saturday night not-quite-live

i've been setting my tivo to nbc for 11:30pm every saturday night for as long as i've had the thing, and though the pickin's can get mighty slim some weeks these days, i've never been disappointed by seth meyers, and every once in awhile someone from the rest of the cast will pull off a keeper that keeps me coming back, just in case. (armison/obama detenting with forte/jintao alone a few weeks back redeemed the last two seasons). the downside is that "a local anesthetic", broadcasting around that same time, and featuring tons of local musical talent every week that would otherwise make recording it a no-brainer, always gets pushed off.

attentive readers will note that a re-broadcast of every week's show takes place the following friday at 11pm and might wonder what all the difficulty might be, but extra-attentive readers will then realize that the rebroadcast takes place on channel 95 which doesn't have its program information mapped out among tivo's program listings, so there's no easy way to tell the thing to grab the feed...

fear not, intrepid local music fans--tivo does have the ability to turn itself on and off based on the time of day--it's just not that easy to make it work. lucky for me i'm handy with electronics, though, of course, this means you're going to have to hear all about the results... (sorry).

in the meantime, i've been fortunate enough to come by dvd's of the first set of episodes, so i'll try to bring everyone up to speed in case they missed 'em when they aired. show #1 i just finished, and from the opening/closing lowell classics "city of lowell" and "homeless guy" by the reverend justin (jj) burns, to a classic live take of melvern taylor's "sleepy eyes" with his fabulous meltones, (which was the highlight of the show), it's all good. there's some live mayhem from "audrey can't die" (including the misuse of an oversized paddington bear, but i can't say more lest PETA get involved), and some extremely rough takes from the principals of "supa dupa", paula and barry, who came out on the wrong side of some unfortunate vocal mic levels but still found a way to make it work. my other favorite bit was from elizabeth lorrey (of the rafters) doing her angry l-word thing on "blood on the state house". not so much some of the rest of it, but that's the beauty of a show like this, much the same as saturday night live. you win some, you lose some, but if you use your DVR to get it, you can use your DVR to fast-forward through the bits you don't like as much, and it's all good. (i have no idea what fred fest is, but i'm guessing it's one of those "had to be there" fest/shows, where kids pen and perform originals built out of riffs that are essentially smoke on the water, and everyone just mills around in case something good happens...)

but anytime there's even 5 minutes of melvern the sum total is always redeemed as far as i'm concerned, and if you don't believe me, i've got the 5 minutes of video here to prove it.

"sleepy eyes... don't close those sleepy eyes..."

how deep our BS grows

headlines today are crowing about the recent "5.7% growth" in our economy, and that it's apparently our best rate since '03. of course, this is absolute and total BS but somehow this simple fact isn't making it into our headlines.

the change in the pace of business inventories shrinking (from almost 150 billion in Q3 to a mere almost 50 billion in Q4) contributed over 3.4% of the total "growth" that is being reported. (wait til valerie bertinelli finds out that the fact she lost 15 pounds last month but only 5 this month means she gained 10--she's gonna flip). basically, things crept along at 2.2%, but you'd never know that if you only read the headlines.

actually, for the whole of 2009, our economy SHRANK at a rate of 2.4%, which is the most precipitous decline since 1946.

half-full, or half-empty? you can decide, but the recent authorization by congress to borrow another 1.9 TRILLION us dollars is what has my head spinning these days. ($6000 for every man, woman and child in this country). care to guess what the debt service will be on that? on top of the trillions already borrowed to "stimulate" the shrinkage of business inventories? (as opposed to actually trying to get people re-hired...) where would you be right now if you owed another $6000 on top of all your other bills right now? (oops, that's not a rhetorical question...)

at these rates, we're heading for a crash that'll make this mortgage kerfuffle look like a walk in the park. basically, the only way we're going to be able to afford to pay all this "stimulus" back is to devalue our currency, or, most likely, to have it devalued for us by our creditors. the results of that, if you aren't savvy to the consequences, aren't pretty. it leads to a lot of people wheeling wheelbarrows of cash down to grocery stores to buy bread, though the grocery stores likely won't have any anyway.

our federal government is spending almost TWICE as much as it's taking in from taxes. are your taxes already high enough for you? think you could afford to have them almost doubled and still make your rent?

republicans and democrats have tag-teamed to screw this country but good. anybody who thinks one side can save us from the other hasn't been paying attention for the last 10 years. it doesn't matter who's on top anymore, they just keep spending MORE. bush started it in a HUGE way, and damn but if obama isn't turning out to be every bit the president his predecessor was, and more.

i hope your retirement portfolio is weighted carefully with non-us securities, that's all i've got to say...

beam us up, scotty

by way of background, let me first say that the original star trek was a forbidden pleasure of my formative years--we siblings each got a 30 minute per-week ration of prime time tv that could not be combined with other offers, so to speak, so the rules, if they were to be followed, never allowed for hour-long indulgences like star trek, the avengers, or i spy. (we weren't stupid, we knew it was because people kissed and/or beat up other people on those shows, but what could a kid do in those days?) well, of course, kids could exploit the permissiveness of relatives during visits, or take advantage of the don't-ask-don't-tell convenience of being over at friends' houses, so it's not like i don't know everything there is to know about the adventures of james t. kirk and his best friend spockie (not to mention emma peel and john steed and kelly robinson and alexander scott, but this isn't about them...)

but to get back to the point at hand, it is with a smirking case of "where have i seen and heard this all before?" that i read this morning that osama bin laden is blaming the US for global warming.

remember whenever jimmy k was stymied by an undefeatable foe? remember what he did to always win? yup, that's right. he always tag-teamed with spock and bones to propose a logical conundrum that would make the bad guys' computers go into hyperdrive and smoke and flash until they burned out on the ultimate illogic of it all. (tastes great... less filling... tastes great... less... whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk). so this morning we wake up to find out that our #1 arch-nemesis slash mountain cave bogeyman is not only still at large and saying mean things about us, but also that he's parroting back our rhetoric on global warming. can you just hear the back room state department slash department of homeland security soundtrack right now?

"osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in global warming... osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in..." whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk.

but do not for a moment think this one is about global warming. the evidence can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and that does NOT necessarily mean we aren't going to sweat to death on an arctic ocean beach in northern canada, just as it does NOT necessarily mean that it's all wrong just because al gore was the one who said it. (replay the previous paragraph replacing "osama bin laden" with "al gore" and you'll immediately understand why no republican can possibly believe in climate-change and will argue you to death about it regardless of what they ever might have thought about the evidence had they seen it first with an open mind).

no, what this one is really about is get smart.

you know, get smart? get smart, being a 30 minute show, was my first and always tv love, and love it i do with a passion that abides to this day. ("would you believe...") well, the antics of control vs kaos and don adams vs bernie kopell make just about as much sense to me today as our current efforts to wage our "war against terrorism" and it's public face, osama, and this latest spate of headlines just clinches it all.

think about it: you could raise a turn of the century person from the dead and say the word "anarchist" in their ear and watch the exact same nonsense occur in their eyes that turned the assassination of archduke ferdinand into world war one. or you could talk to any cold warrior you like down at the nursing home and whisper "communist" to get the complete 411 on what mutually assured destruction looks like. and we are absolutely just as ridiculous in the head with our bizarre obsession with the word "terrorist", and mistaking a band of organized (and deadly, i'll give you deadly) criminals with any sort of significance beyond that which should require nothing more than a highly-organized police action to track 'em down and put 'em in the dock.

no, instead we've gone control vs kaos bat-shit crazy and by doing so created a global movement of opposition to us that ultimately makes about as much sense together as "tastes great" vs "less filling". they hate us because they hate us. we may rationalize that we started out hating them because they hate us, but we've got to admit to ourselves now that we're so far into hating them for the sake of hating them that we've become caricatures of ourselves. it's even gone to the point that if one of 'em puts out a sound byte on global warming, we're even putting THAT on the front page.

puh-leeeeeeze.

osama doesn't know jack shit about climate change. actually, now that you mention it, most folks arguing against it here don't know jack shit about it either, other than they don't like the politics of the people who are insisting on the idea.

oh, yes, questionable study data makes for good headlines, but anyone who enjoys hanging out in banff and jasper provincial parks in alberta, canada as much as i do, and traipsing up to see where the glaciers aren't anymore on day trips in those big cat vehicles where they let you drink beer on the way, isn't exactly hard to convince that something is very, very different today than it was only a few short years ago.

the one thing i DO know is that osama is the last guy i'd think could have anything useful to say about it.

of course, my local paper wasted half its front page on some nonsense about a fringe political group representing barely over 10% of the electorate (i.e. the republican party) and the recent election that's now way over a week old, but i guess i've come to expect wasted newspaper space like that from being here these past couple of years...

