The dharma of the crap gig

"Life is short." You hear that phrase bandied about a lot, but what's it mean?

To me it's part of a broader theory that considers life a constant self-improvement project. Never be "satisfied" with who you are and what you are doing, but, conversely, don't drive yourself crazy. Get "satisfaction" out of small things, from attaining goals and enjoying life, but (and here's the key) never slip into the complacence that "satisfied" implies. Keep striving to be better. Sometimes that includes shedding the crap that is dragging you down, while simultaneously emphasizing and enhancing the things that make life an exercise worth doing.

Music-wise, I am a little bored. I play in the best band I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of, but, on the other hand, dumb stuff clogs my musical arteries and makes me question the sense of the whole deal. An example:  we played a gig recently that was a wonderful, joyful, amped-up blowout -- for the 25 minutes we were allowed to play -- but it was in another city, far away, and I left my house for that gig at 5 p.m. and returned at 5 a.m. 12 hours for 25 minutes is not a fair exchange. It seems that the club had four bands slotted to play over 2 1/2 hours. Do the math. We all ended up with 25-minute slots, and that sort of thing can bring a guy down. Sleep is the single most import component of fitness, health and just plain old feeling good. "I'll sleep when I'm dead" was the mantra of Warren Zevon. He's dead. I don't want to be dead yet. And I don't want to lose that much sleep to play gigs like that.

This experience, along with others, has made me cranky, discontented and generally wondering whether this band stuff is worth it. I have learned from experience that when I get cranky and discontented, holding it in gets me nowhere. The only real change comes from speaking up.

So, does this mean I am quitting Mondo Topless? No. We all know that we are playing really well together, and, when it's firing on all cylinders, which it almost always is onstage, it's a great time. But, after a bunch of conversations about all of this -- in which, we learned (surprise, surprise) that I am not the only one who feels this way -- we've decided to take a little more care in what we agree to do. I am not going to name venues or cities, but we've played some places that we are not going to agree to play again. On the other hand, when we get an offer to play somewhere great that is a known quantity, or a new place that has potential to be great, we will gleefully do it, and sweat out the garage/psych/punk for you.

Part of this plan also involves a little break. After we play Reaction at the Sidebar in Baltimore -- a known quantity of awesomeness, by the way -- on Friday February 11, 2011, we are doing nothing band-wise for a few months. You know...recharge the batteries; if you love something, set it free, blahblahblah. I assume the result of those months off will be a burning urge to play music together and a renewed commitment to high-quality gigs that make that 12-hour-for-25-minutes tradeoff a dim memory of a mistake from which we have learned an important lesson. Onward and upward....

"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength; move on."
                            --Henry Rollins

25 years since D. Boon....

All over the web today, you will see a lot of Joe Strummer tributes, and deservedly so. Joe was a great musician and a great guy. But many of my thoughts today are elsewhere. D. Boon died 25 years ago today. Take a moment to remember the man. Ask yourself the pivotal question, "What would D. Boon do?" And never, ever forget that for a brief period of time, the Minutemen were the best band on the planet with the best damn album you (n)ever heard -- Double Nickels on the Dime. Then, if you're in the mood, you can go back and read my Minutemen tribute if you missed it the first time. Stop by here if you want to see a band ruthlessly attack two songs in under two minutes. Go here if you want to see six more detonated in under 12 minutes.  And then watch the trailer for the Minutemen documentary, "We Jam Econo," which is, not coincidentally, the best damn rock doc you (n)ever saw. I miss ya, D. I'll be playing Minutemen all day long, with brief Clash interludes, of course..

Christmas, hold the politics....

I like this time of year -- y'know Christmas time. I'm not a religiously-inclined person (but I'm OK with you whether you are or you aren't; in fact, I think everyone ought to be free to follow his or her own path in that regard without interference from anyone), but one thing baffles me -- people who get all wound one way or the other up about Christmas. Some of those people are followers of other religions; some are non-believers and probably some are liberal Christians who think that in order to accommodate every religious belief (or non-belief) we need to keep the foot of society firmly planted on the throat of Christmas so it doesn't get too, I dunno, Christmas-y? Others are really devout Christians who oh-so-sure there's an anti-Christian conspiracy out there trying to, what's the phrase, "take Christ out of Christmas" or something like that?

