stax Records, Muscle Shoals, and Motown are dead.  Apple, Google, and the rest vie for control of the music industry.  Ho hum.  Stupid is as stupid does.  Hal Galper was _______.  It to me was alarming.  What he was telling his student was incomprehensible.  Time after time he told the student to change from quarter notes to eight notes, and although the student pretended to understand and do what he asked, he continued to play the bebop scale in eighth notes.  None of the things he was attempting to teach became evident in the students playing.  The only thing that happened was a slight change in legato when the internal pulse upon which they relied to play time changed from quarter notes to half notes.  Brazilian music is notated in 2/4 time, and this is important.  Finding the broader beats upon which to rely while counting also is important.  It dawned upon me that his understanding and thus concept of "swing" is what I call "pop."  He even suggested that most traditional jazz pianists tap their foot on one and three!  One and three!  I stopped watching, and I must digress.  Here is a working jazz pianist telling a student to tap his foot on one and three, because they are the weak beats, the beats that don't swing.  All righty then.  Herein lies my grift with America.  There is a force truly that does not understand the feeling of Swing (Wynton Marsalis) and is functioning in a public capacity as a purveyor of America's one true art form.   Truly we have become a failure of a nation or more accurately the social media of Capitalism.     

The Untreated Disease of Capitalism

Russia hacking the election just fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic.  Real news reporting during the days of Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, and Harry Reasoner are gone.  Edward R. Murrow has left America en route for Canada with the other Hollywood "stars."  Current news reporting suffers from the same ills as the rest of the American population.  ADD.  ADD fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic, although it wasn't. The things in this world that are and have been real are ignored.  Reality is reality TV, fiction, graphic, violent, and unChristian.  The feeling of Christianity no longer is possible it seems from the exertion placed upon it by life.  Modern life.  Modern life in America is a shallow puddle, a humiliated anxious cesspool of anger, disappointment, and resentment.  The man he is again me.  (that in the black slave colloquialism of Mark Twain means, "Against me."  The man he is again me, and I don't think I'll make it through.  Trump is trying.  I feel it is a good SCOTIS pick.  His Secretary of Education, and this is speaking from someone with a Bachelor's degree in Music Education, is a misstep.  Hopefully her vetting process will cut through the muck.  Muckraker.  Moonraker.  Faker.  Midnight shaker.  Education has been a joke for two decades.  Although I see the manifestations of poor public education daily and metaphorically as American life, I have no interest in battling "the man."  The man he is again me, not going to give me what I'm due.  Johnny Depp has fourteen homes, and he is a mediocre actor.  Don't get me wrong.  I like some of his characters.  No actor deserves fourteen homes, and if they have them they are imprudent and influenced by drug and alcohol abuse. The mortgage payments on fourteen homes could amount to two million dollars a day.  Who in their right mind ever could conceive they could support such a habit?  A few hookers (Charlie Sheen).  A few bails of spleef (Willie Nelson).  Cuban cigars (?)  Moderate needs.  Who possibly could want what most American CEO's and celebrities have?  The answer is those suffering from the disease of Capitalism, a fatal socioeconomic system which has ruined America.  Stop.  Backtrack.  Capitalism has not ruined America.  Poor public education has.  

King Kong in Mexico

It is all request Friday on WCPE.  Usually their playlist is more effective, when local patrons call in and ask for specific works.  I would think it would be extremely difficult filling twenty-four hours with music day after day.  It would take a musicologist or cultural historian to provide such a service.  I would like to know who does it.  Probably it can be a group effort dividing up the programming into differing shows.  They do that.  Different disc jockeys (if that is what they should be called) host different time segments with names.  Classical Cafe.  I am getting a bit of a treat as a pianist, trumpet, and composer myself.  I have dedicated five years of my life to studying music composition.  Barely can I remember it, because to what we are exposed on television (the largest purveyor of popular music) is so bad.  This is why I listen to WCPE.  It is a stark contrast to the insipid and selfish music of today's pop.  That is not my theme.  My theme is to comment on recent activity including a chamber music concert by the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra at St. John's Episcopal Church.  I am not feeling any music at the moment and for good reason.  The Guns of Navarone are firing, and my stomach is a mess.  Acid reflux wakes me early each morning burning my throat with stomach acid.  Gorbachov says the world is preparing for war.  It certainly seems that way, because Fort Bragg is in full exercise.  This is why I cannot feel any music.  My sensory system  completely and wholly is overwhelmed by noise.  I cannot function, and I have trouble thinking.  I can muster enough synapse action to comment on Handel's Water Music.  I studied classical composition at Ohio State University.  I made an A in four voice counterpoint at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I don't compose classical music anymore, because the dynamic in Fayettenam does not support my aesthetic.  The aesthetic here is war.  We are at war, and guns are blazing.  Regularly I can hear fifty-five millimeter machines guns tatting away.  The ground shakes for a moment.  In addition Lockheed Martin has provided a new targeting system for their rocket propelled shells.  The Fayetteville Observer says it uses sound waves to target the weapons.  Oh goody!  Like we don't have enough infrasonic pollution all ready?  No one gets it.  There were three suites listed on the program for the FSO chamber music concert.  Either they played them in a different order than what was listed, or they omitted the last set.  When the program got long I tried to figure out which movement they were playing from the program.  Several things came to mind.  One was the introduction by the Music Nerd.  During the Baroque period only were there natural horns.  Valves had not yet been invented.  If horns or trumpets were to be played, tubing had to be altered to accommodate the key of the composition.  Most of it was in D, F, and G.  Interesting.  There were some minors as well.  After the program got long, it began to dawn on me why the concert became a chore like sitting in church.  It was pittance, punishment for your sins.  You had to endure through the music to be cleansed.  We attend most concerts by the FSO, and most of them are exceptional.  Some are sleepy.  There is an inherent concept in classical music, its intimacy, that is sleepy.  It can be difficult to stay awake and focused, because the music's physicality by tempo and style is intimate and relaxing.  I don't like this.  I don't like having to fight to stay awake to enjoy music.  This concert was sleepy, but it was not so sleepy in its tempos and styles.  They were simplistic.  Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.  Square rhythm because some of them were meant as dance forms for court.  Always they are stiff and square, because classical music does not swing.  This is why it does not appeal to me so much.  Because the rhythm of all of the movements was so simplistic, court like, and because they all had to be in one key for the natural horns it got boring fast.  There were changes in meter and tempi, but the constant tonality of D or F was not interesting.  Classical harmony is not interesting.  V-I.  Authentic cadence.  The other issue about Baroque music is that the phrases ramble.  It is a continuous stream of notes with few resolutions.  Romantic music can be this way also.  I like phraseology.  I like to hear phrases of music that are like sentences organized into paragraphs.  Say something, and then wait for he listener to understand it.  Say something more.  It is like conversation, good music.  A string quartet is like a conversation between four adult gentlemen.  (Steve, a telemarketer, just called my mother to try to get her to give money to "The Veterans.")  Of course like the Wounded Warrior Project, the wounded warriors rarely get the money.  It is squandered amongst the upper employees of the organization.  Truly I love some classical music, and I mean concert-oriented orchestral or chamber music born in Europe.  Classical denotes a specific period in music history culminating in the High Classic Period of 1770-1780.  At least that is what Dr. Lois Rosow taught me at OSU.  I don't really agree with those dates, because when looking at the birthdays of Beethoven, Mozart, and Papa Haydn...  Well dates are relative just like music history courses.  My tastes in music are anti-establishment and personal.  Nationalism has its place, and I love the music of the Russian Five and the French Six.  Fully I understand the music of the Russian Five was a reaction against the nationalism of Tchaikovsky, but that fiery Russian parade music is exciting.  They use the crash cymbals a lot.  Donald Trump wants to build a wall, and I have refrained from commenting on his agenda until now.  What an utter and total waste of the taxpayers money.  Obama did not increase the GNP, but at least his money was for the insuring of the uninsured.  Building a wall or fence along the Mexican border utterly will be useless.  It will not stop drug trafficking or illegal immigration.  He should be smart enough to understand this, and I think he does.  His "wall" is a campaign ploy.  It is a device of his divisiveness.  It will accomplish nothing other that satisfying those who voted for him.  He is a rabble-rouser.  He is a soap box shouter.  Damn, I wish he would shut up.  So far his record is abominable.  Rex Tillerson and his State Department resigned!  Keystone pipeline.  A wall.  It's too bad King Kong doesn't live in Mexico.  Then a wall might make sense.  Wetbacks can both dig and climb.  They are good at it.  I guess they may not be good at dying.  We have become even more a fascist nation.  Ugh. 