"and... LOVING IT".

carl johnson at the blue mermaid--put this one on the calendar

carl johnson is playing solo at the blue mermaid in portsmouth, nh on saturday, february 6th.

writing a headline like this is, to me, like "red sox win the pennant". there's nothing more that needs be said.

of course, some of you still haven't figured it out well enough to follow his every public performance move yet, and i can only say, just like i say to my kids when they pass up lobster at summer cookouts, "more and better for me". but, seriously, unlike the lobsters, carl actually likes it when people come out and enjoy, so, do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself.

the blue mermaid is also a great room to simply have some great food and some great beer all by itself. the food is caribbean in style, and the food network taped there when it recently came by to sample the best tastes of portsmouth, so you don't even just have to take that from me. the tap beer, well, you can trust me as an expert about that--it won't disappoint, either.

the carpool arrangements are being arranged even as we speak, so don't hesitate to speak up if you have a mind to give it a go. it's something to plan a weekend around, and that's a fact. (the fact that carl's playing tonight at brew'd awakenings' open mic jam is just another bonus for those so motivated).

see you there!

prohibition

my last rant has me thinking...

prohibition in this country failed. alcohol, of course, with the possible exception of cigarettes, though i doubt it, causes more misery, suffering and death than any other single thing in our society, and stands tallest in need of some kind of better solution... but prohibition failed.

why?

well, first of all, the very act of prohibiting something strikes an elemental chord within us human beings, (if you've ever tried to tell a 15 year he can't go over to his girlfriend's house you'll know what i mean), and the result of that chord is absolutely that we want to do it, or, at the very least, insist that authority has no right to tell us not to. it's who we are.

the other very dangerous consequence is that outlawing something puts it firmly beyond any attempts to regulate it, and the obvious result of this becomes rum runners, drug runners, and, we all have to acknowledge, back alley abortionists, all of whom bring death with them as certainly as the extra profits for themselves they earn for running an illicit enterprise. (anyone believing in the capitalist system, but not in the inevitability of illegal drugs no matter how intense the war we wage against them is an idiot--the harder the stuff is to get, the higher the profits for getting it for people--it's CAPITALISM).

well, outlawing christians didn't work for the romans, and outlawing palestinians isn't going to work for the israelis, either, if you'd like my wager on the subject. and outlawing any practice that has been practiced for centuries one way or another isn't going to stop that, either.

i have the most respect for people who prefer POSITIVE steps to address something they prefer wasn't--not the carrie nations of the world who bust up bars and human beings with bibles and hatchets, preferring to force their way onto others who will not ever accept it, not least reason for which being they are attempted to being forced to. carrie, and her ilk, i'm afraid, did more to advance the cause of violence and alcoholism in america than even al capone, who was, when all is said and done, just a simple package trade man with a few trucks and various automatic weapons. (well, they threw al in jail for tax evasion--they couldn't even get him on the alcohol rap--and it did nothing to slow the flow of booze to those who would drink it since such only increases the danger-premium on the illegal spirits, and so it goes).

so we passed a law un-passing the law that said we couldn't drink, and the guy who can be argued who has done more to save us all from demon rum, the ephemeral bill w, stands alone at the top of the temperance pyramid simply helping people not do it of their own free choice and volition. i wonder what life might be like if we all bent our considerable energies towards solving problems in that way... cuz bill w has never, to my knowledge, suggested liquor should be illegal, or was wrong in and of itself. he just helps those to see another option, and live a life that respects it.

imagine a world where all the resources, people and energy fighting the people fighting the people were instead fighting to help the *other* people (you know, the ones with the problem in the first place?) find a better path.

nobody wants an abortion. nobody. it's as simple a truth as the truth that nobody wants to be an alcoholic. and when i see organizations like sylvia's haven having to scrape and claw for simple needs for needful women and their children, i am disgusted even more that millions might be considered to be invested in waging a fight over their heads that benefits NOBODY about some nonsense that isn't any of our business.

we can persecute, fight the persecutors, or we can help.

which one are you?

the current state of being anti pro anti choice

ok, since none of us here has a football team to talk about, we all get to talk instead about tim tebow and the latest attempt by a network to boost its ratings via exploitation of an emotional public issue. (nods to the newenglander). i say exploiting, because it's pretty clear by past years' censorship of other public policy landmine topics in favor of beer, car and penis-pill ads, that this year's downturn in available ad revenue has the network calculators running on a slightly different moral course.

the premise we'll all be fighting about is whether or not running an ad trumpeting the "values" of individuals not aborting pregnancies is a de facto attack on the "rights" of others not to not abort them. and i'm using the double double negative negative not because i'm chewing doublemint gum, but because this is what it has all begun to sound like to me, and i'm amazed that this fact, instead, isn't what we're insisting the debate should be all about.

like D's vs R's in our national politics, where ideas become "wrong" the instant they escape the lips of ones sworn opponents, regardless of sense or whether or not you yourself "believed" in them only a few short weeks before, (it's blackly comedic how the rhetoric arrayed itself for and against bailouts before and after the administrations changed from R to D, especially in light of the fact that the legislation passes no matter which way the bullshit is flying), the dueling "pro's" (life and choice) have succeeded in a polarized political death match whose only victims have become innocent women and children who aren't either asked or able to give an informed opinion. (if i hear even one peep out of any ridiculous assholes opining on innocence related to this post or ability to give opinion i'm gonna blackball 'em from commenting and present them as exhibit A as to why this whole question is all, ALL, so very wrong). nobody in this fight is pro anything anymore, and i'm beginning to wonder if they ever were. not pro life, (been keeping up on the murder trial in kansas?), and certainly not pro choice. (ever try disagreeing with anyone on either side of this?)

what the people in this fight are, beyond a shadow of any doubt, is ANTI the other side. (capital letters, so you know i mean it). tim tebow fans double-talking the "pro" side of saying that having babies is good, or, at perhaps, that having them is a valid "choice", need to admit it to themselves and to the rest of the world that the whole reason the ad is going on TV is abortion, plain and simple, and it has nothing really to do with having babies at all. not at all. which is why, of course, the other pack of rabid dogs that remains patently unwilling to rest as long as anyone anywhere is allowed to publically disagree with them about even one iota of their opinion, is into overdrive as if airing this piece of trite/tripe is going to imperil our entire american way of life. (it's not, not least reason for which that NOBODY in this country has a legal right to have an abortion--NOBODY. all we have is the right for it to be nobody else's business, though, of course, we all know how much respect THAT right gets these days...)

here's to harry blackmun and the simple truth that roe v wade is a PRIVACY ruling, not an abortion ruling. its very nature should make politicking in favor of sanctioning abortion, or prohibiting it for that matter, a misdemeanor crime or worse, and at the very least impolite upon which for others to comment that aren't the pregnant person and her physician.

want to disagree? IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

want to not have an abortion? IT'S NONE OF ANYONE ELSE'S BUSINESS EITHER.

want to have one? SAME THING--NOBODY'S BUSINESS.

and it shouldn't be yours.

so why are we in the middle allowing it to become an argument to the death??? (back to kansas again).

i think tim tebow and his mom are ignorant jerks if they think i give a damn what they think on this subject. (the only thing that could quite possibly change my mind about this would be their amending their script to talk equally as passionately about their belief that all women be given the choice *not* to remain pregnant as well, just as they were given the choice to remain pregnant, since, after all, we're all god's children and shouldn't be fucked with by others over something so important and so personal). yeah, right... of course, i think people who give tim tebow and his mom the respect of organized opposition are twice as ignorant as the tebows if they don't think that their opposition is EXACTLY what is calculated in the plan to air the ad. i'm not even thinking the tebows expected to get it approved, but were simply smug in the knowledge that asking for it would be enough to get on the front pages of all the papers.

and so here it is...

and here i am talking about it...

geez, i hate it when i'm so ignorant and stupid...

(which, ipso facto, has been proven beyond a shadow with this one...)

and fair warning that any comments about "federal funds" will be deleted too. i am so sick and so tired about how this all escalates--we pay for penis pills, for chrissakes. if we start figuring out all the things that shouldn't be paid for, i'm telling you right here and right now that this isn't the first one needing to be discussed, and, since it's my blog, it won't be discussed here. we can talk about being anti pro anti healthcare in another post...

MUSIC!!!

i'd first like to stop a moment and pay homage to animal, drummer fantabuloso from the muppet show, whose bit attempting to best rita moreno while she sings "fever" is one of the hottest music videos EVAH, ("mirame a mi como te hable"), who is the voice in my head exhorting us all to "MUSIC!!!" whenever i am feeling it like i am now. (you know, i am daily on the verge of buying an iphone just so i can download "the muppets animal drummer" and hear him/frank oz say/roar things like "ROCK AND ROLL!!!").

which is all to say that today, MUSIC is once again the word for the day, (though, when is it never?), and it's time to count down the minutes until tonight's open mic (though there's no mic--the room is so small and intimate no one ever needs such things) at brew'd awakenings, where it is rumored that carl johnson will be in the house with his resonator, and there's precious little more worth anticipating in a day than that. oh, sure, there are hours and hours of powerpoint hell to be endured until then, but what heaven isn't all the more sweet for the purgatory before it to underscore the difference?

toss arte kenyon on top covering zevon, and you have something a just world would find you paying serious bucks to see, but we're all lucky that we're living in the crazy kind of world where this kind of heaven is free to anyone and everyone with the good sense to just walk on down and be there.

you know i will.

the least of the east

there are only 2 teams in the eastern conference of the national hockey league who are sufficient distance from a playoff spot to be considered already out of it. (toronto with 44 points, and carolina with 41). zealous leafs fans may want to splutter that their blue-shirted lifetime of frustration are only 10 off the heels of contention, but here's where the math comes in to obscure the truth for all but the sufficiently numerate: though 54 points would put the leafs the same 1 point from a playoff spot as ny (islanders), tampa bay, atlanta and boston, and on the verge of a tie with montreal, ny (rangers), florida and philadelphia for playoff consideration, they still would have to pass not one but SIX teams in the process. or, put another way, if any one of six teams who already have at least 10 more standings points than the leafs doesn't falter, then the leafs still miss the cut.