Look, at this point in history, particularly American history, Christmas is, from a public-policy/governmental perspective, a secular holiday. Governmental agencies, libraries, etc are all closed, and it's not because government is bowing down in homage to Jesus. It's because a whole lot of us, theists and otherwise, celebrate the holiday with family and friends and want a day off to do it. Yup, some of those people also celebrate for religious reasons; some just like hanging out with people they love and exchanging gifts. Whatever floats yer boat. What's more punk-rock than a little freedom to celebrate a holiday as just a holiday or, if you choose, a holy day?

So why do some people get so bent out of shape about either the phrase "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays," hmmm? May I suggest that both camps need to get a life? Very few (OK, none?) of the people wishing you, the non-Christian, a "merry Christmas" are in fact speaking code that says, "Have a great day (improperly) celebrating a Christian holy day (jackass)!" They are just wishing you a nice Christmas day, season, etc. That's all. They are being nice. They aren't implying that you do (or ought to) believe in any Christian tenets. Conversely, those who wish you, the devout Christian, a "happy holiday" are not secretly speaking in code that says, "Jesus is dumb. You are dumb. I hate Christianity. Why do you believe that stuff, anyway?"

Lighten up, kids, and just enjoy a great time of year. You could spend more time being nice to people that way, which would fit in well with the season no matter what you believe in.

Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

I like the idea; let's see if it has any impact at all

Nolabels.org
It's a fascinating concept. Don't lose your political point of view or your passion. Just lose the vehemence and anger. I'll be watching closely to see if it picks up steam because I certainly like the idea.

I do not understand the estate tax, Sam-I-am

Libertarian-ish types often get wound up about taxes. I'm not really one of those people. Sure, I like my taxes low, but I also get that there are many essential services to pay for. Unlike my liberal friends, I would consider replacing the income tax with a value-added/sales tax on consumption. Unlike conservatives, tax policy isn't the first thing I generally rail about. I never thought the Bush tax cuts in the middle of a war were a good idea, but, now that we are clearly still in an economic downturn, I can't see repealing 'em either. But, by and large, I am somewhere in the middle on taxes.

With one exception....

I simply do not understand the principle behind the estate tax, and, so, I don't think there should be one. Ever. Liberals get bent out of shape when you call it a "death tax," but that's exactly what it is. See, the estate tax is not an "inheritance tax." It doesn't tax the people who get the money passed on to them. Rather, it taxes the dead guy's (or gal's) money before the estate is ever split up. Literally the act of dying causes the feds to swoop in and say, "Before you start distributing that, give the government its share."

What?

I understand income taxes. You earned some money; pay your share. But how does dying constitute a taxable event? No money was earned by the dead guy (the estate) for dying. And the money was already taxed when it was earned. And, yes, I know that only estates over a certain size pay the tax (actually in 2010, no one paid, and that's how it ought to stay, but word is that the compromise currently being struck will have the feds taking 35% of every estate over $5 million), but unless your goal is federally mandated wealth redistribution (I think we can all guess how I feel about government having that sort of power), the estate tax is an abomination -- some sort of atavism to the days when the king came riding through to take his little (or not so little) bit of everything.

It's theft, plain and simple.

So, don't get sucked in by the (Sen, I-VT) Bernie Sanders-ish types of the world who include the reinstatement of the estate tax in their laundry list of Things That Have To Happen To Achieve True Justice. That's crap, complete crap. A government that can take anyone's money for the simple act of dying is a government that has way too much power.

CrossFit...more proof that it works

I've previously gone all blahblahblah on you on the wonders of CrossFit as a fitness system, but yesterday I learned, once again, just how good it is. See, I used to be a runner years ago, but the daily grind really wore me down. Once I hit my forties, my joints were always sore and the repetitive-motion injuries that daily distance running was causing me were simply not worth it. Eventually, I started doing anything but run -- ellipticals, stair climbers, whatever. Then I started doing CrossFit, ditched all the old gym routines and went whole-hog with their integrated system of strength training and metcons that involved all sorts of fast, intense intervals of rowing, sprinting, weights, etc. Yesterday it paid off.