The Man, He is Again Me, Again.

Either he is logging flight hours, testing surveillance equipment manufactured by Sierra Nevada, or just joy riding.  It can't be the latter, because the weather on January 22 was horrendous.  Pea soup fog with visibility of about ten feet.  I guess these conditions are perfect for a pilot navigating with instruments, or with surveillance operators monitoring infrared or optical sensors.  That plane was up there most of the day today, flying over Vanstory Hills.  What could he be doing?  When I drove to my gig yesterday at the Gates Four Golf and Country Club, it was not long before that plane was above me disguised in the clouds.  I guess I should feel flattered.  Homeland Security is following me around wondering why I did not file a federal tax return last year.  I am not planning on filing one this year either.  I tried last year, but the online system would not accept zero dollars income.  After making a reasonable income in the cruise industry for over a decade, is it that unusual that one choses to become a care-giver in his family?  I am poor, so to speak.  I don't have much walking around money, so I don't spend much.  When there is a home available with a family member in it, it is paid for, and there is adequate income to support the both of you, is it that unusual to stop working for a while?  Certainly I do not want to stay this way, but as other care-givers know working a nine to five job and caring for an older person sometimes are incompatible.  I can't work a nine to five job, although I would like to.  It would provide me with a life of my own.  Right now my life is not my own, and I accept it.  I played my first gig in Fayetteville in over a year.  It was nothing other than hard work.  There was not much musical satisfaction in it for me, but that was okay.  I knew that.  I have written some disparaging things about politicians, doctors, and the government.  Never have I been involved in a terrorist event, nor have I conspired to create one.  I rant about the unfairness of railroads in the United States, and it is merited.  They are the most polluting industry of which I can think, including coal burning power plants.  What they create in the environment is inhuman, undetectable by most people, but suffered by all.  I feel it is the root problem in America and other countries today.  It is unregulated and unmonitored.  Good afternoon President Trump!  How does it feel to have all of those new lawsuits on your desk?  What an unkind welcome to the White House.  His position is unprecedented.  It will be interesting to see how his presidency plays out.  (I must imagine I am on a ship going three knots, loping above the Puerto Rican Trench.)  That is some deep water.  My studio is undulating they way my eyes see, but this is new.  How much worse can it get?  Overcast skies, no wind, and infrasonic pollution at less than one cycle per second.  I drove around today and happened upon a little Cessna sitting at Signature Aviation on the tarmac.  There was a fuel truck in close proximity.  It had the emblem of either the Department of Defense or Homeland Security on its tail.  (At least those Kingair 350's with the complex monitoring array were no where in sight.)  It used to be two of those circled endlessly above our neighborhood for hours at a time day after day.  What could they be looking for?  Marijuana growing in the woods behind VanStory Elementary School?  Child molesters?  Testing Sierra Nevada's equipment?  They manufactured that complicated surveillance system, and no doubt it is causing disturbances to our environment.   How much of the taxpayers money they are wasting on the snipe hunt?  Go home young man.  Go home.  

The FBI, the Paparazzi, and Tidal Currents

I wonder if Lester Holt noticed that Fayetteville really was Miramar?   I wonder if his news team noticed the ubiquitous, angry, malevolent infrasound that was swirling around downtown?  It has been insidious.  Since Monday after Christmas the military industrial complex has been laying the hammer down on Fayetteville.  Trains run all day, everyday, and all night.  There has been no respite.  You may get one hour without a train.  Right now is the humdinger of them all, and I know it must be a rebuilt DC locomotive under the suggestion of General Electric.  Norfolk Southern resisted the trend in the railroad industry to invest in AC traction unlike CSX-T and BNSF.  They remained an all DC fleet until rebuilding was necessary.  Surprisingly N&S agreed to the equipping of their previous DC locomotives with inverters and AC traction motors.  Slowly but surely those silent black monsters have developed into the worst human antagonist imaginable.  I am sitting in my home, and I feel like I am at sea.  Of course it could be because cargo ships sitting at Sunny Point are woofing out their own frequency of infrasonic pollution and too boot are sitting on water undulating with the fluctuating tide.  I though that for a while.  Then I realized this tide was coming and going, meaning it is a diesel-electric locomotive, most probably a newly equipped AC traction motor CSX-T or N&S one.  Then there is the GEVO, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of trains.  I posted a video of it sitting in the Milan Yard, and it sounds like a World War ll U Boat.  That diesel is not balanced.  Because I worked on ships for over a decade, I told myself oh, "Just imagine you are on the boat going 3 knots."  This is what it feels like.  It is not that glorious sensation of steaming 21 knots through the Gulf of Mexico heading back to Olde San Juan from Aruba.  The bow of the Destiny used to jump that waves and crash into the troughs for a solid afternoon.  Then the economic crisis hit.  RCCL lost a billion dollars.  Suddenly speeds became much slower.  The ships would creep from island to island.  Luckily I learned what that sensation feels like.  How is that possible?  Do I have vertigo?  No.  This is real, and it probably helps that I have had an iridotomy in my right eye, that I can perceive this low frequency sound.  Then again there are the howitzers.  There are the 55mm machine guns.  There are the menacing Cessnas (like right now) flying up above.  I am trying to imagine that instead of belonging to FBI shell companies, they belong to Google or the paparazzi.  Then it would be understandable.  Inquiring minds want to know, but it is annoying.  Certainly there is no perk from being famous if they are not nice to you. 

Cyber Bullying

While most millennials won't remember it cyber bullying is not knew.  It began in a land far far away and a distant time, a few years ago.  It was the battle between IBM and Apple, the IBM component being Microsoft after having sold them an operating system that would function much like Apple's but on their all ready existing platform.  Point and Click it is called.  Windows always has been clunky, and if briefly we reflect America's continued war with Windows should by now by a watershed cultural icon.  Forever it seems the consumer has been fighting with Windows, Microsoft's attempt to copy the Apple interface for the IBM.  Because my memories are gray the first point of contention and what broke up the company was Bill Gates bundling Microsoft's Internet Explorer within Windows forcing consumers to use their web browser.  Netscape Navigator objected, the federal government intervened and found Navigator right, and broke up Bill Gate's famed company into separate parts.  I am not sure they have been the same since.  Their X Box was a big seller, but if one really scrutinizes the brief history of computer software, most of the older versions of the programs are better.  When Steve Jobs was alive, it must of been his competitive edge that forced programmers to excel in computer language.  Programs were small, and I mean small fitting on a floppy disc.  That is when three megabytes was something useful.  Like the U.S. economy computer language has become bloated and ineffective.  While the modern version of these original programs function, they are a shadow of their former selves.  Simply it is because computer app's (formerly applications) have become pop fodder.  It has become about selling a product to an unwise consumer.  Sprinkle on sugar and tell everyone it is the greatest thing next to indoor plumbing.  Sales skyrocket and Apple make a mint.  Each time I am prompted to download the newest version of iTunes I am annoyed.  Because continually the computer companies are "upgrading" their operating systems (which really means trying to integrate wireless technology into PC systems) we must continually buy the newer versions of the applications  Although Apple allows me to download most of this for free, what you are going to get is speculative.  When Apple was feeling the competitive edge of Windows, suddenly their clear and concise borders and boundaries disappeared.  Instead of having graphs and numbers and columns, suddenly Apple saw fit to give us words on a plain screen floating in cyberspace.  I like my original Word program better than anything I have gotten since.  I liked my original iTunes and iPhoto program better than what I have now, because the improvements they provided in essence were not improvements to usability.  They were superficial and visual.  Text got smaller, menus simply changed places, icons were scrambled, and non of it was intuitive.  Possibly this is because a newer millennial generation does not interact with software the same way the old school did.  There was no connection of programs via the internet.  There were no online stores.  American Online was the program of choice that started social media.  Today because of an ailing economy computer language strives to deceive consumers with interfaces that coerce human consciousness.  For example I do not want to see advertisements in my news.  In a newspaper they are places accordingly so the reader knows they are ads.  The fashion is today as Big Brother increasingly tightens his grip is to intersperse ads within the news content.  You will see a small icon that says, "Sponsored Content."  With this small change of internet advertising and thus revenue, the world has changed.  Suddenly the reader has to filter what normally is factual and true.  This is not a bad idea, since we should have been taught critical thinking in public school.  Why else are we required to take algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus?  Surely only a select few who choose jobs in technical fields will use these skills.  The rest of us may learn how to think about a problem before we reach a solution.  It bothers me that computing has become this.  Always I have vowed to keep the programs that work for me, yet each time I open my internet browser something is being sold to me.  The internet has become television, but the interactive nature of personal computers have baited a trap large enough to capture the world.  I don't get phished that often, but when I do it is a shock.  I don't own a cell phone, and I don't use a credit card.  My life is exponentially easier because of it.  After I convinced the state of North Carolina I did not owe them state taxes, and after I had a mere six months of Obamacare my financial worries were over.  By financial worries I mean what most Americans call financial worries.  Debt.  I am debt free.  As soon as I announce that to the world the heavens will fall. Being financially debt free is not one half of one percent of immunity from potential strife, but when I stop and think about it is a good starting place.  Unlike graduating college students I all ready have paid off my financial dues.  In my case it was for musical studio equipment and a few motorcycles, the things I need to keep my somewhat happy and productive.  It makes me extremely angry that consumer oriented businesses are not looking out for me.  They are looking to take advantage of me.  I spend the majority of my time not become smarter, creating art, or being happy.  I spend most of my time feeling like a slave and trying not to die.  Is this what life in America has become or always was?  

