Good evening.

Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee yesterday.

I’m cutting to the chase here with direct quotes.

“Global cooperation is crucial for the survival of mankind…..”

“If we have a chance, it has to begin by people accepting that they can be proud of who they are without despising who someone else is,”

….”we are genetically “99.5 percent the same……..”

“From time immemorial, people have fought over identity rooted in that (half percent),” Clinton said. “We should have spent more time thinking about that other 99.5 percent of ourselves.”

“You teach your children their ethnic heritage; their religious heritage; their cultural heritage with no negative reference to anyone else because it’s the only shot we’ve got to make the most of our interdependent world,”

All quotes from CNN.com

You’ll have to forgive me but these sentiments strike a real chord with me.  Beyond that chord, is a three part harmony and a choral ethereal behind it.  With a Hammond B3 through a tube Leslie cabinet and some tympanies and strings.  Some brass and wood.  French horns and Oboes.  Oooh, and a Moog.

“Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you’ll know by.” -Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

These simple notions explode in my heart.  If we could just live by them, we’d enjoy so much more peace.

John Lennon beseeched us gently to imagine.  To imagine an entire world with no religion, no hell and just the blue sky above.  No country.  No nationalism or even patriotism.  No reason to even covet wealth or profit from famine.

“A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world” -John Lennon

That’s big stuff there.

Then there’s proof we’re almost outta rope.  This is such a simple thing but the climate is getting ever more polarized and violent.  While the right wing frolics in it’s own pudenda, evangelicals are snug as a bug in a rug with the idea they are somehow among the righteous and will somehow live forever.

These folks are stupid.  These folks are mean.  Sheezus.

As cynical as I am, I’m still an optimist.

The latest xenophobic diatribe from the asshole club foolishly denounces the concept of being a citizen of the world.  Newt the Salamander (new nickname alert), mocked it last week in a speech before rotting doddering sycophants.  That’s dumb.  I don’t care what backward crap you subscribe to, if you are reading this, you are a citizen of the world.

Some of you don’t like it.

Tough shit.

Newt the Salamander cracks me up.  The hair of a robust but premature gray talk show host, the face of a caramel and Scotch addicted bigot, the grill of an octogenarian who’s still got some baby teeth.  Thinks he’s got a shot at the head office.  The way he’s shoveling sewage, he doesn’t have shit to say.

Whatever he does say smells like ass.  He packs his jowls with feline fecal tootsie rolls to lend his face symmetry.  I’m really happy I just said that exact thing.  I don’t care much for the Salamander.

Nattering nabobs of negativity want to know Newt’s languor.  How does the Salamander balance the warm rock and the cool water?  Plump and bellicose.

I’d like to have him over for drinks and duct tape him to a space heater.  Make him watch CSI Miami.  Feed him nothing but Slim Jim’s and Dr. Pepper.  He would change his own diapers whilst suspended by a chin strap.  Morticians would be allowed to practice on his pale countenance and somewhat alien bone structure.  I could invite some NBA size trannys.

” George W. Bush left office with a public approval rating under 30 percent. Less than 30 percent of Americans currently describe themselves as Republicans. The amalgam of evangelical Christians, hardcore gun-rights fanatics, anti-tax, anti-immigrant and anti-choice voters who make up the base of the Republican Party amount to less than 30 percent of the overall electorate.” -William Rivers Pitt, truthout.org

Salient point of ensuing article by Mr. Pitt is that it’s own base is reason for the GOP’s demise.  The Sarahs, salamanders and Huckabees are prisoners of their own device.  The once muscular, hard right base of the Republican party, the guns and God crew, are essential for candidates to be allowed to sit at the table, but now a virtual guarantee they’re exempt from being dealt a winning hand.

My synopsis: These guys are fucked and it’s all their fault.

Will Pitt rocks.  Like a hurricane.