I ran the Haddon Township, NJ Turkey Trot, and, as an experiment, did absolutely no distance running beforehand other than ordinary CrossFit training, in which the longest "distance" I ran was one mile consisting of 4x400m as part of a larger metcon workout. The last time I ran as far as 5k before yesterday was the Warrior Dash on October 10 of this year. OK, in the interest of full disclosure, I should make clear that, when training for that race (i.e., the Warrior Dash back in October) I once ran 4.5 miles, and once ran 5k, divided up into 12-400m runs separated by pushups, pullups, lunges, etc., but, still, in the last year, prior to yesterday, I'm sure I hadn't run more than 15 miles total for the whole year, and it's probably more like 10. Just CrossFit, baby.

And it worked out great. I was never a speed demon, and I haven't run a 5k in years, but I still came in at 22:57 (or, if you believe the stupid chip timer that didn't work right, 23:02), which is less than a minute slower than a 5k that I ran when I was eight years younger and, most importantly, running all the time. And I know I could have run faster yesterday, but I held back just a little because the course was so badly marked that I never saw a one-mile or two-mile marker and was vaguely freaked out wondering how far we'd gone. So anyway, whoo-hoo CrossFit! You made a non-runner like me run almost as fast as when I was a daily runner. And I am not nearly as sore. Nice.

"It would all be so much easier (and nicer, and, yes, higher quality) if we controlled things for you...."

This past week, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), told us how much more "quality" news there would be on television if only the FCC would assert its regulatory self and take FOX News and MSNBC off the air, presumably for the crime of being too opinionated for a "news" channel. Jay apparently is pining for a bygone age of Cronkite, et al, which is fine if all he's doing is pining, but suggesting that the government ought to step into the speech wars in "our" best interest is tantamount to a full-on assault on the First Amendment.

I'm not a FOX News guy at all; I watch a little MSNBC, primarily "Morning Joe" because I think Scarborough has a reasonably accurate finger on the pulse of the independent vote in this country (you know, the one that controls national elections that you might have heard me mention before). But I will go toe-to-toe with anyone who wants to strip either of these channels of its respective right to broadcast. I don't care how "faux" their "news" is. I understand -- it's political opinion under the guise of "news." I get it, but it's still political opinion -- the very thing the First Amendment is intended to protect, no matter how noxious, dopey or otherwise offensive that opinion may be. The mere notion that a sitting U.S. senator could conceive of trying to put a sock in the mouth of a TV network under the guise (or even the honest goal) of "protecting" us or raising the "quality" of news is enough to make me quite certain that I don't want to see that senator hold his or her job for very long, regardless of party affiliation.

If you want to read more about this flap from the perspective of a Denver Post columnist, go here. If you want to be not surprised at all that Jay Rockefeller is trying to regulate cable news content, go here and learn that he's been at this sort of thing for a while now.

Mogwai Fear Nothing

Last night, I sat down with a freshly-bought copy of Mogwai's Burning movie. It's a 48-minute, black and white concert film spliced together from a three-day run the Scottish (mostly) instrumental quintet did at the Music Hall in Williamsburg, Brooklyn back in April 2009. The easiest way to get it is as a bonus DVD disc to the recently-released live CD Special Moves.

It's taken me a little while to reach this point, but, holy jebus, Mogwai is good at what they do. And the movie enhances every aspect of their considerable attack. My initial thoughts on the band were formed a few years back when I bought a couple albums, liked 'em fine, but dismissed them a bit as just another band working a loud/soft thing. Well, yeah, they are "working a loud/soft thing," but they clearly are not "just another band,' and there's a lot more to them than loud/soft -- particularly just enough rhythmic complexity to be interesting as hell without lapsing into proggy King Crimson-isms (not that I don't have an occasional weakness for those, mind you).