that's some tough math.

it's tough enough on the four teams already possessed of 54 points, as each of them would need not only the additional point to put them into the big fat knot at 55, but they'd also need to bank on another three of their standings-mates to implode, along with at least TWO of the 55 pointers at the same time.

oh, dark days ahead for the hard luck bruins...

you knew this was going to be about the bruins the moment you heard NHL, right?

the only thing the b's have in their favor is as many as four games "in hand" over those ahead of them in the standings. perennial optimists will be tempted to calculate the mathematical potential of that (4 games times 2 points equals...) but anyone who has been watching the broons limping along lately (oh fer their last 4) knows that the downside potential of that (4 games times zero points equals...) and is currently looking at their canadiens tickets for the 2nd of march with turbulence in their stomach to match the lachine rapids. it's one thing to be on the outside looking in, and it's another thing to have to contemplate the possibility of ending 9th and it being les habs who kept 'em there.

fans of good old time competitive hockey, however, are pretty stoked at how much action is implied in EIGHT TEAMS being within a point of each other, from 6th place in the division to 13th. (i don't believe i've ever seen a standings logjam this close this late in the season in my lifetime, anyway). out west, only edmonton can be considered completely out of it, too.

here's to marc savard getting back this week, and putting the b's back on the right track!

livenation

some years ago ticketmaster automated the distribution of event tickets, and took with it a huge chunk of the market, not to mention out of the pockets of concert-goers with their niggling and ubiquitous "ticket fees". but a few bucks seemed a small price to pay to avoid standing in lines and getting duckets for the back of the house when you really really really wanted to sit down front, and we all rolled over on the higher prices.

today i'm looking at my elvis costello and the sugarcanes tickets for the orpheum theater in april, and trying to figure out how it is that we got heeyah from theyah...

livenation is disintermediating ticketmaster in a big way these days, and if you need any evidence as to the extent and efficacy of their rout, just take a look at the twelve dollar and ninety-five cent "ticket fee" livenation is charging (in addition to a $2 venue fee and unexplained fifty cents for "charity"), on a sixty-two dollar ticket. (that's over 20% to the livenation robber barons for running their little web ticketing widget, and adding absolutely no value other than that which accrues to a monopolist).

the business model is simple: pay off the big-name artists with cash bribes to book exclusively through livenation venues, then extort from the venues their livenation memberships to pay for the small part of it that's not recouped by charging the $12.95 ticket fee, to be levied on the backs of the poor saps (i.e. us) who might like to support the whole criminal enterprise with our attendance.

want to know what i think?

a few days later, i'm a classic case of buyer's remorse. if i could return these tickets and get my money back, i would. i've concluded that livenation is an abomination, and i'm nauseous to be caught enabling it. (and i love elvis costello more than i can say). livenation does abosolutely nothing (as in jack squat) to get more and better music out into the world--it's just extorting the popularity of a limited number of acts to corner the market on concert venues and then charge monopolistic fees for our misfortune. (yet more reason to be disgusted every time i have gone against my better judgment to see a show at the paradise, which, speaking of which, isn't nearly the rock and roll room that is church, which was a revelation when seeing jen kearney and the lost onion there last weekend--GREAT ROOM!!!)

yes, for the price of those livenation ticket fees alone, i'd could support half a dozen local acts at venues like the old court, gemstones, and the village smokehouse right here in downtown lowell, or church in boston, or johnny d's in somerville for that matter. (e.g. february 27th at gemstones, for $10, i'll be supporting speakermute at their cd release party, plus audrey can't die and air traffic controller).

fight the power.

screw livenation.

not for nothing, but melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones are free at toad tomorrow. (though i've heard rumor that carl johnson is bringing his resonator down to the free open mic jam at brew'd awakenings, so i may just have to rely on having seen melvern this past weekend to tide me over til the next toad show in two weeks...)

it's so easy to fill your life with great music--insist that the money you spend on it goes to the musicians. you'd be amazed at how many great ones will be happy to come out and play for you for the privilege.

claire finley and the lost onion

get your attention? ;-)

buh-leeeeeve me, it's every bit jen's band that you've always known and loved, and, let me be the first to tell you, jen was so on her keys and her vocals and her being jen last night that it would be unseemly for me to tell you just how much i loved being so close to her stage as to see it all, (and the last thing i would want would be to earn myself a restraining order saying any more than that about how i feel about it and her), but if you missed the jen kearney and the lost onion show at toad last night, then you, my friend, missed something truly special.

claire finley, it can now be said, is one year less the baby of the band since her birthday last weekend, but it sure looked like the birthday party still continued into yesterday evening, and i think i've never seen anyone having as much fun on stage as claire seemed to be having last night, with the only possible exceptions being carl and pete and mark and jen who got to play with her. every time claire hung that huge smile on carl's shoulder during his solos the music just started pouring out of him that much more astoundingly, (and if you've ever read my feelings on carl's guitar, you know how astoundingly that must actually be), and every time claire'd bounce her bass over and on top of everything pete was putting out he would come right out from under and then put everything completely over, and it was all WONDERFUL. which, of course, would instantly put the smile on jen's face yet again to hear her songs coming to such wonderful life all around her, and lift her and her voice and her keys up even higher, and it's all testament to what a great band can do with a great space when they're just playing because they love to. and these folks clearly love to.

wonderful.

audience members also were treated to the public debut of jen's newest song (whose title i did not hear announced, though i may have missed it in my euphoria) whose jazz arrangement is, even more than lucky charms, magically delicious. there's so much potential imbued throughout it that you know, as good as it already is, there's no sky limit to where it might be enabled to go, the more that jen and the band gets to work with it. imagine stevie wonder doing guest keys and vocals on a donald fagen / steely dan tune, and you'd have an inkling, but still not nearly the full idea of what jen has written and brings to life with her lost onion.

yep, i'm a lucky, lucky guy, cuz i was there. you can be too, every monday night at toad. special things are happening!

film at 11

some stories you know just aren't yours--today's paper of record's (nttmcb) coverage of high school girls bloodying themselves while fighting on the street while being video'd by their "friends" is such a natural for the mr mill city boys that i'm going to leave the whole thing to them for the details and commentary because i know i'm never going to be able to do the whole thing justice. but, suffice it to say, until they get around to it, you should absolutely run over to the sun's website and check it out.

the funniest part to me (yes, you knew already that i laugh at inappropriate things, right?) is that the fiscally (and consequently arguably morally) bankrupt paper was compelled to put the full color photo above the print-edition lead, whose font was even bigger and bolder than the one about the tragedy in shirley being covered by lisa redmond, who, if you want one man's opinion, still writes the best courthouse bylines in the business.

the whole thing, of course, consequently makes me feel more than just a little bit dirty, knowing that i'm the guy paying the subscription to enable the whole sensationalist circus. (i was going to say "this sort of journalism", but i think you'll agree the term doesn't quite apply here...) yup, it's news. nope, full color photographs of likely-minors on the front page isn't. (here's hoping somebody's parents raise a stink about it, because they'd be right). i have no idea who these newspaper yahoos are, or what they're thinking, but, quite often, it's obvious they're not, and i'm not just talking about the inane editorial content that occupies almost as much of the rag as the news these days.

on a better note, it would seem that peter lucas finally decided to spend a little of his bizarre-ly generous allocation of op-ed column inches on something and someone relevant to the area. (ex-state auditor joe denucci and his boxing days up here in lowell). i always liked joe--one of the rare honest guys on beacon hill for years, and you know the state misses that all the more these days.

dear barack

i hung out with an out-of-work carpenter last night, and today can't help thinking that a lot of that government bailout money for haiti might be well-spent sending a planeload or two or six or eleventy-seven of such folks down there for spring break with a container ship or two or six full of construction materials. we could house 'em in some of your army-issued quonset barracks down by the beach, and have the logistics guys give 'em three squares and some cash for the weekends in return for putting a few hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people who really need it back in some decent accommodations. on the flight back you could even hand out some dearly-needed bonuses for a job well done along with their regular well-earned and dearly-needed paychecks. best part for you is that i can't imagine anybody would be able to complain at all about that kind of policy, even for the yahoos with those crimson R's on their name badges.

what da ya say?

i'd be happy for you to steal the idea, and i wouldn't even want you to mention where you got it when you bring it up in your state of the union address--full credit to the guy who can make it happen.

being happy

now that i know what i'm going to say to her, i can leave the newspaper headline face up on the dining room table and move on to far better things...

being happy is something about which i've often told people i care about, that, in one man's humble life experience, one can never be completely unhappy with a ukulele in ones hands. this morning i know it to be more true than ever. (ignore at your own peril).

i'd also like to say that i do try not to brag in here unseemingly (though i know i fail miserably on a daily basis) about how lucky i am, but today i'm giving myself a complete free pass under the fully-rationalized heading that i'm simply trying to prove the uke admonition for the benefit of others. that, and take my figurative and literal hat off to a songwriter that never ceases to amaze me.

i have a collection of chicken scratchings on a piece of paper here that are but the faintest renderings of genius. they aren't even the actual threads of the song they represent, since they're just complementary pieces to something that is so much fuller and higher and better than just this, but they're all i have, because they're my part. (though, i can also say that, like epoxy, the whole only becomes the ultimate expression of itself when all the elements are combined, so such is never lost of all value...) and i follow them, in a way, when i am alone, like a blind man makes sense of the colors in his wardrobe. g major seventh... g flat minor seventh... g sixth... a suspended... then the a... then back to the g major seventh and g flat minor seventh only followed instead this time by a b flat major seventh and then an a minor... and then....

