Thursday Night Service at The Church of James Blake

 “D’angelo!” a member of the audience murmured loudly between songs at James Blake’s April 18^th, Thursday night concert at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, California.  Who knows exactly what the person meant but a few moments later as Blake fiddled with his keyboard and microphone they said it again, shouting this time, “D’Angelo!”  At the second and louder mention of the late 90’s R&B impresario, James Blake took notice and calmly and wittingly retorted in his endearing British accent, “What, is he here?...I hope he’s here that’d  be great?” Though he was joking there was a purposefully detectable amount of sincerity in Blake’s voice, and the audience responded with  both cheers and laughter.  No, D’angelo wasn’t there, nor did James Blake suddenly break into a set from the D’angelo songbook, but the brief exchange was indicative of Blake’s performance before the intimate crowd in the seaside college town and surfing haven an hour south of San Francisco.  Blake and many of his fans know and appreciate very well the lineage that he and his music fall into (yell D’angelo at an Aerosmith concert and see if you get a reply), which only increased the connection between the sentiment and sound of his songs and the audience that night.  Furthermore, anyone who’s spent some Sundays in a Black church knows where Blake takes some of his musical cues and that the roots of his sounds can be heard from a pew any Sunday morning in Black America.  But Blake’s concert wasn’t a holy event, it was a secular celebration of audible art—in a hallowed way.   At approximately 9pm Blake had kicked off the evening with the mellow intro to his single “I never Learnt to Share”; service at the church of James Blake had begun.  An hour and a half later when the doors of the church were opened and the mostly young crowed filed back onto Soquel Ave., Blake had assured his fans that his is a career worth following.    

Mad Men Sillfully Avoids the Civil Rights Movement

I started watching AMC’s Mad Men from the very first episode of the very first season.  That’s not meant to be proof of my hipness, that I watched Mad Men before it was popular, just a statement of fact…that it also happens to prove my hipness is purely coincidental.   Mad Men at its height was one of the best shows on television, albeit very quietly, and it long ago achieved endless critical acclaim.  Now in its sixth season, the series about a Madison Avenue advertising firm which takes place during the 1960’s finds itself nearing the end of the decade it depicts with episode 6 making it clearly 1968 on the show.  Which makes it possible to declare another great achievement of the series:  Mad Men is a show that’s painfully accurate about the 1960’s yet has almost entirely ignored the civil rights movement.          

Mom, There’s A Canadian Salesman At The Door

Canada is a wasteland of peace, universal healthcare, parliamentary government, and moose. In many ways it is a distorted reflection of America, the distant relative living in the attic that resembles us and shares many of our personality traits while still managing to be noticeably different. There's a comedian, whose name escapes me, that once correctly stated that the entire world…that life… is a freak show and to live in America is to have a front row seat. So where does that place Canadians? Directly behind us politely looking on in their distinctive quaint manner while we Americans scream at the top of our lungs, flailing about as means of ensuring we remain the center of all attention? Oh Canada. There's a constant cultural dialogue that occurs between America and Canada, but you can rest your ego filled American head peacefully because that dialogue is more often a one way conversation in which we constantly dare Canadians to differentiate themselves from us, knowing we ultimately don't care when they do. It's because of the very unique nature of the American-Canadian relationship that Canada has been able to undertake a very successful enterprise that no other nation in the world could duplicate. Canadians are masters at selling us back to ourselves.

100% Complete ████████████████████████████ -FREEDOM-

(John Moore/Getty Images)

Uninstalling Dictator ... 99% Complete ███████████████████████████░ -ERROR-

A sign of the fundamental changes that are coming to our world because of technology.  Also, emblematic of the generational standoff that's taking place across the globe, as the two largest generations ever (think baby boomers and millennials in the U.S.) increasingly find themselves wrestling with one another for relevance.    