As much as I loathe the great unwashed, I sincerely wish they’d wake the fuck up and smell the world along with America’s place in it.  They nearly screwed the pooch when they were in power last time and now they are poised to do their worst despite being the minority.  Irrational fear, ignorance, prejudice and unwillingness to judge a man based on the content of his character, but rather his religion, political affiliation, culture or social beliefs, has the whole movement flirting with obsolescence.

The Republican party is a parody of itself.

They have begun to eat their own.  They drag their party moderates toward a house still fully engulfed instead of even entertaining the idea they are less than absolutely right about everything.  Frustrating to watch.

It has always been true, always an imperative, but now it’s damn near an emergency; we must get along.  Share the world.  Humankind can no longer afford to relinquish reality and truth while clinging to individual interest and willful ignorance.  The fomenting of hate by right wing media is not just reckless and irresponsible but is literally a menace to society.  I’m not here to suggest we revoke the first amendment rights of fucktards like The Human Shitsmear (Limbaugh), Hannity, Coulter, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly or even the Cheneys.

Fight fire with fire by using your own rights under that same amendment to drown them out.  How hard would it be for every American who loathes Rush to storm his phone lines regularly?  Sunday afternoon in the park.  We could do it from facebook and myspace.

What then, of the example by the Iranian people this weekend over the travesty of their national election?  They took to the streets.  I understand that the chronic malfeasance of our ’00 and ’04 elections was not nearly so obtuse.  We are guilty nonetheless, for behaving.  Not nearly enough ‘what the fuck?’

They are furious and showing courage.  Point to me the American who doesn’t cheer this struggle.  These people are ass pissed as they should be.  This is incredibly good stuff.  Anybody looking for inspiration or even an example?

As I write this I watch dickheads go swine stupid downtown over a goddamn basketball championship.  Now that’s blind shithouse irony.

I have it on mute but LAPD are going paramilitary and scaring the crap out of them.  Herded like cattle and KCAL9 cuts to commercial.  Lean it up against what’s happening in Iran right now, that’s all I’m saying.

Drinks for my friends.

I must tell you about the Magic Snot.

As  janitor King of the Fruit, I was accountable  for the appearance and cleanliness of the entire studio.  Tens of thousands of square feet.   King of the Fruit; the onus was on me more than anyone else.  Five bathrooms.  Two public restrooms inside the complex.  One for men and one for women.  Five bathrooms total, three with showers in the private lounges of studios A, B and D.

Lounge bathrooms were to be stocked with shampoo, conditioner, razors, shaving cream, toilet paper, soap, tampons, paper towels, tissues…….

All five control rooms required full dispensers of denatured alcohol, windex, tex wipes, Kim Wipes, a certain number of blue, red and black medium sharpies, grease pencils, sharpened pencils, ballpoints, splicing tape, canned air, red tape for reels stored head out and blue tape for reels stored tails out.  Red heads, blued tales.  At least two empty half inch, quarter inch and two inch reels.  Labels to fit any tape box size, track sheets, patch sheets for 72 channels and templates for documenting outboard gear of at least 50 different kinds filed alphabetically, blank cassettes and dats……

Of course the aforementioned pots of fresh coffee, decaf, cold water, hot water, and then tea, sugar, non dairy creamer, sweet & low, cocoa mix, honey, stir sticks, plastic spoons, forks and knives, paper plates, salt & pepper, napkins …….

Then ice chests with half & half, milk, ketchup, mustard and an identical accompaniment for each refrigerator in four lounges.  Fruit baskets etc…..

I did my best to ensure those bathrooms, control rooms and lounges appeared  clean and sanitary.  Sort of.  I didn’t take it any more seriously than I had to.  I was adept at maintaining appearances.  Randy Wine taught me to stoop and pick up imaginary flotsam when passing authority in the halls.  Greet them and smile while bending to retrieve imaginary refuse, then make your way to the nearest trash receptacle and out of their periphery.

We did mop the floors, clean the toilets and urinals, windexed the mirrors and took out the trash at least twice a day.