the D.

capital D.

the D so sweet it floods your brain like opium and insists that it be fed once again, from the top, only this time MORE...

i notice how the b minor and minor seventh chords play with the a in the verse before it's sent over to the e minor seventh that's not really an e minor seventh at all because it's purposefully given a suspension of that last b to substitute an a instead... (yes, you can’t possibly make sense of which i mean to be a chord and which is meant to be a note, but, trust me, you don’t have that long for me to try to explain it, even if i were to pretend that i myself understood it…) until maybe or maybe not a little b gets tossed in there before it moves on... to...

the full D.

the reason i notice all this is that the d chord in the verse is constantly being robbed of itself... first its very d is wrestled back to a c, while the f beside it gives up to a g, to make that a minor chord that always seems to be lurking just under the covers of everything. there are g's and g minors and suspensions of a's that simply dance all around the truth that the D is only for those who can find the patience and the art to wait for it... playing through all the changes... and here’s another a minor, because now you know you want it…

and in the final turn of the chorus, the b flat major seventh blows everything up until there can only be that a minor to save it... and you are now in love with it… that a minor.. but when your ears hear it... that a minor… that love that you found… that a minor that’s the result of everything that’s been taken away over and over again up ‘til that point… there's only one sound your whole world is thus tuned to hear, despite all that came before it... (bend that 7th...) (hold that strum...)

the D.

genius.

in my hands.

joy.

fathers' dilemmas

front page of the paper of record (nttmcb--nods to the mill city boys) is a brutal and gory description of a relationship gone bad, where, it would appear, (and i'm just speculating here, but i'll be happy to wager anyone on the eventual conclusions drawn from the proper police investigation), a 19 year old girl (yes, she's a young woman, but to a father, and i have no doubt whatsoever to HER father, she's just a young girl) died at the hands of a mortally violent boyfriend.

as a quick review, i'll point readers back to my open letter to those contemplating lethal domestic violence that carries my full opinion on the self-evident cowardice intrinsic in such an act. but, most of all this morning, i'm dumbfounded by the implications to me as i struggle to find the right way to raise a young girl who is destined to be, just like allison would have been destined to be but for those few short hours ago, an extremely accomplished, intelligent, beautiful and promising young woman.

i had a conversation with a worldly-wise and well-life-experienced woman this morning during which she repeated the standard admonition and observation that women, especially for their relatively smaller stature and lesser physical power, must always be "more careful" around men, but i wonder about two things related to such an opinion.

first of all, what really is "more careful"? she herself had been the victim of some pretty heinous physical violence in her life, yet she was also giving herself credit for judgment that has kept her, in her opinion, ultimately saved from winding up as a similar newspaper headline. i can only think to myself, especially in light of her experience of having been actually hit by lightning, that concluding from a coincidence that one has never won the lottery that one will never win the lottery denies the truth that, for better, in the case of the lottery, or worse, in the case of girls/women like allison and their new "boyfriends", once you hold that ticket in your hand, anything can happen. allison's ticket just happened to be named robert...

second of all, given that "careful enough" is quite clearly here more careful than "careful", and quite likely, observing the past observation about lightning and lottery tickets, even more careful than "more careful" on certain occasions, what does a father do to help his daughter grow up to enjoy her full life? i know teenagers well enough from having been one (not to mention raising two before her) that "don't" might as well be "do" when it comes to parental advice. it's most heart-rending of all for me to read the words of allison's family that "despite all our efforts, we were unable to convince alli of the danger she was in". i know they will always be in a state of acute anguish for the rest of their lives about it, and though i can not even fathom the first thing about what that anguish might be like, i feel the possibility of it in my gut this morning like a living thing, and i know i have to figure out what it is that i'm going to do, lest i be left with no possible way to live with myself in the case that the not-nearly-as-rare-as lightning of horrible tragedy finds its way to my family's door. (imagine allison's family's anguish had they not even said what they had to her before this happened...)

i know i must tell my daughter in ways that are useful to her that such cowards are mortally dangerous people, in addition to being merely dangerous people who will abuse and take without regard for anything but themselves in the name of their obsession. the yellow and craven selfishnesses will grow beyond all reason and bounds if they are let to, and all that my daughter's accomplishments, intelligence, beauty and promise will buy her are yet more tickets to increase that chance.

i know how it is--the smarter you are (or think you are) the surer you will be brought down by your own hubris to learn the truth about the way this world works.

i'm brought back to something i read in the bible, (that i will also point out is usefully found elsewhere lest we be giving too much credit to one philosophy/dogma over another), that one can know a tree by its fruits. i can recall my own brush with the ping pong balls of fate and having that moment of enlightenment, when i could finally add up all the negative things that had been brought into my life owing to my association with a certain person, (someone i met long before my ex, and let's be clear there's a huge gulf between divorce and "tried and tried but just can't ultimately find a way to live with" and "might possibly gonna kill or be killed by", and i'll tell you and the whole world right here and now i will always love my ex and never hold her to blame for any of my mistakes, but that's another long story that has nothing to do with this, or the crazy bitch we're talking about here), and see them for what they truly were--the fruits of the tree of that relationship...

a kiss to my ex for my children, and another to the forehead of a girl for whom i would give the entire contents of my world, and will at the end of my days. (provided she agrees to share them with her brothers--this isn't a gender thing).

if you have been brought down by your feelings towards, and, even more, the actions of, another, take another look at them, yourself, and that relationship. i've been divorced, and i'll still tell you that life it not intended to be that bad, or that hard. life is truly wonderful when you let it be, which is to say, when you do not interrupt that goodness with a perverse insistence to heap it full of someone who is ultimately toxic to you. but you must first WALK AWAY. no, not just "walk away" and then drunk-dial them again when you're feeling low, or hold a secret torch that wakes you up and night and makes you eat too many cookies from the bag of mint milanos you know you really ought to be putting down... no, you know you need to just walk away. walk away. as in, away. away from them and the part of you that can't allow itself to be happy, so insists upon staying with them. no, walk away and then TOWARDS something better, if if that better something is just yourself, secure in the knowledge that you deserve better.

because you do.

i know my daughter does.

i know more than ever i'm going to have to do all i can to show it...

exhibit i-can't-remember-how-many for why mr mill city is required reading

of course you might have tripped over this on youtube, or had it forwarded to you by a web-savvy friend, but it seems so very often i'm getting the good stuff from religiously reading the mr mill city boys over at mrmillcity.com, and here is yet another reason to put them on your required internet reading list so you never miss a keeper. (the stuff about rita, well, that's just gravy). and, believe me, this is a keeper. yeah, yeah, i know you're never supposed to make jokes involving hitler, but the captions here are just too inspired to let a little charlie chaplin moustache interfere with the fun. ("all of the newly elected 'blue dogs' please leave the room now" had me in stitches even more than the rest of it).

it's funny. and if anyone might be too liberal to think it's funny, then i'd say they're funny too.

click and enjoy!!!

http://mrmillcity.com/2010/01/22/against-my-better-judgement/

speaking of carpool information...

MFT (that's melvern * taylor if you weren't at the gaelic club back in the day when justin burns said it just often enough that it could catch on, and then, as i understand it, cuz i wasn't there at the time, about 1000 more times after that) is going to be at nick's in worcester on saturday night. his fabulous meltones, too.

i've done the nick's road trip a couple of times now, and feel confident in recommending it to any intrepid mill city music fans who are looking for something fun to do on a saturday night. the place itself is a classic, with victorian voluptuous oil paintings hung on the richly stained wood wallwork all around the velvet-curtained stage. the beer and the table service is top-notch, (you'll never have to wait for your next one), and the atmosphere tailor-made for a meltones evening. it's not even an hour away, and an easy on/off I290 with plenty of free on-street parking. you can't beat it. (AND, they have genuine german soft pretzels to go with your pilsner!)

do it!!!

because it's too much fun not to share

she's often betwixt bemused and befuddled at the various ways i (sometimes barely) acknowledge her here as a regular source of inspiration and great stuff, so today let's refer to her as the gawkah chick, and share with everyone her latest gem, courtesy of a great find by gawker.com.

first of all, who remembers digney fignus? don't worry if you don't--the GC (the gawkah chick--catch up!) and i recently ran through in conversation what we thought was an exhaustive list of boston bands from the heyday (resulting from having our ya ya's blown way out by treat her right a couple weeks ago) and even we failed to give the ever-smiling digney and his always party-friendly rock and roll the love. but back in the day, i have to say, digney was legit, and "the girl with the curious hand" was the radio hit that affixed him to the map. not that the song is all that, or even all that much, (just wait til you see the hair), but it's a way for those of us who were there to say AHHHHHHhhh, and know that we remember.

so, anyway, take a look at this, but don't just take a look for digney's sake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLvwc3W_KwM

there's an isley brothers song title that asks the question i want to ask you now that you've peeked at the video, but if i gave you the song title, i'd give away the aha moment. so watch the whole video. it's worth it. i promise. (and, no, not for some little bit at the very end that you might be tempted to skip to--it's all through the video, and you'll know it when you see/recognize it).

enjoy!

softly, so everyone can hear you

most all the rock bands you've ever heard never get the message on this one--sometimes people don't hear until it's turned down--until everyone in the audience leans forward, all as one, and all that there is becomes the music... (check out a duke robillard solo sometime...)