Blue Valentine: Matters of the Heart

"Love is not a victory march it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah." The aching intonation with which Jeff Buckley sings that line in his cover of "Hallelujah" was the first thing that reverberated through my head after watching the movie Blue Valentine. The eerie stillness. The bittersweet. Love. It's a testament to the fact that love of the deepest nature can be as painful as it is pleasure. Rarely is the totality of this aspect of our most powerful relationships accurately captured and so completely conveyed in art…in a way that makes your bones creek. It's also true that the stories we all know about love gone awry are replete with the familiar themes of the scorned woman and/or the wayward man. The woman who's man no longer loves her or maybe never did. We hardly ever discuss the opposite. Rarely has there been a movie that is able to arrest so well both the scene and the sentiment of a man sunken to his knees, grabbing at sand as the tide comes in. But the truth is while that's a refreshing plot point in Blue Valentine, that's not what makes it a good movie. In fact Blue Valentine isn't a good movie..it's haunting. It captures the deterioration of a relationship so well, the sorrow in each syllable of the word "goodbye", it's scary and it hurts. In a good way of course.

The Digital Revolution

(A protester in Egypt. Photo by Sarah Carr.)

The internet is the most truly democratic institution man has ever created. The main problem with governments that suppress political opposition  within their country (non-democratic institutions) is that the government  never has an understanding of how deep or widespread public support for a political opposition is. This is often a central reason revolutions are successful, this is often why repressive regimes appear so flat footed and caught off guard moments before they fall. The government finds it wasn't able to appreciate how many people were truly unhappy at any given time because it always dedicated itself to making any small amount of political disturbance disappear. The threat of the opposition is of course an old feature of any political reality, but the internet is a rather new feature of all political reality and it's only making life much more difficult for oppressive regimes. The democratic nature of the internet has always posed a major threat to autocratic, secretive, and oppressive regimes, but as a young generation across the globe comes into its own armed with social media, many world leaders now have reason to seriously worry. The internet and social media are forcing the will of the people upon many unsuspecting figures in the world. That is to say the internet is starting to bring down governments and there is nothing anyone can do…except watch as it all unfolds 140 characters at a time on Twitter.

Exit Through The Gift Shop, The Way We Now Live

What to make of this world we live in, or this world we now live in? Possibly the proper question is what to make of this world we appear to be entering? If the dawn of the 20^th century saw the setting of the stage for titanic global clashes between competing economic and political systems (socialism, communism, capitalism, fascism, democracy, autocracies, etc…) the dawn of the 21^st century appears to be the second chapter of that book. Despite the lingering traces of a bygone world in various spots around the globe, capitalism is king come hell or high water. Even China has gotten on board. So as the lights flicker on in the early stages of the next millennium we humans are being forced to accept the consequences of the choice we've made to make the free market our God. The good and the bad. Thus what we make of this new truly global world we're entering is as fascinating a story as there has ever been, and humans through the millennia have expressed their stories through art, and the preferred artistic form of storytelling in our times is movies. What could be better than a global story about capitalism and art, turned into a movie? Nothing. There is no better phrase for our times, and few movies that capture the pure essence of them as well as Exit through the Gift Shop.

The Truth

The second to last post here, The Turmoil Just Behind the Peace was both oddly and accidentally one of the most honest things I've ever written and sent me into an introspective spiral. And that damn song, "Pues"…well let's just say it isn't the best idea to listen on repeat while you gaze into the inner depths of your soul and rifle through the dustiest boxes in the dimmest recesses of your memory. Either that or it's the best idea ever. I haven't fully figured out yet. What can be said is that everybody must find the truth as it exist within them at a certain point in their life. Some do it on the playground when they're 3 yrs. old, others on their deathbed, and everybody else likely somewhere between those two extremes. There's of course the larger struggle of finding the truth as it exist in the larger world outside our windows, but that's another thing entirely. Most everybody figures that out after they take their last breath and whatever happens, happens…I'm assuming. But finding truth as it exist within ourselves just involves realizing at some point you have to stop getting in a boxing match with yourself and work your way through the world the way that little voice in your head keeps telling you to. If you want to be a clown, be a clown. Alexander Ebert's first words in "Truth" get right to the point: "truth is that I never shook my shadow/everyday it's trying to trick me into doing battle/calling out faker only get me rattled. " Shadow boxing your own shadow eventually wears you out and strips you down. Oh, and the names your own shadow will call you…completely unnecessary and inappropriate. And so, sooner or later we each just stop fighting. And that's the truth.