Elephants or Donkeys?

This is my question.  With our great intelligence community, the CIA and the FBI along with the NSA, if Russia had such a large influence on the presidential election, whey didn't they catch it?  I would say that is a major failure of intelligence, failing to catch cyber-hacking.  Then again it is happening over and over and over. When a society, lead by irresponsible telecommunications companies, posts their sensitive material on a communal cyber "cloud," then why is anyone surprised that hacking is occurring?  If you as a homeowner choose to control the security in your home wirelessly with a smartphone, and hacking is common, why would you be surprised if you home is broken into?  The parties' screaming about Putin's influence in the election is juvenile and inflammatory.  If you were Russia's president, and you were a war criminal, would you not do everything you could to influence international policy?  Putin has been doing this for a long time.  Only now do the cries go out, and it is sickening.  It is indicative of what is to come in Washington.  I staunchly have ignored all of it and choose rather to laugh at the president-elect's jokes.  With the sheer amount of moxy in congress, surely appropriate checks and balances will be taken with Trump's cabinet.  If there are aberrations then litigation is appropriate.  Governor Roy Cooper is doing it in North Carolina.  In his first few weeks in office his legal team all ready was at work challenging McCrory's preemptive legislation.  This is my question.  With the continual string of hacking and leaks in America, why did not any of the intelligence agencies detect any of this activity?  It is because it is political slander, mud-slinging at the most base level, something that has been occurring for the last eight years.  The entirety of America has been enticed into the cyber domain, and therefore it is appropriate was have been hacked.  We are sitting ducks, and I am positive a network of backdoors are built into all of the online networks propagated by the computer companies.  It only makes sense, and it is sickening.  I see no recovery.  Senile senior senators are not young and savvy enough it seems to even understand the issues.  Maybe they are.  Maybe it is just our corrupt media again inciting violence for the sake of news.  I was asked once to use the program Dropbox to exchange scores of music, and I declined.  There was no way I was going to place my original, copyrighted, unpublished music on a cloud ripe for the picking.  It could be some guy sitting on a bed in New Jersey.  Without good investigative reporting there is no news, and because evidently we have incapable researchers, writers, and journalists, this is what we get.  Mr. Trump's example as a proponent of reality television is not helping.  I am not alarmed at his approach, because it was invented to win a particular vote.  Only now after some time has passed do I feel the escalation of bigotry and racism as a result of is incendiary campaign.  It was not a good example for the country, because we as a populace and our government seem incapable to rise above it and set the example for humanity and effective government.  It is interesting to me that the Republicans are on path to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and yet surely no one has taken the time or effort to pen a new health care law.  This is the single reason why Hillary Clinton could not achieve this goal.  Her call for universal health care was a scribble on a post it note.  To actually enact legislation that will provide effective and affordable health care for America at the expense of our private system supporting wealth is daunting.  The author of Obamacare achieved a milestone.  While slowly after Obama leaves office the legislation with unravel with rising premiums, at least it has existed and covered millions of Americans.  Although Hillary Clinton could not get the vote, she could have commissioned someone to devise the immense and far-reaching law that would achieve her goal.  A look at other countries would have sufficed.  Trump and Republicans say they will replace the Affordable Care Act with something more effective, but my question is, "Who is writing it" and "Where is it."  I beg to differ on this point.  If all Congress can do is squabble over computer hacking, how will they ever muster up enough energy to overhaul the medical and insurance professions?  I don't see it.  Mr. Trump does spew a fair amount of hot air, but I feel he has good intentions.  The appointing of the CEO of Exxon Mobile to the position of Secretary of State is mockery.  I feel like America has regressed to the decade of the l970's when we were stuck in a war in Viet Nam and fighting domestic violence at the same time.  Are we in a state of war giving the President a set of unique and powerful executive privileges?  Never do I remember a President since Jimmy Carter who was engaged as the American President until the very end.  With President Carter unfortunately he was humiliated by Iran.  President Obama conversely is massing artillery and troops at German military bases in an attempt to fortify NATO's presence and intimidate Mr. Putin.  Money is being spent in huge quantities as it was for the last eight years, and still we have no solutions for an ailing economy.  I have not felt this particular emotion in a very long time, and I have no reason to feel it.  I am not being spurned by a spouse or lover.  Although I write sometime incendiary rhetoric, I have no power to effect change in any way in America.  Cable television monitors our home, and often what we do or speak about immediately shows up on television.  While I may sound deluded, what better way is there to monitor American homes than with an Amazon Tap or Echo and Alexa's keen ear tuned in?  I don't care if they do listen, but the feeling I have must be a metaphor for the tension in Washington, DC.  Unresolved adolescent angst.  It has been decades since I have experienced being mistreated on purpose, because someone disagreed with my opinion or something I did.  Acrimony, rancor, enmity, animosity, or malevolence are such negative and useless emotions.  They solve nothing.  Attempting to discipline or achieve one's goals with such behavior is juvenile and immature, but we are that now as a nation. Until adults once again inhabit Congress, we are doomed.  