last night at ole, jen kearney and the lost onion (carl johnson, claire finley and pete maclean) put out a couple of sets that were as sweet as strawberry pie. it being a restaurant and not just a bar, i was able to sneak my daughter in past curfew (one of the perks of divorced parents the way she sees it) and she could hear it, too. (hi to the band, she says--thanks for the show). the band was looser, somehow, in a way that was, if i were to try to find words for it, more lithe, and expressive than even usual, even if it was quieter, and more down-to-earth that you'll see them rockin' most shows. maybe the restaurant wanted something a bit more "background", but what they got was something that was even more all-there-was.

the sound was beautiful. carl's blues jr was in the air like honey over warm bread, and claire's lines were expressive and clear and smooth, like a pat of butter right in the middle that's melted all across everything at the same time. pete's beats, held back as they so often were, were pulling people right up out of their seats with every hesitation, and jen's vocals were catching every nuance. it was a beautiful night out in downtown shangri-lowell.

word is that the JKLO show tonight at church in boston is going to be everything last night's was, and MORE. more 11. (as nigel would say). more party. (happy birthday at midnight tonight, claire!) more jen kearney and the lost onion.

it just doesn't get any better than this. (call for carpool information!)

points for liberals and conservatives to ponder

scott brown's acceptance speech ackowledging his debt to the groundswell of truly independent political support segue's well into his immediate public statements (covered well in the washington post) citing his votes in massachusetts in support of our state's universal health care legislation, and commitment to bi-partisanship in washington to achieve the same for the rest of the country. can't say it any more plainly than "i think it's important for everyone to get some form of healthcare". amen. not only did he say it, but it's also the way the majority of massachusetts voters of all affiliations see it, too, and i, for one, think it's great to know that we're sending someone to washington who represents us, and not just one narrow polemicized slice of the electorate.

but more than that, as liberals in massachusetts and elsewhere contemplate what it means for a bluest of blue states (the only one to stand up to nixon, for example) to send a red republican to the greatest deliberative body in our nation, i'm reminded of the very last man from here to sport that big republican R on his senatorial name badge: ed brooke.

ed brooke is forever noteworthy, much like barrack obama to the presidency, as the first african american ever to be popularly elected to the US senate. among his many tremendous accomplishments, and possibly, if i may be so heretical as to suggest it, more meritorious and effective in producing results than all that his junior senatorial partner, ted kennedy, ever could boast, ed first of all organized the "wednesday club" of (relatively) liberal republicans, which formed an extremely important working group for crafting bi-partisan legislation, such as the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which was signed into law just days after the assassination of martin luther king. even after LBJ left office and handed the national keys over to tricky dick nixon, brooke was pivotal in defending things like the EEOC and the Job Corps against nixon's attempts to erase them--thus effectively and resoundingly defending the legacy of LBJ's Great Society initiatives. ed also fought to defend title IX for equal educational opportunities for women. in '75 he waged a one man filibuster against a southern conservative democrat (who would now undoubtedly be registered as a republican) to gain passage of extensions to the Voting Rights Act. (THAT's the kind of things that can happen when a blue state sends a red guy to washington, and liberals shouldn't forget the importance of that).

but, most of all, for the really really liberal among us to contemplate, are ed brooke's positions on uber-conservative supreme court nominees like haynsworth and carswell. ed brooke was the organizer of republican opposition to these attempts to push the court beyond where the country wanted to go, and it's hardly a coincidence that the later of those two confirmations became harry blackmun, who, if it may be recalled, was the author of roe v. wade.

nobody, least of all me, will dare to suggest scott brown could do anything but carry ed brooke's luggage at this point in his career. but it must be considered that, as a republican, his voice to represent us in washington has the potential to carry extra weight in places where john kerry's big blue D simply cannot.

in the meantime, i think we should ALL continue to let scott know that we expect at least this much bi-partisanship of him. time may give him the chance to do more, and i think we all should give him that chance, too. three years from now he'll have to bring his report card home, and we'll all be able to ground him if he hasn't done a good job on his schoolwork.

all good, as far as i'm concerned.

do we even have a standard anymore???

lots of rightful indignation from the distaff set over the "centerfold doublestandard" this morning. ("if a woman had taken her clothes off...", and i trail off there because that's just about exactly the point where guys will forget everything they were thinking).

well, scott brown took his clothes off, and he's now the junior senator from the great commonwealth of massachusetts. ronald reagan was a movie actor, bill clinton liked to play with ladies who weren't his wife, and dubya was a draft-dodging alcoholic, to offer just three recent presidential examples.

no, they just don't make standards like they used to.

lest the wackos on the right try to make too much of this "values" stuff now that another one of their boys has made it into the club, and start to bloody your ears with rants about their usual "family" stuff all over again, you just tell 'em for me that scott brown's divorced parents, (you know, the family who raised the second coming of a guy whose first name begins with J), is likely FOUR TIMES better than theirs, since his divorced parents have EACH been remarried three times.

yep, i wouldn't make this stuff up: scott brown's divorced parents have each remarried three times.

so far.

yeah, that's family!

and tell me mitt romney isn't crying into his corn flakes

a friend brought up the mittster on the phone this morning, and i realized in complete agreement with her that, of all the people who lost in this election, martha coakely not least of all, it was definitely willard m. romney who may have lost the biggest.

just a few short years ago, the mittster had landed his "anywhere to get elected president" tour back in belmont, fresh from his "saving" of the salt lake city olympics, to try to build some blue state cred as the final puzzle piece of his now quite less-than-inexorable quest for the white house. (via taking the brief and a quite obviously-planned-to-be-temporary residence in the corner office at the massachusetts statehouse). when all that fell off the rails with the twin misfortunes of deval patrick ascending to his governorship, and john mccain outpolling him for the 2008 republican nomination, the mittster once again found himself "minister without portfolio", and desperate to try to hang on to whatever remained of his "but i can win in massachusetts" street cred.

and now enter scott brown:

* even more, if that's possible, telegenic than mitt (despite the ridiculous image of him buck naked in cosmo, scott wins cameras even faster than voters)

* actually born to a welfare mom, instead of to the manor (does anyone use the colloquiallism "to the manor born" anymore?)

* not the member of a commonly-ridiculed religious group (c'mon, mormon jokes are a late night tv staple, or can you name another religion besides scientology that gets joked about more?) but a nice white-bread protestant, with huge catholic cred for helping out the order of nuns next door, who "pray for him every day". (as you should know about me by now, i'm not making this stuff up!)

* the first republican senator from the great state of massachusetts since ed brooke, who, as will be talked about a bit more in the future i'm sure, was the very first black guy to get popularly-voted into the US senate back in '66, further amping up yet higher the blue state cred factor for mr. brown who is already able to pull off the "jfk legacy" thing...

so sorry, mitt, for your disappointment this morning.

tell me gail huff isn't stoked

for years, shelby scott stood out in the rain and the snow doing the location reports during weather events for channel 4. (the other night someone i know was showing off their boston weatherman cred by pulling a very creditable "schwoegler" out of their wayback hat, which is pretty cool, though i had to point out that bruce was only ever a prince to don kent's king's throne). anyway, shelby was a credible and creditable reporter, but once you go out to pasture on that extreme weather gig, well, shelby also proved by her example that you basically never come back.

so gail huff has been doing the "live from where the craziest weather is that we can televise" spot for channel 5 for years now, and except when she gets to fall down an embankment and hurt herself in pursuit of a car crash video (from lowell just a few months ago) she really doesn't get to do much on the six o'clock news anymore. but today's election victory catapults her to a new sort of stardom, and you gotta know she's stoked about it in a very big way.

in every election, there are losers, and there are winners...

what to do, what to do...

since our freedom from exit polling leaves us free not to be obsessing about election results today, and since i've already voted, ("early and often", as they say), i can spend my early evening mapping out the rest of the week for you. tuesdays i play soccer, so i won't be much help for tonight, but wednesday, thursday and friday are looking like a veritable treasure trove of musical and other entertainment options, so we're all in luck.

first of all, the early must-be-there show on wednesday nights has become d-tension's trivia extravaganza at major's pub. the kick-off week of the new "season" last wednesday was SRO packed, so get yourself there early if you want a good seat this week. (things start at 8, and here's a hint about whenever the quizmaster says the category name "science"--do your very best thomas dolby impersonation and give it right back to him--"SCIENCE!!!") the beers are cheap, and the trivia is a ball. (question of the week from last week--"in what city occurred the great molasses flood of 1919?")

the late must-be-there show on wednesday nights is the open mic night over at the worthen house. rumors continue to swirl that carl johnson will eventually be stopping down there to share some new originals, but even until he shows it's a nice place to wind down and talk shoulda-woulda-coulda about the trivia while checking out some great local talent.

thursday night also presents the possibility of an early and late show for discerning lowell music junkies. first of all, the right reverend justin j. burns rocks thirty-one main (31 main st. in ayer, yo) at 7pm, giving you plenty of time to zip down after work, and still get back to the mill city while the night is young. (you know you want to go). second of all, the right righteous jen j. kearney and her lost onion will be found rockin' ole down on merrimack street in beautiful downtown shangri-lowell after 9:30pm. how's THAT for a double bill!

friday night, unfortunately, you will have to pick your favorite and stick with it. (no double dipping, unless you're really, really fast about it). justin is once again part of the chaos--this time as part of thunderpants johnson's hillbilly orchestra at the middle east in cambridge. and, jen, too, remains a playa, with her lost onion, gigging in the back bay of boston at a club called "church". (which would be a natural for the reverend, but we'll leave that to his booking agent).

so, back to back to back to back to back, and all the weekday stuff is perfect for getting yourself home at a very reasonable hour so as not to upset your beauty sleep or your work schedule or your class schedule, if you have those sorts of things. (i work, i swear i work). friday night you can stay out as late as you want--tell 'em i said so--and the times will be happening, i garr-on-tee.

enjoy!!!

know what i REALLY like?

want to know what i REALLY like?