International Diplomacy

A snapshot regarding the state of global politics, starring apparent friends Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former Russian President current PM Vladimir Putin (via Julia Inhoffe:)

Their favorite activity, however, seems to be holding joint press conferences. At one of their most memorable appearances together, in Moscow, in 2008, a Russian journalist named Natalia Melikova asked Putin about his apparent marital trouble and rumored romance with the young and indecently plastic gymnast-cum-parliamentarian Alina Kabaeva. When asked about the liaison, Putin's face hardened. "There is not a word of truth in this story," he said. Berlusconi, giggling, regarded the exchange. When Putin had finished answering, Berlusconi cocked his hands, and, imitating a gun, fired with a silent "Pow! Pow!" at Melikova. It had only been a year and a half since Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, had been shot in her Moscow elevator, and Melikova was reduced to tears. On the dais, Berlusconi laughed, and Putin nodded. 

Talk about wildly inappropriate.  That's pretty messed up.

The Turmoil Just Behind the Peace

"Here's to the precariously perched highways of life that intersect with ease from a distance yet are filled with an unbalanced commotion."

You can't make someone love you.  Those who have had the experience of realizing this through experience understand the innate pain and agony that accompanies that statement. While it's easy to say and somewhat simple to understand, its outright torture to truly realize.  There's that moment when you have to watch the other person walk away for last time, and while you look at them you suddenly realize that it's not necessarily the last time you'll see them, but that it's the last time you'll see them attached with a feeling of hope. It's in that small moment that the rational part of our nature makes its greatest stand, attempting to beat back the tide of sentiment, screaming in a symphony of lyric-less music—you can't make someone love you.  When that moment ends the memory becomes an instrument of agonizing pleasure, reminding you of why the best was so good and the worst was so bad, while doing its best to feed that small feeling of hope as it slowly makes an exit. It's a tough and bittersweet lesson to learn and indeed the most stubborn among us never fully accept it. You can't make someone love you.  Here's a song that captures the beauty within the sorrow of watching someone walk away, sans hope, leaving you to your memory. Here's a song that goes out to the eerie splendor after the storm. Here's to the precariously perched highways of life that intersect with ease from a distance yet are filled with an unbalanced commotion. Here's to trying to make someone love you.  Here's to finding out you can't. It's a strange peace wrought with inner turmoil.

“The Same Thing We Do Every Night Pinky…”

The race to take over the world has been getting interesting, and Facebook just pulled ahead. If you think Facebook isn't in the process of building a search engine, I think you're crazy. Last week Facebook launched its own messaging application, Facebook's own twist on email. Today, Facebook landed a major coup against Google in their competing bids to take over the world. Apparently Facebook has overtaken Google in web traffic, getting 3% more visits and unseating Google as the most visited site on the internet over the period of a week. Not only that, but Facebook accounts for 25% of all web traffic in the U.S. Wait, what? 

Should College Athletes Be Paid?

The Free Market is Going to School, And We should All Be Worried

(Auburn Quarterback Cam Newton; students no longer use 
sports as a means to attend school, many now use school 
as a means to play sports.)

There's a black market for athletes in college sports.   Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton is the current star of college football and is in the conversation to win the sport's top individual honor, the Heisman trophy. There's just one problem. He's embroiled in an unfolding scandal of allegations that he or those around him solicited large sums of money, in violation of the NCAA's longstanding policy that prohibits college athletes getting paid or accepting favors. If Newton were alone his problems would be little more than an unfortunate scandal. However in late summer, Super Bowl champion and New Orleans Saints RB Reggie Bush was forced to give back his 2005 Heisman trophy after it was revealed he accepted money and gifts when he was a college athlete at the then National Champion USC Trojans. In fact, during the summer of 2010 the NCAA opened an embarrassing amount of investigations into a score of collegiate football programs citing similar cases of student athletes being paid. Whether they want to admit it or not, college sports has a crisis on its hands. It's because of that crisis that American institutions of higher learning are probably about to become beacons of free market capitalism. Which will be a crisis in and of itself.

Obama Saves GM

(Photo via Motortrend)

In Washington D.C., Barack Obama is the only grown up in the room and GM is just the latest evidence of that fact.  Many now admit he was right, but it may already be too late.  Palin 2012, anybody? (Updated)

Goldman Sachs is Robbing You Blind, But it’s Actually Kind of Funny

Last week the Federal Reserve announced it would engage a policy of quantitative easing. If you say the words quantitative easing (QE2) to me, my eyes glaze over. I have no clue what it means and I suspect most Americans don't either.  Turns out, it's all so simple it's actually kinda funny. 