Zombieland and the iPhone

I shouldn't be drinking vodka, because it makes me feel stupid.  Bourbon, although not as healthy as triple distilled rubbing alcohol, is familiar to me.  I have been drinking bourbon all my life, since I heard Jim Fine order, "Bourbon and ginger" at a party we were playing with the Kyle Whitford Band.  Bourbon used to taste really good, but I think in recent years like everything in America is has become fraudulent.  What's that?  Fraudulent bourbon?  How is that possible?  It is possible just like many herbal supplements on the market are fraudulent.  The vendor tells you they are selling you a specific product, and in actuality it is a placebo or it is chalk.  I have had this experience three times buying Guarana both online in in stores.  It began with eBay auctions.  The bottles began showing up unsealed.  Inside of them was something other than guarana.  Once after reading feedback from a particular seller, I discovered they were substituting melatonin for guarana.  Wow!  Melatonin is a sleep aid.  Guarana is an energy enhancer.  Taking melatonin instead of guarana is dangerous, and I did it for a while until discovering that tablets were making me more sleepy.  Recently I purchased guarana at the local Vitamin Shoppe.  When I opened the bottle in the car after buying it, the "guarana" was fake.  It was the same white stuff the eBay vendor sent.  I ordered  Puritan's Pride version of guarana from another seller, and it also was fake.  He returned my money.  The Vitamin Shoppe gave me a store refund, but for obvious reasons I no longer want to spend my money there. How do you know if you are really getting Ginko Biloba?  The FDA does not regulate herbal supplements.  I am not sure there is much oversight in the alcohol business.  It has become big business, and because our federal government taxes it 50% liquor and tobacco are money-earning commodities.  It's too bad that like everything in America, there is no oversight.  Fraud is everywhere. It is being called "Fake News."  It makes life difficult, when everything you buy is accompanied by a neurosis about its authenticity and value.  I am a good internet shopper.  I have learned how to research products online, find reputable sellers, and most times receive a fair product.  A few times I have been screwed, but it is becoming more of a norm.  I question the quality of today's bourbon in America.  It doesn't taste the same.  I have a friend who thinks that the bourbon industry is using high fructose corn syrup rather than cane sugar.  It doesn't taste the same.  Of all of the things I would like to think about, the validity of my herbal supplements and non-prescription medication are not on the list.  I would rather continue as normal, but America is not the same.  America has changed frighteningly in the last decade.  I feel stupid.  I drive around Fayetteville running errands, and judging from what I see our entire lives have become masquerades.  Capitalism, or the selling of goods and services, must have failed on a massive scale for businesses to behave as they do.  Apple is on my mind, and after receiving an iPod Touch for a Christmas gift, I believe that company, after Steve Job's death, has become the major purveyor of Newspeak.   There were smartphones, and then there were iPhones.  iPhones.  The Macintosh operating system was re-tooled over UNIX, modified for mobile use, and voila.  Apps!  I don't need apps, because I remember when application were just programs you used on a personal computer to get your work done.  It was a bit scholarly.  (Obama is deploying the military his last few weeks in office, and Fayettenam is at war)  The C-130's flying over our house are an ominous presence.  Who knew Vladimir Putin had become America's arch enemy number one?  When did this happen?  When did Congress decide to resurrect the Cold War?  I understand that Putin may be a threatening presence, and fully I don't understand what is happening in Syria and Aleppo.  Putin is responsible for most of it like the annexation of Crimea.  I feel stupid, because what I am seeing and listening to on television and the newspaper each day is juvenile, childish, dogma.  The problems America faces are clear, and senile senior senators playing pinochle on our dime is unacceptable.  Truly and without a shadow of a doubt our Federal government no longer represent the best interests of Americans.  In North Carolina they brag in your face as the screw you up the ass.  It is like professional wrestling.  I shouldn't be surprised, but I have been to nine years of college.  I have sought to educate myself, to grow, and to mature into a thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent artist.  There is little room for that now, because we still are at war.  (The engineer gives a little toot on the horn, because at a grade crossing they are required to warn motorists)  Most of the time they don't.  Most of the time CSX-T breaks the rules.  They run most of their trains at night now.  Just read any online account of engineers on call for a major railroad.  They are overworked and underpaid.  We can't expect ethical behavior from anyone scraping to get by.  Nine years of college to understand a fruitful and fulfilling life, and yet America has become a trench.  Although I voted for Hillary I feel Donald Trump is the only qualified person to see through the B.S.  on capital hill.  That is why they are so afraid of him.  The excesses, masquerades, and fleecings of Americans are so rampant, they are upon what America runs.  Capitalism has failed, and to survive fraud has become the new market.  It was easier before.  It was easier when we had the Mafia.  At least we understood it.  If you can't get by within the constrictions of the law, you went around it or made your own.  That is happening now, just on Wall Street.  I read up on George Soros, and I liked most of what he ways.  What I don't like is that he is a hedge fund manager.  Pooling the populaces debt and selling it like fish is not the right way to become wealthy.  Bernie Madoff is in jail for it.  (Has his movie come out yet?)  I have discovered that there are no networks, cable or otherwise.  Television has become one singular entity, and it is controlled by the same interests.  Is it Fox News, the originator of ridiculous soap box shouting?  Is it Rupert Murdoch?  Is the the Defense industry who desperately need the U.S. to be at war so their companies can become profitable?  I don't know, but we are losing.  I don't think president-elect Trump is the problem.  I think he will be a solution. He doesn't need the taxpayers money.  Back to Apple.  Wireless communications by zombies.  Our youth have been brain-washed.  After trying to play simple MP3 files on this new iPod Touch, only was I bombarded with sales pitches.  Apple Music.  I don't want Apple Music.  I want the music I loaded on this iPod.  I don't want the weather.  I don't need notification.  What a cluster fuck.  When I learned the Macintosh at OSU, it was simple, easy, and fun.  I didn't have masses of millennials trying to screw me through suggestive software, products that melt the human mind, and poisoning our souls with insipid propaganda.  (I didn't get that just right, but you get the picture)  Apple has become despicable, and perhaps their network is responsible for Newspeak.  ATT bought Direct TV.  It all is ONE thing controlled by one interest.  There are no networks, only aliens sitting in offices pushing the buttons.  

Weiner News and the Dewey Decimal System

Now that Roy Cooper officially has become the governor of North Carolina, and Pat McCrory will carry his devious political affiliations to Washington, refuse is beginning to float to the surface of the pond.  A recent study showed that the state of North Carolina ranked last in an international study testing the voting process.  We are the least democratic state in the union, meaning we are ruled like a plantation.  I have known this my whole life, and never was it more evident to me than when I graduated with a BME degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.  Beginning teacher pay was roughly $18,000.00 a year.  I spent four years of my life studying at a prestigious institution so the state of North Carolina could spit in my face.  It hasn't stopped.  In fact it has gotten worse.  I was lucky enough to see fit to move away from the American South, and it was a good idea.  Other places are not like plantation states.  South Carolina was, and that is why I moved from there.  Moving back to North Carolina has been the largest challenge of my life, and it is not over with yet.  Each and every day I ask myself how life became so difficult, and the answer is because we are stuck living in a plantation state.  The political sentiments here are over a century old and they are rife with bigotry, racism, and violence.  I have learned enough in my time spent in other places how to ignore this ignorance.  When life continues to beat on you with the help of your state legislature, it becomes tiring.  Must we be idealists to think out state government is there to help us succeed?  Instead their intent is to control, suffocate, and exploit the general population of North Carolina for their own greed.  Never did I want to believe the stereotypes of the American South, until I have been forced to experience them first hand.  It really is unbelievable.  It is not unlike an Orwellian novel, and I guess that is appropriate.  The great literature of our time along with the rest of our cultural heritage that is being suppressed is exactly as 1984 depicts.  With the media at the helm truth, integrity, and Christianity have waned leaving America a whining bunch of second generation Appalachians.  I never knew devoted ignorance could be the cornerstone of a human existence until now.  I guess God knew what would happen to man.  It is up to us to solve this crisis, and we will fail.  Only those devoted to Christ will survive and be transported to His other planet after watching men destroy our own world.  

A Billionaire Cabinet

Once I asked Wynton Marsalis a question.  He was visiting Ohio State University in an educational endeavor concerning jazz music. Dr. Ted McDaniel was the director of jazz studies.  Subsequently he has retired and handed his baton to Shawn "Thunder" Wallace.  We sat in the Hughes Hall auditorium, and I was enrolled in the D.M.A. program in music composition.  I have played jazz music most of my life but was being steered in the direction of Contemporary Classical Music.  (You don't need jazz musicians to play this music)  Jazz music in general has become obscure for reasons relating to the economic crisis of 2008, poor public education, and the loss of the professional music industry.  If it doesn't work with an iPhone app...   Well you get it.  Jazz historically is called America's one true art form.  Today the populace at large does not recognize art.  Since the inception of Karioke live music performance has been neutered in lieu of the championing of personal egos.  America has embraced the man, masturbates him, and takes his money with a sheepish grin.  When a population becomes so shallow they cannot recognize and appreciate anything other than themselves, society has a problem. It is religion.  Religion has become ignored in America.  It is understandable when you are homeless and hungry why your values would change.  A scrap of food, a sip of wine, or a fag could seem more important than a prayer, generosity, or art.  Americans are scrambling for survival, and it is because after the 2008 economic crisis our currency is being held by a select few who betted against the American economy.  We hear little about these men today.  Corporations are required to disclose more than private citizens, and thus they are scrutinized more.  Slowly we are becoming aware of where our money is.  If it is not flowing through our economy freely to exchange hands, it is sitting laundered in a Grand Cayman, Swiss, or Chinese bank.  While it may be accruing interest it is not invested in America.  Those with this money have spurned the American people.  We have been abandoned, and there is no better metaphor than two mile long munition trains headed to Sunny Point Ocean Terminal to be loaded onto commercial cargo vessels en route to the Middle East.  Why are we supplying Afghanistan and Iraq?  We are we investing in America's military rather than her own people and infrastructure?  Each time I see expensive machinery at the cost of the taxpayer traveling to Muslims in the Middle East I question.  Would not this money be better spent on bringing industry back to America, rebuilding our infrastructures, and repairing cataclysmic weather damage which recurs?  Priorities in America have been skewed since the George W. presidency, and while Barack Obama did execute Osama Bin Laden, our economy problem and national debt are worse.  It is clear why our electoral college chose Donald Trump to be our new president.  Instead of bleeding heart liberalism...  Well we all know.  A cabinet of billionaires, those who have profited in the private sector, should be a good choice for righting the economic ills of our bloated federal government.  Only if they embrace their new government jobs and the American people as their shareholders.  