NO EXIT POLLS!!!

isn't it blissful?

it's kinda like walking out into the snow on a beautiful winter morning and finding no cars or traffic of any kind, and being able to stroll wherever you please, and enjoy the beauty of the day without being beset by noxious fumes and crazy drivers spouting their nonsense out their windows.

the party faithful are frantic, of course, over the suspense of it all, but that's half the fun, and, besides, isn't that the way it's SUPPOSED TO BE???

we all vote. then we count the votes. then we learn who wins.

myself, i'm very much looking forward to playing soccer tonight and then reading all about things in the morning paper.

and i'm going to sleep like a baby.

:-)

41 or 60?

i'm having a hard time figuring out any possible reason at all for the hyperbole being flung about the bay state today about ours becoming either the 41st or yet-again 60th senator in the healthcare debate. now, mind you, i can imagine the potential for concern from other states where their political preferences are already carved in senatorial stone, as they may well have been motivated when they voted to consider THEIR senator either the 41st or 60th as the case may be way back last year, but, see, here in massachusetts, i can't for the life of me figure out the relevance of the concern.

no matter which one of these clowns becomes elected, (even if we elect joe kennedy), we're GUARANTEED to have the overall preference of all the voters of the great state of massachusetts reflected in all the upcoming senate votes.

that's a great and wonderful thing, right?

OHHHHH....

I see...

what these folks blathering about 41 and 60 are really saying is that they want THEIR (personal) preference reflected in all the upcoming senate votes, NOT the overall preference of the voters of the great state of massachusetts, and most certainly not yours if you should happen to disagree with them...

i think that's scary and just plain screwball thinking, and, now that you mention it, downright un-american.

well, here's to OUR (sorry, out of staters) preference being the one that counts tomorrow morning (or whenever billy galvin gets around to it, which, regardless of the outcome, i hope is PDQ, and, yes, i will hold it against his party if he foot-drags on the certification) and every morning after that, no matter which one it turns out to be.

hmmm...

"election day thoughts and questions" over on the dick howe blog today have me wondering about DC political power dynamics...

lets say members of one particular out-of-favor political party begin to sense a little bit of a hypothetical public opinion pendulum backswing, and lets further presume that they might begin to salivate over the prospects of regaining a little of their lost political power and prestige in DC because of that. lets also say that such political out-of-favor have-nots have recently seated a senator from one of the blueest of their blue states opposition, (remember our "don't blame me, i'm from massachusetts" bumper stickers back in '73?), and are desperately seeking hints on how to craft their policy agenda and stump rhetoric for the next election...

do you imagine the from-nowhere wunderkind who was able to beard the beast in its own den might be more or less influential because of that?

of course, folks who imagine a guy to be the anti-christ just because he might support an "R" on his political party name badge as opposed to a "D" will gnash teeth and rend garments and wail that this influence can only be a bad thing for our country...

but i'm just perverse enough in my opinions to wonder if i might be well-represented by such an influential senator, even if i might disagree with his overall politics...

oh well, it's all moot. the party in power has more folks to drive more old folks to the polling places, and i voted for neither of the the party folks in the election anyway.

but it does make for interesting thoughts while procrastinating from continuing on with the work stuff.

best practice

"best practice" is one of those corporate euphemisms upon which tv shows like "better off ted" get lots of laughs. (one of the funniest shows on tv--check it out!) no worries if you don't know exactly what i'm talking about yet, but there's actually a worthwhile premise buried somewhere deep beneath the innumerable layers of BS now heaped upon the phrase, and i was reminded of this while standing in line in my polling place to get checked out after voting this morning.

most waiting lines in polling places stack up right inside the door, (when they exist, as they should more frequently exist), as folks wait to get to the table where people's addresses are looked up in order to have their names checked off as having shown up to vote. at that point, the ballots are handed out, and observing the extensive number of booths to house people while they stand there and make up their mind for the very last time, and the fact that the check-out lookup is exactly as complicated as the check-in lookup, meaning that it should take exactly the same amount of time, there's really a pretty smooth flow from there. or, at least, there ought to be if polling place workers would follow "best practice"...

one best practice, taught to me years ago by my politically involved parents, is to draw a line through the voter's name with a ruler, so that the line extends over to the little box where the voter is to be checked off. that way, no matter how many people show up to vote in a crush, and no matter how flustered the polling volunteer worker may become, the chances of checking the wrong box and running into trouble later are minimized. oh, and the other best practice is for polling workers to be hired based on their working familiarity with alphabetical order...

so, this morning, when i emerged from the booth with my little black circle so proudly filled in, (this is not a political opinion piece, so the identity of the candidate belonging to that little circle is irrelevant, except to the fact that i VOTED, and YOU SHOULD TOO), i found myself at the back of a line that was already getting pretty extensive, and it was barely after 8am. the check-in had gone smoothly. i gave my street address, and the functionally literate poll worker had found me and checked me off... but i noticed that the practice had been slightly less than best, (no ruler, and no straight line through to the check box), and i wondered what that might mean to the management of this particular precinct's polling workforce...

the answer is that it boded very un-well...

the line to the check-out table was barely moving, and as i got closer it became painfully obvious that the older lady in the disney world sweatshirt manning (womanning?) the check-out voter book did not win that disney world sweatshirt in a spelling contest. yeah, i know, there are a lot of M streets downtown here which can create some confusion (Ma, Me, Mi?), but, geez, don't keep flipping to the back of the book once you go past the up and down zig-zaggy letters, hoping that there are more of them towards the back with the more-rounded P's. (as we proved this morning, she and i together, there aren't...) and, once the street was finally located, and my name was found, (not, by the way, by the first letter of my last one, but by the length of it), there was a frantic little scribble in the check box as the next voter was hurried to be addressed.

i can see where this is going. somewhere towards 8pm tonight, some voter getting to the front of the check-out line is going to discover that his or her name, once his or her name can be located among the seemingly-to-the-poll-worker random lists of names and streets, will already have a check in the box beside it.

how could that possibly happen?

best practice would be rulers and lines, manned (or womanned) by people with a working knowledge of the dictionary, or, at least, alphabetical order.

but who is complaining?

we all get to vote, (hopefully nobody will be turned away for having a check box improperly checked during the day today), and that's a beautiful thing.

when i get older, and i can retire from the kind of a place where a show like "better off ted" gets all its best material, i am going to take a part-time gig as a volunteer poll worker because i already know the important bits about poll "best practice". and my alphabet!

if only they made three-headed coins...

it occurred to me, while enduring some prodigious and prodigiously ear-bruising rants from both R and D acquaintances over the past few days, that not nearly enough is being discussed about what these senate candidates may be for, as opposed to what their opponents are against. of course, when questioned closely, some of the more widely-read jerk-offs among these knee-jerk supporters of the unsupportable can sometimes articulate what their candidate is against, but, then, generally only in terms of what their opponent is for.

is this any way to run a campaign, an election or a senate???

i think the reason why this senate race is so interesting is because it has exposed a lot of what is wrong with our current political party process. one of the lowell blogerati pointed out in a recent installment that the primary for this race was almost as close to setting a record for apathy as this final one is to setting a record for excitement. to my way of looking at things, this makes perfect sense, and may even bear the seeds of optimism. i try not to get carried away too much with my rose colored glasses on most days, but today i'm daring to let myself wonder if party partisans may actually be becoming such a minority and insignificance, that some day very soon we may very well see the rise of a truly independent political movement, and, if so, the great news is that it's taking place RIGHT HERE in massachusetts.

think about it: how wonderful would it be (it is to me, anyway!) to wake up in a world where D and R partisans are not defining our electoral choices, but, rather, are merely on the outside opining in. imagine a world where our candidates are culled from the best and the brightest of people with ideas who want to serve, but who insist that they not serve party political masters by becoming beholden to their pacs and campaign money machines.

imagine we elected a truly independent voice to congress, and the whole country had to listen to us for a change, instead of either tuning out, as half the country did to TK, or simply nodding along without really listening to a word being said. imagine presidents and political would-be kings showing up at our rallies every year, instead of almost never, and working hard to earn our independent vote.