Burning takes all of that rhythmic and dynamic tension and ups the ante with wild/weird/closeup camera angles that start as disorienting and distorting and end up placing the viewer not merely in a front-row position, but onstage, up-close and personal. As a drummer, I particularly gravitated to the many shots that hovered just inches above a ride or hi-hat cymbal, or occasionally backed off just enough to give Martin Bulloch the chance to thrash and pound with precision, all seemingly only an arm's reach away from the camera.

You feel like you are in the band at many points of this film ... like on the super-quiet bit of "Mogwai Fear Satan" where the band members exchange knowing glances, after which feet tap pedals and the world of near-silence disappears into a cataclysmic explosion of sound and light. It is awe-inspiring.

And the pacing of the film could hardly be better. Things start slowly and deliberately with "The Precipice" and "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead," falter ever-so-slightly with the only vocal song in the film, "Hunted By a Freak," and then take off, never looking back, and barely breathing for air, with a five-song run of "Like Herod," "New Paths to Helicon, Pt1," "Mogwai Fear Satan," "Scotland's Shame," and "Batcat" that left me reeling.

Interspersed throughout the between-song bits are shots of the area around the venue, jarring the viewer even more by quickly jumping back to the onstage closeups only seconds later.

It's an amazing movie, maybe even the best pure concert film I've ever seen, and it has me just a little sad that it's still five months until these guys come to Philly. I already have my tickets, and I suggest you get yours.


VIDEO LINK 1 -- "Batcat" live (not from the movie)
VIDEO LINK 2 -- "Batcat" promo teaser from Burning film (so much better than Link 1)
VIDEO LINK 3 -- "Mogwai Fear Satan" (not from Burning film, but shot by same guys who made that...from a concert in a cathedral in France)

Oh yes....

I love this so much, and I am about to go watch the full-length movie. Report to follow....

A Democrat's guide to whom you should really really fear in 2012

I have a lot of lefty/Dem friends. And a lot of them think all Republicans are an equal threat, politically speaking. (OK, almost all Republicans; I don't know anyone who genuinely fears Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe).

When I say things like, "Oh come on, there are a lot of different kinds of Republicans. You shouldn't be equally afraid of all of them," I feel like they aren't buying it. A quick look at the potential GOP presidential field for 2012 tells me that they reject my advice on this topic at their own peril.

And look, I realize that I am not sympatico with some of the goals/means of the Dems/left. For instance, I think the current level of spending is wacko, the deficit is too high, and the government needs to permanently stop taxing everyone for the act of dying (i.e., the estate/death tax and, I know, that's a topic for another post). On the other hand, on the personal-freedom front, I'm generally with you, my Dem friends. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, and generally think the government should spend its time doing something other than telling people what to do with their personal lives. Hell, I'm even registered in your party, if only because that's where I started and if I register as an independent (which is really what I am) I'll lose the right to vote in a primary.

So, while you may not think there'd be a hell of a lot of difference between the various potential GOP presidential candidates, I'm here to tell you, as someone who believes in at least some of what you believe in, that there is.

Let's start by reviewing the potential 2012 GOP field, and then quickly narrowing it down to the ones who could actually get the nomination and then, of those, the ones that could actually win the presidency by defeating President Obama, and then, finally, of those, we'll talk about whom you should be really genuinely scared of.

The field:

Mitt Romney

Sarah Palin

Mike Huckabee

Tim Pawlenty

Newt Gingrich

John Thune

Mitch Daniels

Rick Santorum

Gary Johnson

Ron Paul

Haley Barbour

Chris Christie

Mike Pence

I'm going to discount Pence right off the bat as not really running. It seems pretty clear that he's going to run for governor of Indiana, not president. Paul and Johnson (I will digress for a moment and tell you that I really like much of what I have heard from Gary Johnson) are out because their libertarianism is too socially tolerant to get them nominated in the current GOP. I also think that, practically speaking, Thune and Barbour wouldn't stand much of a chance in any sort of crowded field, and, let's face it, the field looks crowded. Plus, this post is about whom you Dems should really fear, not who might make you a little queasy on the crazy off chance he (or she) gets nominated.

So where's that leave us: with a potential GOP nominee named Romney, Palin, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Daniels, Santorum or Christie.