Li'l Black Sambo and His Friend Uncle Tom

The media has been covering racism in America more, since police shootings of black men have escalated in recent years.  I hesitate to use the term media, because traditional forms of media such as newspapers and periodicals have dwindled since the promulgation of cable television and Internet news.  (or rather "Newspeak")  It is interesting that Internet news not that long ago was reliable and thus reputable.  I used to read the Reuters Hourly News Summary, and it was streamlined and accurate.  Suddenly Reuters replaced it with commercial, tabloid type, advertisement laden reporting, which has become the norm in America.  Media has suffered at the expense of tabloid media.  The line of demarcation between news journalism and tabloid fodder has been blurred and possibly on purpose.  Because Fox News has stumbled (the fall of Roger Ailes), and Donald Trump won the American presidency, media has been forced to take a step back and reflect.  While they are breathing and attempting to gain sure footing again, news in the meantime has become propaganda.  Now it is adolescent driven opinion and mostly an opinion decrying the downfall of the Democratic Party.  They are standing scratching their heads, and continuing through the appropriate steps of bereavement.  (Denial, anger, etc.)  It is obvious which media outlets are privy to which side of partisan politics.  (Not the way it should be.)  American media has become  partisan, since the challenge of the success of Fox News.   Racism has existed in America throughout the Obama presidency.  It inexplicably has escalated.  (And not only in the months since The Donald made is socially fashionable) The election of America's first black president didn't help race relations in America.  It exacerbated them.  It exacerbated them, because Barack Obama in all honesty didn't represent the majority of blacks in America.  (Perhaps Shaft would have been a better choice)  He was an elitist, and it was proven elitism in American politics no longer was to be the flavor of the day.  A majority of Americans felt alienated by the Obama presidency.  In a funny turn of events Democrats became the elite populace, and they stand scratching their heads wondering why the electoral college chose The Donald.  It is clear to me. 

 Change of Subject:  

American jazz music once represented integrity, honestly, God, human love, and values.  No longer is it that.  Perhaps jazz now is the appropriate metaphor for American media.  They all have sold out.  After trying to watch Lincoln Center award Herbie Hancock his prize, I only could stifle retching.  I have seen it before.  I have seen it on the Smooth Jazz cruises.  I watched Wynton's band do it.  Last night I saw two seminal jazz artists become the metaphor for racism in America.  I saw two token darkies dressed in black uniforms Uncle Tomming for the Man.  It was difficult to swallow.  Here were two of the best jazz musicians, two musicians I have respected and enjoyed for decades, kowtowing to the establishment.  Perhaps in their eyes, eyes which have aged and faded, they were happy still to be in the public eye playing jazz -oriented music they enjoy.  When the camera panned to the audience, a predominantly white mass who know nothing about the history of jazz music, it was apparent to me what jazz has become.  Like media it has become pop.  (Or poop.)