THAT is something i'd love to see.

i'm voting my mind tomorrow, and not the party political alphabet.

everyone should, too.

but, even if they don't, they still ought to vote, because it SHOULD be just as independent a voice (it's not yet, but it should be) to vote a party line.

let's, go, people!

let's VOTE!

on middle street

melvern always gets it right. "i'll be here, drinkin' beer, on middle street"

last night jen kearney and the lost onion poured out the soul onto middle street, and if the snow is melting this morning, it's because jen and company put the on last night and it's still radiating today. and if you listen carefully, you'll also still be able to hear the echoes of the crowd-swell noises of "ONE MORE" repeated over and over again. (three is apparently jen's limit for encores, but nobody is complaining).

best place on earth.

oh! and, yeah--french inhaler followed immediately by a kick-ass lawyers guns and money (complete with amp jump coda) is definitely the way to close the open--great set by corey b featuring originals and the tastiest and most eclectic of covers. (giving rise to the deep music trivia question that may or may not make it onto the list when d tension runs next wednesday's trivia night at majors: what do billy bragg, lady gaga and warren zevon have in common...)

on a lighter and much happier note

jen kearney and the lost onion (claire finley, carl johnson, pete maclean et al.) are playing tonight at the village smokehouse.

if you haven't been to the smokehouse, or if you haven't been lately to see their new stage and PA setup, then consider this your prime opportunity to check out something remarkable in your home town. the renovations to the space are top-notch, (all the old brick mill accoutrements, etc.), and the quality of the beer and bar selection is right there, too. no, it's not $8 pitchers like at the worthen or the hynes tavern, but, see, there's a price point for everyone, and NO COVER has to be on just about everybody's. so just don't drink as much. (it's sunday, after all, and you know that's better for you, anyway). or, realize that you're getting JKLO for free, and that makes everything else a bargain. (i dare you to head on down to see them and then tell me different--it can't be done).

so what are you waiting for?

COME ON DOWN!!!

the healthcare crisis

i was going to put "crisis" in quotation marks on the header, but opted against it because i don't want to understate the critical need for ALL americans to have access to basic healthcare. but i do want to state that i think the term "crisis" has nothing to do with the legislation currently being bullied through congress.

we all, as americans, enjoy the right to public education, and, coincidentally and generally, also enjoy basic fire and police protection. they're some of the bennies we get for being citizens and paying taxes. (and, it should also be noted here, even non-citizen residents are "covered" to some extent in this, and, for instance, nobody thinks the police shouldn't arrest someone for robbing a non-citizen. right?)

anyway, in addition to the aforementioned big 3, we also have legislated over the years that everyone should have access to a national postal service, and even made sure that POTS (plain old telephone service) should be ubiquitous, too. everybody pays for stamps and their phone bill, but everyone can drop letters in the mail and call their aunt martha if they want. (it's how we roll). we leave it up to the USPS and the phone utilities how they spread their costs so that everyone is on the same level playing field.

so now we come to healthcare.

backing up a bit, i should describe how my dental insurance works. cleanings and checkups are covered, as are basic necessities like fillings, and then even a small portion of everything else, too, but, basically, if i want my sons to have dental-colored fillings instead of metal-colored ones, i pay extra. ($162 extra on the last one). works well enough for me, and nobody goes without fillings when they need them.

so, healthcare.

i sincerely believe current healthcare proposals being floated in congress are fundamentally flawed. instead of figuring out how to make sure everyone can get the medical equivalent of dental fillings when they need them, these proposals are being written to try to tackle the overwhelming problem of how to make sure everybody gets the equivalent of dental-colored dental fillings, and braces, and whitening, too, while they're at it. (braces run close to $5000 these days, by the way, or $3500 if you have insurance, and nobody is helping anybody pay for that).

look, i understand that everyone wants their statin prescriptions filled for their high cholesterol. but, seriously, there are people in this country who lack eyeglasses and basic medical care for broken bones and the like. oh, sure, lots of folks go get those bones set at the emergency room, but, see, that's the problem. emergency rooms are expensive. bone setting shouldn't be. but we're getting coerced into paying for the expensive version of things, without even contemplating what it means to live 200 miles from the nearest emergency room with an x-ray machine and a plaster shop.

i say, let's get back to sanity. let's agree that big money prescription drug regimens for chronic conditions that are most often the result of bad lifestyle choices AREN'T the first thing we need to cover, if ever.

we need to get basic medical care to ALL our citizens.

too bad that's not what they're debating in congress.

"we"

caught a local blogger talking about the political "we" this morning. seems the hyperbole is in overdrive about our little local plebescite here, and there's a deep fear on the part of certain D's that the potential lack of a supermajority in the senate somehow places the entire country at the edge of an abyss. ("vote for the D, or the dark ages return...")

funny, when i read the congressional rules designed by our founding fathers, i can't help but note the powerful protections afforded to the minority, baked right into the fabric of our legislature. for example, the filibuster, more than any other single mechanism, ensures that 40% of the country can hold the other 60% hostage until their concerns are met and addressed. this was thought by our founders to be an extremely important democratic ideal, and i cannot help but be impressed with what that means.

sapere aude

financial crisis primer

comments on the dick howe blog may not reach all my faithful reader (no "s"), so here's a summation of where we are so far.

there's some difference of opinion as to relative culpability, but i maintain through experience (i've worked on financial systems everywhere from aig, jpmorgan and merrill lynch, to lehman brothers, bear stearns and bank of america--yes, the worst of the worst, and, please, we don't need to opine about what that says about me, tyvm, as well as both fannie and freddie) that the causes of our economic collapse are deservedly laid equally at the feet of both republicans and democrats. (such experience is what you get when you work in the financial services arm of the largest software companies on the planet, and it's not pretty, and, no, i'm not necessarily proud, either).

this link is to the best summation i've yet seen on how the subprime mortgage mess got us where we are today: http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/ it's a little bit profane, but it's so accurate (even the profanity) that it's scary.

next we'll toss in a summary from back even before the meltdown that appeared in the washington post that explained how HUD oversight (which was, effectively, no oversight at all except "loan more money") involved fannie and freddie in feeding the bubble: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html this is offered lest anyone be confused as to the impact from barney frank steadfastly refusing to budge on his opposition to treasury department oversight of fannie and freddie that would have introduced capital adequacy tests to their balance sheets, and effectively stopped the run on bad paper by being able to cover the defaults instead of letting outfits like aig become insolvent trying to do it after the fact.

even during the past presidential campaign, and AFTER our economic implosion, john mccain continued to insist to be quoted that his fight to deregulate wall street hadn't been the problem, but we'll just let that one stand at face value. "i think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy". (here's some video here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/mccain-defends-deregulati_n_128170.html)

so, in short, the tag-team combination of democrats and republicans was essential to getting us where we are today, and anyone who would try to sell you on a suggestion that one party or the other is more culpable is selling you snake oil of the most poisonous kind.

you don't solve any of this by throwing your votes and campaign contributions into either a D or an R marked sewer. they're already being fed quite generously by the same financial institutions that they're not properly regulating, and if you'd like to look at the sorry truth of that matter for yourself, I'd advise trolling through the archives here to find out: http://www.fec.gov/disclosure.shtml

the best way to go is to click on "search the disclosure database", and then "candidate search", and then just pick a name. the "committees who gave to this candidate" after you get to the candate's page is the real gold. "frank, barney" makes for some FASCINATING reading, as does "mccain, john s." which is to say, the sources of money are quite often surprising in terms of public perceptions, where you have barney raking it in from bankers (cuz he "oversees" 'em on his committee, natch, though, as we've seen, there's "oversight" and then there's barney's ideas on "oversight") and mccain getting his right up front from the afl-cio. (you can try to figure that one out yourself). the suggestion from my side is that if you thought your pet political hero was working the rhetoric like it was told to you, the truth is that, behind your back, it's going a COMPLETELY different way behind the closed doors. sad, but true.

i'll give you alphabetized links for our present senate candidates, just to save you some time if you're curious about those, and i suppose the best news so far is that their lists aren't nearly as long as the DC lifers (yet):

scott brown
martha coakley
joe kennedy

enjoy!

getchyer political commentary heeeyah

the uselessness of the sun's political coverage has been pointed out several times in this space, so i won't go further into it today other than to say that, for people searching for alternatives, there are far worse places to start than the mr mill city blog. hats off once again for today's brilliance, which is a youtube link to a conversation martha coakley had with dan rea on his "nightside" radio program about out-of-towners coming in to stump for our ongoing senate race.

DR: "scott brown has curt schilling, ok"

MC: "another yankee fan"

DR: "schilling?"

MC: "yes"

DR: "curt schilling a yankee fan?"

MC: "no? alright i'm wrong on my... i'm wrong"

DR: "the red sox great pitcher of the bloody sock?"

MC: "well he's not there anymore".

this is truly dumbfounding. i mean, i'm not saying our elected politicians need to be local sports fans to be useful representatives, but, geez, to be so completely ignorant, and yet so completely quick to smear proponents of your opponents without knowing (apparently) the first thing about them is just that one little bit too far for me. (to say nothing of how offensive it is to hear trash talked about one of the greatest and most effective yankee-haters of all time).

martha, that sound you're hearing is all that black electrical tape being stuck over the party affiliation on the namebadges of your red-sox-hatted and would-have-been supporters as they sneak into the back door of the polling place to slide a sideways ballot for your competition.

curt schilling? a yankee???

i had to laugh out loud at that one.

and, as usual, big props to the mr mill city boys for being way ahead of the commentary curve.

what i preach...

ok, i'll start. since i don't like all of 'em, (well, at least two of 'em), i'll have to write something nice for both sides.

martha coakley, for the most part, (ack! no faint praise! let me start over...)

martha coakley has impressed me as district attorney with her assiduous pursuit of financial justice for victims of recent financial frauds and other banking excesses. there's a special for-the-people streak that runs down the length of the good ones, and i think martha has this in spades. when you talk about law-and-order, i always first think of the vastly under-prosecuted white collar crimes that cost our society far more than the violent ones overall, and i know that having perspectives like martha's in the senate are our best efforts to achieve true social justice. kudos!

scott brown turned me off initially by his... (double ack! there i go again!)