I’m Still Here, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, and Jay Electronica

Joaquin Phoenix's documentary I'm Still Here catches me off gaurd, Sarah Palin may be hoping to catch all of America off guard in 2012, and Jay Electronica might be 1 step closer to saving hip-hop.   

The Best Podcast: A List of the 5 Podcast You Should Be Listening To

1. Uhh Yeah Dude
   "America through the eyes of 2 American Americans" is how host Seth Romatelli and Jonathan Laroquette (yes, he's the son of TV's John Laroquette (Night Court)) describe their show. What can be said about UYD other than it's the definition of a well done podcast, with a unique and hilarious perspective. In these crazy times that we live in Seth and Jonathan spend an hour each week chronicling the craziness, discussing news stories from around the country that reflect the worst and/or most unbelievable aspects of American society with a thick layer of humor. The only hurdle between realizing how this podcast is consistently good week in and week out, is the little voice in the back of your head that says, "I shouldn't be laughing at this"—it's likely you're already laughing before that happens. The best part about UYD is there are over 200 episodes stretching back to 2006 which means there's always a UYD episode to listen to.

Veterans Day

I just missed the 11th hour, the 11th day, the 11th month. Due to some technical difficulties with my computer I've been unable to post recently.  But I'm back up and running now and this weekend there should be an interesting post about fame, notoriety, youtube, our desire to connect, whatever you want to call it.  For now here's a belated Veterans Day memorial post complete with music.  Tune in. Turn on. But..yea, please don't drop out.  Still here.

  Bill Withers - I Can't Write Left-Handed 

Speaking Wealth to Power

"Mr. Paul you've just been elected United States Senator, what are you going to do?" "Well, Wolf, I'm going to stop this God awful war that's being waged against America's wealthiest citizens." We'll find out later this week he misspoke, I'm sure. American conservatives have been waging a philosophical war in this country since Ronald Reagan became president that is focused on letting the rich man run free and giving him a chance to spread his beautiful wealthy wings. Central to this war is the belief that government is smothering the invisible hand of the free market, capitalism, freedom of choice, I support the troops, God bless America, blah blah blah. ..The central philosophical strategy employed in this philosophical war were elegant terms developed in the Reagan administration such as "trickle down economics" and "starve the beast." Which in practice simply means cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy, allow the money of the wealthy to slowly trickle down to middle America and starve the federal government of money, forcing it to shrink in size. In practice none of this works. The government has at no point since and including Reagan shrunk in size, however conservatives have been masters at bankrupting the country. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the debt, and we all know how W. Bush faired. Starving the beast amounts to nothing more than a magnificent way to make the government financially insolvent. The trickle down part? I'll let you figure out for yourself why rich people don't start "makin' it rain" on the rest us. 

Is it Still Cool to Like Kanye West?

 Last month Jay Z sat down for an interview with the American financial institution that is Warren Buffet and noted conservative money man Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine. It was a far cry from the drug dealing project reared roots of hip hop's celebrated elder statesman. Last year President Obama invited him to the White House where Jay Z was given a private tour and snapped the now infamous photo of himself lounging in the situation room. Possibly Obama's way of thanking Jay after the President made an allusion to a line from one of his songs in '08, when then candidate Obama was fighting off Hilary Clinton in the nation's longest primary season (Man, I miss that Obama). As part owner of the New Jersey Nets, Jay Z is partially responsible for the future move of the NBA team to Brooklyn, the home of Marcy projects, the home of Jay Z, made famous by the artist himself. For much of the 20^th century the unofficial anthem of New York City was Frank Sinatra's crooning rendition of New York, New York. It served it's time well for decades of transplants, onlookers, outsiders, and natives alike, as the musical for the world's most dynamic city. But let's be honest it's a new century, a new millennium even, and New York needed a new anthem as the city has changed from the days of Sinatra. Jay Z provided that anthem last year, doing Old Blues Eyes justice with a beat backed anthem that recognized that the New York of this era is different than the Broadway sounds of New York's Sinatra past. This is the era that the boroughs birthed hip hop making it all the more fitting that Jay Z wrote the tune. For those of us on the outside life seems pretty good for Jay Z and he appears happy with whatever place he's reached in the cultural pantheon.