Southern Bells and Pop Music

I have been wanting to blog for a week or so, but like other tasks I have been avoiding blogging at times heightens awareness a bit too much.  I will call it an invasion of privacy.  Abstractly refusing one's mind it's need to function, to operate, to think and solve problems, to fight for one's survival is a bit Southern.  The South after all is genteel.  It is a land dotted with plantation front porches, glasses of freshly squeezed lemonade, and bells.  I don't mean the kind that are found in church towers.  I am talking about Southern women or matriarchs as Chef Vivian Howard calls them.  Disparaging Southern Bells is and was not the intent of this blog entry, although I have a few things to say about the subject.  They do enjoy a passive man, a man who smiles, shag dances, and otherwise blows sunshine up their asses.  If you are connected, grew up with money and influence, you may not need the skills about which I am going to write.  The skills I have learned throughout my life with an undergraduate degree from Chapel Hill (in 1985, which means far more than it does today), a graduate degree from the Gamecocks at USC, and all DMA coursework at Ohio State has both taught and inspired me to excel in the field of music.  I would have done it anyway had I not attended any of these places.  My father was an exceptional musician, and somewhere along the line I decided being the best musician I could was the right thing to do.  It has gotten me very little.  In fact nothing.  Unless you are part of the in crowd as Ramsey Lewis would say, finding a job in academia is political.  UNC didn't teach me this.  Politics is taught within the family unit as children observe their affluent and influential parents' wheel and deal through their lives.  Many of the people I went to school with were stupid.  They did not do well in high school, but amazingly they all seemed to have grown up to be their parents.  They have yuppie jobs, children, and still enjoying shagging, pink and green, and the company of other Southern socialites.  If that is what floats your boat, playing dress up, smiling, pretending to be something, because you don't have the gumption to actually do something with this time, okay.  We differ.  Socializing in Fayetteville, North Carolina purely is politics.  It is a small town with very little room for new blood or money.  I overlook this fact, and it continues to cause me grief because I don't like to soak cork. I mean be Southern.  Be passive.  Smile.  Act the fool to blend in and not challenge the set way of thinking.  If you have that good job, then it would be easy to do that.  That is what the South has been doing for over a century.  If you are looking for work, looking to enjoy your on life without the influence of power and money, it is a different story.  The way I became good at music, although I have reaped almost nothing from my exertions, was to be excited about it.  I was a mover and shaker and took no prisoners.  This worked well until I met a girl name Geraldine.  It continued to work well for three years, until she grew up.  I don't know whether she became unattracted to me or the the opposite, but we separated on a sour note.  The three years of musical excellence we experienced together at my behest came to an abrupt end, when she decided to end my life.  I never really knew it at the time, that one person's opinion can destroy another person's life.  That is politics, and I have experienced it a few times in my life.  Once I had words with Cruise Director Sammy Baker, and she picked up the phone and blacklisted me with the Carnival Corporation.  She told their musical hiring professional not to hire me again.  I quit her gig two weeks shy of my contract completion date, because she did not see, understand, or acknowledge how I had contributed to the Regal Princess.  When life becomes a time when you are working far above and beyond what is reasonable, and someone begins to criticize you for it, it is time to go.  I had to end a seven year relationship with my first love for the same reason.  I learned that such behavior is an inability to make a decision that is difficult.  They could not sever the bond that needed to be severed, so they mistreat you enough until you do it for them.  Criticism in the midst of great effort and love.  It is a conundrum.  Geraldine was a prickly pear, and decided in her adolescent glory to take my success for herself.  Until that point I was allowed to be a successful musician. The parties at large around us were summoned by the wives, and their influence was great.  It is one reason why my band Quintessence won the semi-finals of the Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search.  She and John Glancy's girlfriend accompanied us to New Orleans to compete at Storyville.  When we played these two blond beauties whooped up the place like groupies we never had had, and it worked.  Doc Severinson and the judges liked their tight white pants, and the band, and our music.  We would not have won without the Southern Bells at work.  Needless to say I was not given two extra plane tickets to Los Angeles, and no one paid us any mind at the finals even though a young Chris Potter was fronting the band.  It was politics.  Music is politics.  I listen to WCPE pretty often, and there are times when thoroughly I enjoy the music.  The rest of the time they play music from the Classic Period, and if anyone is interested the Classical Period was during a time of court.  Papa Haydn worked for the Esterhazys.  When you hear this music by nature of its emerged definition, it is polite, symmetrical, and a bit stiff and square.  It sounds like court.  Certainly it doesn't sound like individual freedom.  When they play classical symphonies I feel the same way as I do when confronted with the American South.  Someone else is controlling the party, and it is their party.  Music for my is MY party.  It is one of the things I can do that allows me the freedom and expression to be an individual, rejects society's  norms and stereotypes, and tell the story that I am thinking and feeling.  It is not unlike writing a blog entry, yet it is more visceral. Music if given the opportunity can be pure feeling. Schoenberg and other great composers disagree including Mr. Stravinsky.  They say music has no inherent emotion, and Mr. Babbit would agree wholeheartedly.  If it is embraced and appreciated for its ability to do this, music can be pure feeling.  For me it is.  It always has been, and that is why I excelled at it.  If you tap into expression, emotion, and if it means something, then you are making an artistic statement.  I listened to myself playing lead trumpet in my Governor's School wind ensemble in 1980, and it was transcendent.  The entire group new what we were accomplishing, and we have Terry Mizesko, the bass trombonist with the North Carolina Symphony, to thank for this. He didn't look like Leonard Bernstein in his white tennis shorts, but he understood what we were trying to accomplish.  It was an exemplar education experience, as it should have been being The Governor's School of North Carolina.  I am grateful to have been allowed to have participated.  I almost didn't make the cut.  The original GSNC in Winston Salem was an orchestra.  When they expanded to St. Andrew's College there weren't enough string players to go around, so they made a wind ensemble.  Because wind ensembles have no strings, they use trumpets and cornets.  This is a lost art, and I am not sure any traditional musical concepts are being taught today in education.  Our musical educational system has sold out just like Apple.  They teach pop to kids and parents who demand the shag.  One interesting thing is the South helped create great music in America. The "Jazz Highway" is an interesting map that shows the history of jazz just in the Carolinas.  It includes Cheraw, SC, Hamlet, NC, and Rocky Mount.  A diagonal line connects the birthplaces of Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk.  (There is one other person on the journey, but I can't remember them.  Oh, it's me!)  At least my birthplace of Mocksville, NC is in proximity.  I quit aspiring to be a great jazz pianist years ago.  Interestingly when you quit trying to be great at something, it gets easier.  Truly if you have an interest, you will continue to pursue your interest out of desperation.  We must do something.  I am not sure if picking what you love so you will never work a day in your life applies, but music feels a bit like that to me, until now.  I am not liking music at the moment, because of what has happened to music in America.  Surely it is because of Simon Cowell and the Norwegian television producer who came to America and destroyed professional music.  As television continues to do they would rather exploit  the common man, pay them nothing, build them up, and then revel in their subsequent failure.  This is the definition of pop.  Pop does not even seek to find the suitable expression.  If it did, it would require talent, musical knowledge, skill, and technique.  Most of all it would require an intellectual and spiritual understanding for which no one has the time.  Pop in a nutshell took the easiest rhythmic concept, the one that is the most simplistic and requires the least amount of feeling or time, and exploited it.  I used to really dislike Motown.  I disliked them, because Barry Gordy exploited soul music.  Soul music has the feeling and spirituality of which I am talking, and it was embodied at STAX records.  Motown instead used the pop groove as the vehicle for their music, because like shag music seemed to communicate with the masses.  It is simplistic.  It is what we have today, silhouettes of guitar players strumming those infernal machines with no understanding that other rhythms are possible.  That visual representation of pop, that up and down strumming of the guitar, is so limiting.  It is limiting, because by definition it cannot create an emotion.  If you strummed a string of eight notes in perfect time and generated an emotion within your body, it would be possible to convey feeling.  That string of notes, that strum on the guitar that has become the metaphor for pop music, does not possess the ability to move listeners.  It is a beginner's roller skate, which functions at an elementary level and allows aspiring pop musicians to create a facade of greatness.  At least when you listen to classical music, reggae, or jazz in the pure forms they use instrumental music to convey feeling.  It is accomplished with the things you learn in a good music education.  Phrasing, dynamics, taste, rhythm, and the rest.  You cannot substitute desire for the elements that create great music.  Hence we have mediocre pop music, and if it continues surely it will disappear.  Unlike Wynton Marsalis I will not buy a ticket on the pop train.  I will not buy a ticket, because after almost two years of study and exploration of the pop idiom, I have no desire to change my learned piano technique.  I now know how Stevie plays, how Elton plays, and how Leon Russell plays.  Even one musician I admire, David Foster, is exploiting the pop rhythm.  America seems to know nothing else these days.  It was extremely fitting that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  At least he was doing the right thing. 

A Short History of GSE's

The Federal National Mortgage Association or Fannie Mae was a Government Sponsored Enterprise or GSE formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in l938 in response to the Great Depression. It attempted to facilitate liquidity in the market by making mortgages available to lower income families. It bought mortgages from Savings and Loans, which encouraged more lending and insured the value of the mortgages by the United States government. In l968 Fannie Mae was converted into a privately owned corporation with shareholders. A newly formed publicly funded partition institution, The Government National Mortgage Association or Ginnie Mae, took over the role of Fannie Mae. In l970 The Emergency Home Finance Act created a new private corporation GSE to further stimulate the secondary housing market. The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation or Freddie Mac buys mortgages on the secondary market, pools them, and sells them as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market.

Zen and the Art of Midnight Motorcycling

Tonight I tarried on both of my blogposts.  I made valid points, but I didn't get to the heart of the matter intended.  At Christmastime (in Caroline, and in other places) society is in full combat dress, or at least that is what it feels like to me.  This evening consisted of eating pinto beans, raw tomato and onion, and cornbread which browned and set with the help of Alton Brown.  Heating your cast iron skillet in a 425 degree oven ensures your batter will crust on the bottom when cooking for twenty minutes.  A little sugar helped.  I was glad to help my mother, although she was in a rotten mood.  After watching a little tube I did a thing that could be a metaphor for my holidays.  I have experienced these holidays before in Cowtown.  It took a while for it to become apparent to me that I was experiencing a true Paul moment.  It was not my mother.  It was not the neighborhood, although they were involved.  What I did completely and one hundred percent was me, and the response I had also was one hundred percent me.  I was riding a Honda CRF50 minibike in the darkened rain at ten o'clock at night in an upstanding middle-class neighborhood.  I had no helmet.  I had no protective gear.  Only I had a hoodie that won't stay up, because of the force of the driving wind.  It was surreal.  The hum of the CRF motor was a calming force for me, but also I get a visceral jolt from being rebellious in what is not a rebellious place.  For a brief moment three curious vehicles stalked me, and after I stopped and sat on the side of the road quietly recalcitrantly they drove past.  Residents of this neighborhood I am finding have rampant imaginations, and a fifty year old man in a hoody riding a minibike in the rain is like the Ringling Brother Circus.  It is surprising to me that adolescents today must live lives of such doldrums.  Do they really not know how to have fun anymore?  We used to have sex.  Such an action in the old days would qualify as such.  I enjoyed my ride, but what was challenging was the disparity between a rebellious motorcycle ride and expensive homes draped in decorative Christmas lights.  I have not taken the opportunity to tour the neighborhood in the evening, so who knew families were so into decorating their homes for the holiday season?  I do not feel festive in the least, so for me it's business as usual.  I, as a single adult, will have to jump start my holiday gift-buying, or I will be delinquent.  The metaphor which emerged under a crisp, clear, Carolina moon was that the majority of these people were in their warm homes adorned by Christmas lights with their families doing what I assume are festive things.  (or maybe because school is not quite out, preparing for the next day)  I didn't want to think about it for too long, because it was creepy.  To the sensibility in this neighborhood I could have been the Creeper smelling and stalking adolescents for the feeding.  As a matter of consequence I do not take a minibike rides in the darkened rain every seventeen years.  (or is it more or less?  I can't remember)  What I was doing in reality was not recreating, but trying to get an automatic three speed clutch to behave.  Like all motorcycles usage is the best maintenance.  If a vehicle sits it dies, or it ages drastically.  I am not sure about the clutch on this CRF50, but riding it certainly helps.  It is a gift for neighborhood children, and I wanted to help by working on the machine.  I was successful with the motor.  Once it finds a gear it pops along merrily and content the engine humming like a finely lathed top.  I know the secret rules for carburetor jetting for a few bikes anyway.  The motor ran well enough that it gave me the same satisfaction as my CB-250 and my XR-200.  The vibration of a Honda four stroke is a prized well earned and earnestly should be appreciated as the best caviar.  I was disappointed that further clutch repairs would be necessary, but a strong-running motor is a great foundation for many years of future riding pleasure.  I did my job.  