scott brown really does drive that pickup truck of his all over the state, and there's a bona fide of-the-people sincerity that comes clearly through his positions on the political issues of our day. he knows more about welfare moms than partisan cliche might suggest, (he had one), and his career in the guard, exceeding 30 years, including tours of kazakhstan and paraguay, offers the kind of life experience that can't be measured in its importance to legislating our national policy in these troubled times, and i know that having perspectives like scott's in the senate are our best efforts to achieve our nation's best potential in the world. props!

joe kennedy isn't THAT joe kennedy, which right there... (geez, staying away from trash talk is really hard!)

joe kennedy, coming from our state foster care system, is devoted to the ideals of for-the-people government. he's forthright about his understanding and insights on currently-proposed financial legislation, which stands to have the greatest impact on our lives as citizens over anything else that might come before the senate in our lifetimes. monetary policy rarely gets the attention it requires, which is often why those who understand it are left free to exploit that understanding for vast personal gain. (yes, that means you, wall streeters). it's comforting to know we have a choice among the three that can effectively fight for us in that arena, and i know having perspectives like joe's in the senate are our best efforts to fix this mess we're in. hats off!

there. that's my effort.

care to offer yours?

what's wrong with this picture?

this ongoing senate race is bringing all sorts of things about which to be thoroughly disgusted to our fair state, including rudy "what shoe bomber?" giuliani repeating "terror" every fourth word on behalf of someone who claims to be otherwise above traditional party influences and rhetoric...

but the thing that has me sputtering over my cheerios the most this morning is the sight of bill clinton, yes, THAT bill clinton, who was recently named special ambassador to haiti, making multiple campain appearances in a place that is most certainly, at least they way it looks from the photographs of all the white men in suits, not haiti. i had no idea we were so central to the relief efforts...

i'm actually thinking that bill's and barrack's appearances here in massachusetts are the most eloquent arguments in favor of giving the other side a good look that anyone could make. i mean, if we all went in the tank for martha, we wouldn't be seeing any of these heroes of ours here, now would we?

all this remains, to me, the most compelling reason of all for us all to throw off our party affiliation and begin to assess the merits of our candidates at face value for a change. i'd love to see a thoughtfully researched piece on all the positive things scott brown brings to the table on the dick howe blog. i'd likewise love to see a carefully reasoned analysis of martha coakley's advantages on cliff krieger's. (and without the damnation of faint praise, either--this would have to be sincere). i think it would be good exercise for all of us to practice that "open mind" stuff before merely referencing and genuflecting to all the best stuff that supports our pre-conceived political agendae.

i've been looking, and there sure seems positive reasons to respect all our candidates, (don't forget joe kennedy!), just as surely (as i've never hesitated to point out here) there are some pretty scary reasons to steer widely clear of a couple of them as well. (joe kennedy gets props for being the cleanest of the three by a wide margin, which, to me, counts for more than a little something).

so, how about it, dick and cliff and all the rest of you local partisans? any chance you could risk writing something truly complimentary about the other side, just for grins, in time for the election?

nah, i didn't think so...

not much fun in the sun

yet another 45 square inches (i measured i was so bored) of my incredible shrinking local newspaper was plastered full of irrelevent and pointless partisan political pole-waxing today, and all courtesy of the editor's (or publisher's, or does it matter) man crush on someone whose opinion means less to me than nothing, which is what i wish i could be paying for it, but apparently that's how other people's man crushes work when they're running a failing local newspaper, and the choice was never left up to me...

yeah, the sun... it's getting here earlier these days, but it's getting so that amount of it that i can be bothered to read can't even last me through a medium bowl of cheerios. (maybe i should just think of it as a weight-loss aide instead of an amusement...)

it would be funnier if it wasn't so sad.

edited to add: another 60 square inches for this time a syndicated waste of space, who's not even from around here, spewing useless vitriol against one particular candidate without ever telling us one useful thing about anything or anybody.

i'd be interested to know if anyone has the balls to share with us loyal readers how many of our subscription dollars are being diverted for these two yahoos, and, comparatively, how close the budget numbers are to the line between black and red...

getchyer prograhnms heeeyah

"can't tell the players without a program" is one of those things that any baseball fan can recite to you, even though they probably can't tell you where they might have heard it first, last or most often. it's just one of those ballpark truths against which you can't argue, and that has stood the test of time.

well, rarely growing up did i ever have a problem like that at the gahden. (i was going to qualify it to say "at the gahden to see the bruins", but, then i remembered that i never went to the gahden to see the celtics, so it would be kinda redundant for me to say that--though your results may vary). by the time i came along at the tail end of the eisenhower administration, there were just six (ah, the "original six", those were the days) teams, and they played each other a good dozen times a year, so you knew not only who all your players were by sight, number and sometimes even sound of their skates, but also who bernie "boom boom" geoffrion was, and why, though he was a (hold your nose while saying it to get the correct pronunciation) le habitant, he was important as a hockey player nonetheless. (more or less invented the slap shot, believe it or not, but, he was a canadien, so BOOOOO).

i remember just as clearly the season the blues were admitted to the league, along with the flyers (ugh), the pens, kings, north stars and the forever inept golden seals. (and you young folks thought the DUCKS was a stupid name for a hockey team). among many others on that blues team, i got to know glenn hall, who would in a couple years reward bobby and me with the best known stanley cup-winning goal ever, and experienced my first instance of realizing that i might sooner or later begin to need a program, which would have been at that time to be able to tell apart the plager brothers, barclay and bobby. (ok, "bob", but the prose is better if i call him "bobby" just this once). then there was red berenson, who was all that passed for scoring on that squad, who could have been an ahl'er just as easily...

which brings us to last night's bruins game where i felt the oddest vertigo to realize that i was going to need one of them thar program thingy's to tell apart the skaters on my own team. (oh, how the faithful have fallen into their dotage). savvy is out. patrice is out. now even krejci is out. the three best forwards on my team, and they're all out... and last night we were facing the league-leading san jose sharks, and jumbo joe thornton, who, with patty marleau (leading the NHL in goals) and dany heatley (not far behind) are the single scariest line combination in all of hockey this century, and probably a lot of last. (stay tuned for the olympics, cuz if these three are skating together there, i don't see a country that has what it takes to skate with 'em, and congrats in advance to team canada for the gold). so who did i have to root for, being a steadfast b's fan?

well, for one, there was johnny boychuck, who is becoming at least a bit of a no-program-necessary familiar face, having skated in 21 of this season's contests. but then there was this other guy mcquaid across the ice from him... mcquaid... 7 nhl games, skating with the olympians, and what is his number again??? (54--tedy bruschi--maybe next time i'll be able to remember it without looking it up...) and barrence whitfield's younger, whiter brother, trent, (ok, show of hands, who remembers barrence whitfield and the savages?), whose been skating with the big boys 9 times so far this season, who would be #42 in your program, just like larry robinson's older blacker brother, jackie... (i really like the way this guy trent skates, by the way). most fun of all has got to be miroslav (MEEERO!) satan (prounounced shuh-TAHN) who has taken over phil kessel's old #81, which has prompted a very clever and not-so-proud owner of an old bruins #81 kessel jersey to append an " = SATAN " to the back, which i think has to be the best fan statement since they started wearing those "looks like jesus, acts like judas and looks like mary" t-shirts a few years ago. (and you know who i'm talkin about, dontcha).

yes, it may very well be time to consider a program...

and you know why???

that's the best part--

those baby b's and their big brothers on the club skated a full 65 minutes last night against the best in the league, and they gave not an inch, or millimetre, as they'd say over the border. it took a lucky bounce to get their goal, and it took some amazing saves from their goaltender to give up only one, but they took it all the way to the shootout, and they hung a donut on heatley AND marleau for a second and final time. (patty missed the final shot that let tim thomas be the one pumping his fist on the tv to first celebrate the great win.

oh, it's just a game, and there's more tough sledding before this rough patch is over, but it was a great game to watch, and a great game to keep reaching for your program to make sure you got all the names and faces right.

GO BROOONS!

getchyer senate seat info heeeyah...

www.kennedyseat.com is a fascinating treasure trove of links and information on the three ballot candidates for the open senate seat from massachusetts. especially intriguing are their interviews with the three candidates, which purposefully eschew questions about platform and rhetoric (all easily available on their web sites or wherever) and fill in with a lot of other great questions on insights, inspirations and other useful dimensions of our three choices. i especially like the way the ridiculous excesses and errors of both major party candidates are offered side by side so you can really get a good sense for how pernicious our national patronage political system has become, as has the groundless-attack mentality from both sides. (not a very good look for either brown, or coakley, if you ask me).

particularly interesting to me as a guy who thinks its the money, stupid, it's heartening to learn that joe kennedy, alone out of the three, is actually reasonably conversant on REAL economic issues, (i.e. can say more than "more jobs and lower taxes" about it), and knows about ron paul's currency and other financial legislation enough to talk about it. opened my eyes quite a bit, anyway, and i also have to say his folksy low-budget and low-tech campaign videos are an extremely welcome break from the over-produced malarkey being foisted on us by his rivals.

i still have a few days to make up my mind, (as do you, because you ARE going to vote, aren't you?), but having reached my maximum disgust quotient on MC, and being just about on the precipice of it for SB, and learning new and interesting and encouraging things about JK with every online page turn, i think you can imagine where i'm headed...

of course, should it come down to it on tuesday, i'm never above a "lesser of two evils" approach to voting, if i feel it's particularly important. (you can call it the anyone-but-pat-robertson technique if you like, in case you're old enough to remember that particular republican presidential primary).

sapere aude!