It was there and then I became a compulsive hand washer.

The day shift was a hump but it was only nine hours.  We ate when we could.

Years of my life were spent cleaning up after drunken , drug addled rock stars and don’t give a shit producers and engineers.

The night shift could be a grind.  Cleaning up after five, spoiled and self indulgent rock bands who ate their meals off real plates using real flatware.  All of which had to be transported down to the runners closet to be washed in a single sink that you couldn’t even see because of the shelving in your face if you were taller than five foot six.

It fucking sucked.

The worst part was the waiting.  Waiting for the rooms to go down in the early hours of the morning knowing the work that was waiting for you.  Work that would challenge my janitorial acumen.  My capacity for giving a fuck.  It sucked.

As a runner, I was exploited, taken advantage of, discounted and dismissed.  It was a goddamn nightmare.  I remember sitting in my piece of shit ’69 VW Bug outside some shop in South Central LA in the pouring rain to procure obscure vacuum tubes for the amp of a semi famous studio guitar player.  I was already wet and about to be soaking.  Sitting there, asking myself just what the fuck I was doing.  The wind making my bug rock and the rain drumming on it’s thin metal shell.  My hands and feet were freezing.

I would ask myself that a lot.  I was to be in that place over and over.

I drove that shitbox everywhere.  From Malibu to Oxnard, Beverly Hills to Manhattan Beach.  Before it was over I would drive Shelly’s cars back and forth between Tahoe and LA.

If you lasted in that place longer than six months you were probably at least a little crazy.  More than two years, you were for better or worse, a member of the asylum and it might be the best place for you.  I put in over eight years, which is easily twelve in human chronology.

I need to explain to you the Magic Snot.

There was a brass push plate on the door of the public men’s at the end of the first long hall.  Past studios B, C and A.  One day I glimpsed a curious thing.  I can’t be sure how long it took me to notice it.  Once I clocked it, I couldn’t be sure how long it had been there.

A smear of mucus on the upper right hand corner of the brass door plate to the bathroom inside the privileged and exalted environs of A&M recording studios.  It looked a little like Italy. Maybe a half an inch.  That was it’s shape.  Boot and all.

It seemed impossible for such an obvious anomaly to survive in an environment of turborcharged anal retentivity for very long.  For awhile there was a stunted black whisker lying flat, half inside and half outside it’s shape.

I could have eliminated in seconds with a variety of tools.  My thumbnail even.

Yet there it was.  A booger.

A Magical Mucus Smear.

Albeit a tiny one.  It’s edges blackened over time.  It became more disgusting.

But it was holy.  Sacred.

Hallowed by a singular audience.

I came to ascribe all manner of superstition and outrageous fear to the Magic Snot.

I grew to covet and admire it’s unlikely existence in the face of impossible odds.  It was my champion and I became it’s benefactor.

I protected it.  I preserved it.  After years, yep years, I came to regard it as the signpost of my future.  I never mentioned it’s existence to a single other person.  The Boot Shaped Booger came to represent not my hardship, but instead my survival.  My symbol.  My metaphor of eventual triumph..

It became my Mascot.  My Talisman.

I was even assigned the men’s room one weekend with nothing but a toothbrush.  With that mere toothbrush, I did my damndest to demonstrate my devotion to the institution that was A&M recording studios, yet I took care to preserve the Mystical Booger.

I couldn’t believe for all that time, no one noticed the sacred Italian Mucus Smear.

One day, in a sort of semi obsessive compulsive routine that had manifested itself over time, I saw the Magic Snot had vanished.  I was able to detect that it had been scraped off with what was likely a razor blade.

In my mind’s eye I pictured it’s abrupt removal.  Flaking away and wafting in the sun spilling before gravity claimed it’s feathery mass.