Shackademia

In my previous blog post I wandered.  I wandered like an aberrant shepherd looking for the newly born baby Jesus.  I was hoping to find enlightenment in my rambling, and yet I found only a condemnation of digital piracy.  The millennial culture was built with shortcuts.  Modern films employing millennial directors suffer from lack of camera vision.  They are limited by shortcuts, camera angles that never have been studied or developed into a concept to provide a vehicle for the film.  What?  You mean the camera cannot just aimlessly roam around looking up people's noses?  Not in traditional cinema.  Traditional American cinema has a lineage and a history rich with intelligence, artistry, and expression.  It meant to convey something, not just earn money.  To convey something, an idea say, one needs more that what the pop arts are offering today.  There is a bit of stripping down of technique today, and possibly at one time that may have worked.  The entire discipline of the Avant Garde in essence is a dramatization and simplification of its predecessor.  It worked and still today stands as the most recent chapter of art history.  The Avant Garde is effective.  Ask Jackson Pollack.  Ask Ornette Coleman.  I love the Avant Garde, but I always didn't because I didn't understand it.  I didn't understand that if you, the artist, had the message, the intent, the understanding, and the technique it doesn't take a lot to get your point across.  Mark Rothco and other modern artists did it with Abstract Expressionism.  Composers set the same goals during the 1920's.  I love Modernism.  I wish I had lived during the 1920's in America.  One only has to watch the movie Rhapsody in Blue to feel the visceral energy in the air musically during this decade.  There are such things as concepts.  Concepts are effective, because they ensure you will achieve your goal as an artist.  You must know what you are doing.  Millennial film and television directors have taken the shortcut.  They have not lived long enough to have studied film history.  They feel as if the hand held camera is free to roam whimsically, like an epileptic filming hat could be beautiful moments.  Why must the camera shake?  It makes me feel like I have Parkinson's.  Rather I would like to view the scene from the stability of a sane person with no angst.  Let the camera sit.  I have wandered again, and although I am suggesting that a thorough study of the Humanities is necessary for integrity, my premise of this blog entry was to criticize academia.  (and not with sour grapes)  Premise:  Ash Carter is a noted academic and scholar.  Ash Carter was the most recent Secretary of Defense.  Who is the better choice for America's Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, a noted academic and scholar, or a tough-as-nails military officer?  I say the latter.  After reviewing the Obama years it occurred to me that academic has become a problem in America.  Not only is it now a dinosaur, it has it fingers in the pie, America's pie.  Academia has become so powerful through tenure, and so weak because there are no jobs, it is gobbling up huge amounts of America's pie.  Obama went to some Ivy League schools.  This ensured him enough clout to enter the American political system, like most systems in America, is controlled by influence.  Influence cannot and has not run a country.  That is why Donald Trump is president.  

Clinton Folly and Humanism

It would be nice if the Clinton Camp would take a lengthy vacation.  They could go to Acapulco.  If they traveled incognito maybe even George Soros could not find them.  They could drink Margaritas on the beach.  (not Acapulco Bay like the song says.  It is pretty polluted.)  Are their any white sandy beaches left on the Pacific?  If the Clintons took a nice long vacation, then maybe the remains of the Democratic Party could concede defeat in the presidential election.  As it is now we must listen to them whine nightly.  This is what politics has become in America.  Mudslinging.  It was inevitable I guess.  Jerry Springer, a former mayor, sets the example each day on network television.  How can American ideals remain pure, as the country changes so much?  This is the fundamental question that has been posed.  What has changed?  The answer is simple.  Them Internets.  When personal computers existed in labs at universities, they were regarded as a tool of academia.  Them Internets began as a connecting of data bases facilitating the development of the nuclear bomb.  It was academic.  Connecting scholarly data bases is a good idea for research.  Connecting personal home computers for the pirating of music is not.  Napster did it anyway, and shortly thereafter a thriving music industry in America died.  It was not a lengthy death.  As soon as adolescents realized you could pirate MP3's for free, it was over.  When an audio track, now an audio computer file, became available for download for free, America decided buying CD's no longer was a reasonable idea.  Paying a premium price for a studio recorded musical project became the butt of the joke.  Juggling digital music became a jubilant and rebellious practice for the youth of America. I was included to a degree.  I purchased a few recordings from iTunes, but after I realized the price was the same as buying a higher audio quality CD, I stopped.  If you buy the CD, not only do you have the CD to which to listen, you can import it onto your personal computer and then upload it to your iPod.  The consumer wins with multiple copies of his purchased music.  I don't know what the rules are today.  Apple at one point securitized their offerings, so you could not share them.  As a consumer and as an American the idea of owning my purchase seems reasonable.  We are a Capitalist community.  If I buy your album, it is mine.  The music is of course by the band, from the songwriters, and produced by the record company.  They all should get their cut from my purchase.  These terms have been thought out and well implemented for decades when the American music scene flourished.  Radio, both AM and FM, was a part of it.  Many people benefited from this system.  The system we have today only a few people benefit.  The system in America today benefits only a few, and these few are the influential cyber captains who have forged Internet commerce.  Them Internets.  This is what has changed in America, and while buying gifts from Amazon and eBay is enjoyable, undercutting large portions of the business community with piracy is criminal.  ASCAP is at war with Congress over digital copyrights.  Our federal government, incumbent, senile, narcissistic walking anachronisms continue to castrate American culture.  Pulling the strings of course are puppet masters which continue to escape public scrutiny, Rupert Murdoch being one.  Our media has become one large spin machine, literally a Big Brother, and these beings laugh and take our money.  If society as a whole decides to exploit our youth rather than educate it, there will come a time (now) when the mieda hits the fan.  Every major television network exploits the new arena of social media.  Should television news journalism have demeaned their craft for popularity?  Here is another fundamental question in America.  If talent and integrity openly and knowingly are sacrificed for popularity and this money, what remains?  With no one to monitor society, without religion or honest government, who will assure that American Capitalism will not destroy itself or be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah?  God is not happy.  American popular culture, mainly Facebook and iTunes, by sheer force have thrust their eager penises into our lives.  Their presence has unseated traditional norms like broadcast news journalism and the music industry.  Youtube, Google, and Amazon have thrust their eager penises into the art world disguised.  No matter how shiny, no matter how sparkly, and no matter how appealing immediate gratification is created by online media, it cannot replace the traditional arts.  The shortcuts that iMovie, Garage Band, and Photoshop offer us cannot and will not substitute for a thorough study of any discipline including broadcast news journalism.  The Voice, America's Got Talent, and Dancing with the Stars are entertainments.  They are entertainment offerings in the reality TV arena.  They exploit, embrace, and champion amateurism.  Tabloid news then capitalizes on their failures in the public eye.  It is very Greek, and yet the Greeks invented the humanities.  The Greek culture created and recognized areas of study which would ensure the human race an existence of integrity. No matter how hard they try, Internet commerce never will replace the traditional humanities.  Only unless we as a race decide we no longer want to be human.  