Next step....which ones of that crowd could plausibly beat Obama by capturing what I have already branded in another post as the crucial, election-deciding, center of the electorate? As I have previously discussed, I don't think Palin, Huckabee or Gingrich can win enough of the center to beat Obama. Take it from a centrist...Sarah Palin freaks us out; Mike Huckabee does too (albeit with more humor and smarts, but way too much social conservatism) and Newt Gingrich is like your mean uncle Myron who treats everyone like crap while simultaneously moralizing and visiting hookers. Newt has no credibility with the center at this point, and he seems like he'd kick you while you were down, steal your money and give you a lecture about compassion and the evils of theft all at the same time.

So...that leaves Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels, Christie and Santorum. Now, I don't expect my Dem friends to love any of these guys. Hell, I don't expect you even to like any of them, but let's be serious. You have much more to fear from one of them than the others. They are all fiscal conservatives, but only one of 'em is bent on telling you what to do in every aspect of your personal life.

Daniels? Hell, no. He's the guy calling for a truce on social issues. Christie? He hasn't mentioned a social issue in a long time either. Pawlenty? I am quite sure I don't agree with him on personal-freedom issues, but he hasn't struck me yet as a Bible-thumping demagogue. Romney? Frankly, I never believed him when he said he's anti-choice. He was governor of Massachusetts fercryingoutloud. And even if he is anti-choice, he, Daniels, Pawlenty and Christie have been hammering the economy and spending as the big issues for 2012. This isn't to say, my Dem friends, that you'd love any of 'em, but I don't see any of the four as moral crusaders bent on invading your bedroom.

No, that status is reserved for the guy who said, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery." Yup, Rick Santorum.

There are so many things wrong with that statement that the mind boggles, but let's focus on just two. First, it equates consensual same-sex relations with incest and polygamy. Second, and let's not lose track of this one...it implies that adultery ought to be illegal. Did you catch that? I realize that adultery is on the "bad" list of things you shouldn't do, but are there many adults who actually think it ought to be criminalized? Like, you know, people going to jail for it? That's our Rick. 

And he's a good campaigner and a reasonably smart charmer --  smart enough, in fact, that I think he's learned a lot from Pat Toomey's U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania: talk mostly about economic issues while quietly assuring your social-conservative pals that you are their man. The hangup for Santorum is two-fold -- he can't get the GOP nomination without winning Iowa (thereby leaping to the forefront of the field), where he can only win if he out-moralizes Palin and Huckabee, and then he may have positioned himself too far to the right, socially-speaking, to win the center in the general election. But, like I said, he's smart, and if anyone can pull off that trick, it's Santorum, not Palin or Huckabee. 

This is a guy who cannot help himself when it comes to moralizing. Where many of the other GOP candidates are focused on the economy, he is quick to tell you, "If all the focus is on spending and taxes, I think we miss the whole picture. There are great concerns about where America is going not just on the economic front." That's code for: "I am dying to tell you what to do and not do in your personal life." And his PAC can't help it either. Right there in the list of what he thinks are pressing issues in 2012: "We must protect those who are the most vulnerable." In case you aren't clear on this point, that's more code-speak. He's not talking about helping out any actually already-born Americans; I can assure you that. Santorum also supports the teaching of intelligent design in public schools and has called life-saving/changing stem-cell research: "the wholesale destruction of human life paid for by the federal government." Really, Rick? Thanks for the hysteria.

In fact, I like to think the "can't help himself" part of it will be Santorum's downfall. Let's not forget that Dems just held a Senate seat in Colorado by exposing GOP candidate Ken Buck as too socially right-wing for the residents of that fine state.

So there you have it my Dem friends. None of these guys are with you on economic issues, I realize, but, on the personal-freedom side of things Rick Santorum is a frighteningly electable cut above (below?) the others in terms of his burning desire to legislate morality at the federal level.  I don't come close to sharing your fear of all Republicans, but, if you're smart, you'll at least learn to fear some of them more than others when it comes to 2012. President Santorum ought to be a very scary prospect, indeed.