Fake News

It is interesting that "fake" news has been in the news.  After America's presidential election all I seem to see is fake news.  Rather it is not fake.  It severely is politically biased.  Sometimes it is erroneous stemming from the partisan desire to slander the political enemy.  While national news coverage of the Trump transition has been unbiased, Internet news and social media have shown their true colors.  I do not take the newly elected president too seriously.  If one did, it could be a descent into severe depression.  Today society, with its state-level legislative shenanigans, makes it difficult enough to find hope in America.  Instead I choose to see Donald Trump as a catalyst for real change in American government.  His triumph over the Democratic party has pointed out to me that the democrats and what they now represent are a large part of the problem.  I find his associations through the Trump businesses and brand to be refreshing.  I know that Vladimir Putin highly is not popular with the outgoing Obama Administration.  Clearly I remember Ronald Reagan's success at ending the Cold War and bringing down the Berlin Wall.  These were major achievements in civility, and having Russia as an ally, not an enemy, allowed the decade of the l980's to flourish with creativity, artistry, and peace.  I prefer to remember this relationship with Russia with Mikhail Gorvachev at the helm.  Although Vladimir Putin was the head of the KGB, I will not incriminate him without evidence more than hearsay spread by malcontent and petulant Internet news agencies.  I do not see the preexisting relationships an oil tycoon has with Russia as counterproductive to State Department policy.  It points out to me that government in the last eight years has failed to function even with Barack Obama at the helm.  While I do believe the execution of Osama Bin Laden and the passing of the Affordable Care Act were notable accomplishments, our federal government did very little to help Americans during his tenure as president.  This is one reason why Donald Trump was elected.  Frankly I find his views to be refreshingly anti-establishment, and our American federal government replete with narcissism, senility, and dysfunction needs to be shaken up.  It is happening, and it is good.  When I hear incumbent lawmakers complain that Donald Trump brings a savvy business perspective to Washington, what is wrong with that?  What is wrong is that Washington has been fleecing the America people for way too long.  It is brilliant that Trump thumbed his nose as Boeing and their padded federal contract.  It is brilliant that Trump thumbed his nose at Lockheed Martin with their inflated prices for the F-15 fighter.  Could five hundred billion dollars even be possible?  The best metaphor for Washington's ability to govern effectively is suggesting we spend tax payer's dollars investigating Russia's influence in the election.  The best metaphor for local government is spending seventy-five thousand dollars to pay for a study to see if an arts center is a good idea.  Government has been operating this way squandering real money for too long.  If a small percentage of tax payer dollars actually were spent for the appropriate things, America could be positive again.  Instead we must rise each day and observe our crumbling infrastructure, incapable Congress, and mongering corporations take money from those less fortunate.  Truly America has become a Third World Country. 

The America America has Become. Entertain Mindlessly. Do Not Educate.

When music no longer communicates an opinion, a feeling, or an idea and resolves itself only to entertain for money, then we have failed our children.  

The Orchestra That No Longer are There

Yesterday I ventured into the woods for the first time in many weeks.  (I don't like being heckled by the neighborhood children.)  There only is one really, but the experience was enough to cut short their enjoyment.  If a child is stupid enough to yell taunts at a stranger in the woods carrying a chainsaw.  Well you get the picture.  That is not a very smart drink of water.  I realized this later, but then working in the woods is my therapy.  I used to enjoy working in the woods, cutting trees, pulling vines, and trimming brush.  It was more visceral than working in your yard.  It is a bit Boy Scout.  It is a bit military.  It is a bit "man."  Working in the woods many men do in the American South.  I'll bet they do it everywhere in America.  I'll also bet many men who do this may be considered "Radical Militants" by their communities.  They are not, and neither am I.  I just am not a pussy.  I like wielding an ax.  I also like swinging it into an aberrant rotten tree blocking my trails. An ax is and always has been a useful tool, but useful tools today in America are smart phones, Bluetooth speakers, and ?  An ax is "Old School."  Geez, we are getting so ignorant, naive, and pubescent in America it will not be long until our entire historical culture may be lost.  I'll call it Generation Pussy.  Kids todays are pussies.  It seems the people in my neighborhood are afraid of "the guy in the woods with the chainsaw."  Is it that uncommon to see a man cutting fallen trees in a patch of woods in a neighborhood?  These kids have overactive imaginations, because they life they live is pathetic.  It is pathetic, because systematically we as a nation have purposely neglected the upbringing of our youth.  Instead we have capitalized upon them.  We have exploited them.  We have indoctrinated them with wuss.  It is the America America has become, and it sucks.  Each day I read the news in the Fayetteville Observer or online the same unconscionable theme appears.  How is the state government in North Carolina taking advantage of her citizens?  First what must be jar-headed Republican politicians re-draw the boundaries of voting districts to favor themselves thinking no one will notice.  A federal court noticed and not only demanded a fair and unbiased redrawing of the boundaries again, but rescheduled the election for this November.  All politicians elected with the new boundaries must be voted for again.  I could go on.  Those property owners whose real estate was taken with imminent domain for the building of I-295 have not been paid.  The DOT under McCrory's watch built an impressive entrance to Fort Bragg, the home of Ground Forces Command, and took the property of incumbent residents without paying them!  It took Yarborough a class action lawsuit to make the state fess up their money.  Meanwhile if you see fit to carry your refuse to the city dump, you will pay $20.00 for the privilege of dropping it off there.  You are not rewarded for cleaning your property.  You are penalized with a fee, while you drive your vehicle up a dirt mound and unload your garbage yourself.  I would say the state of North Carolina is in dire financial straights.  What's new?  These practices have crept into government and corporate government since George W.  We are a scourge of a nation.  While I can laugh off these scenarios like I laugh off the condemnations of our newly-elected Commander and Chief, I can't laugh off the recent performance in Chapel Hill of Wynton's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.  How can I say what I am going to say without getting sued for defamation?  Tell the truth, brother, and only two percent of the American population even know what jazz is.  Swing Wynton called it at their Saturday evening performance at Memorial Hall.  I first heard the band Spyro Gyra at Memorial Hall in l981.  It was the most enjoyable concert I have ever seen next to the Turtle Island String Quartet.  I had an instinct, that I would not enjoy this ensemble, because anything that has risen to the ranks of "Lincoln Center" must be contemptuous.  How could jazz, a music that rose from the brothels of New Orleans, be heralded by Lincoln Center?  There is a chasm between orchestral music and jazz, while there should not be.  It is an accurate metaphor for the chasm between the Left and Right in America today.   I will elaborate.  Jazz never has been mainstream music in America.  It is considered to have been popular during World War ll.  With the doldrums of war upon us, regular American folk liked to escape reality by dancing to the Glenn Miller orchestra.  The Jitterbug and the Lindy Hop were appropriate vehicles for adolescent sexual tension.  Them internets are fucking up.  While teeny-boppers did dance to swing music back in the day, Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor always have prevailed as chosen artists for lackluster conformist Americans.  Jazz after all was considered "devil music" by the Nazi's.  Anything that represented freedom of expression and individualism during the Nazi occupation of Germany was outlawed.  It is called Communism.  Unbelievable we are experiencing a similar oppression in what now has become America.  I bristle at the notion of calling America American anymore, because we are not the same country we have been.  We are not the same country we have been, because how can the eldest statesman of jazz champion an ensemble that consciously does not at least try to swing?   Wynton Marsalis, the most known and respected jazz artist of our century sat at the helm of an orchestra that knowingly played the "pop" rhythmic style rather than traditional swing.  (and he called it swing)  This is a prickly pear, and one about which I have blogged for years.  Ninety-nine percent of American won't be able to tell the different.  To boot those ninety-nine percent are to whom the Marsalis band is kowtowing.  Jazz is dead in America, and Wynton voiced that publicly.  He said if you wanted to continue to work in the field of jazz, you better do what the people want.  Hence "Pop."  What's the difference?  How actually can you play swing in pop style?  It is not that easy by the looks of the players in the Lincoln Center Ensemble.  None of them moved.  None of them grooved.  None of them show an ounce of rhythm in their bodies as they played this so-called jazz music.  I never have seen anything like it.  It felt like I was sitting at the most square, white boy, classical recital in history.  They were afraid, uptight, and not having fun.  In addition when it became apparent that it was obvious the band was not swinging, they attempted to Uncle Tom an impression that they were.  Can anyone believe I am saying the name Wynton Marsalis and Uncle Tom in the same sentence?  Miles wouldn't have it.  He refused to "Uncle Tom."  His turning his back to the audience when leading the band lead to heartfelt outcries that he was insensitive the needs and desires of the audience.  This band abandoned the key concept of swing music, and watered down their music for the ignorant populace that has become America.  I won't explain it again.  Pop is not swing, although cruise ship and Broadway bands including the SNL band continue to mock the religion of music with a practice that is sacrilege.  I may be no Adjunct Faculty at North Carolina Central University, but I can look at a rhythm section and tell how they are playing.  They are not playing.