Razor blades were plentiful in recording studios in that day for the editing of analog tape.  The entire plate and been polished to it’s full sheen of brassy potential.  It glowed and I admit, it was beautiful as it shone beneath the morning rays streaming through the windows of the rear studio entrance.  My stomach flipped and my heart pounded in my ears.  Some over zealous runner had forever deleted my secret charm in the self interest of janitorial acuity.

I was reckless that day.  I got Marcus Miller’s Porsche up over eighty between two stop signs on the way to a car wash down De Longpre.   Got it up to a hundred down Highland ………

I had been asleep.  It was time.  I was to make happen what I heard in my head or fail.  Time to relinquish childish things.  I waded in up to my chest in a vicious current and started swimming against it.  Stand still, you die.

Stand still you die.

Drinks for my friends.

If I don’t close a few deals tomorrow, we all may be killed.

Gotta pay the rent and peanut butter by way of index finger is getting old.

Meanwhile the asstards of the GOP have decided that Sotomayor is so very experienced, possesses such an elaborate history of jurisprudence, that her confirmation must be delayed until after the end of the Mayan calendar, as they need to study her every move.  They prefer her confirmation hearings begin sometime after the world ends in 2012.

What exactly do these men of lust, greed and glory hope to accomplish here?  Don’t know about you, but they look like dickheads to me.  She’s gonna be confirmed you assholes of the flat earth society.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, another right wing, homophobe, bigot loses his shit and goes off on innocents with a gun.  This guy’s done time just like the last uniquely American tumor.  You know by now DHS distributed a report a few months back warning against this specific conflagration.  The Republicans piled on and forced an apology out of Janet Napolitano.

How rigoddamndiculous does that dance look today?  Looks like under Obama, DHS might have a chance at efficacy.  Might just be the most prescient and important thing they’ve ever done, you know, that report that predicted all of this.

Fucking Republicans. Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.

The frontline of the GOP is the Human Shitsmear, Sarah Palin and some human salamander named Newt.  The bench is Guy Smiley (Romney), McCain and John Voight.  Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.  Rounding out Republican leadership is Michele Bachman and John Boehner.  Mr. Everglow and Mrs. Dipshit.  I understand now why Republicans pretend to stay right with God.  Hypocrisy is in their blood and they are not then, easily embarrassed.

Still can’t figure out why they aren’t embarrassed.   They have become parodies of themselves.  Not a single original thought, plan, strategy or policy.  Nothing but anti.  Nothing but no.  They just don’t get it.  The weight of circumstances and the gravity of right now is barely in their periphery.  They wander through fields and ditches without any concept of consequence.  Not a single Republican is thinking about anything beyond itself.

Rome is dry.  Rome is a tinderbox.  Rome is about to burn and you assholes can barely be bothered to get off the phone.

Wake the fuck up you Republican moderates.  You think you got no place to go other than Independent?  A lot of us will be inclined to join with you or at least work with you if you can behave.  We’ll hold it against you but we won’t throw it in your face.

Let’s get on with it.

Drinks for my friends.

So Newt Gingrich declares he’s not a citizen of the world to applause by the most prominent collection of misfit toys ever to gather on an annual schedule.  John Voight, the same whackjob who melted down on public airwaves a few years back over his superstar daughter Angelina Jolie’s estrangement, called Obama a false prophet and told us America is weaker.

Newt also told them the brand new economic plan has already failed.  This, despite news today that ten banks are set to repay almost ninety billion in stimulus money.  This,  despite it being way too early to tell.

This blog is for you Lo.  I understand that Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.  The big picture is far more convoluted than most of us know.  It is far greater than the sum of it’s parts.  Both sides have bodies buried and there’s no innocence in Washington; I am not a Nuclear Playboy.

It’s just that people like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich, whom I adore, have no real chance at influencing seminal policy, much less posturing for the highest office in the land.

You see this administration as a glass half empty.  I’m not ready to go there yet.

When was the last time a President of the United States told Israel in front of the world, in an Arabic Muslim nation, that her actions were intolerable?

You graciously offered an article on the similarities between Bush and Obama for this particular context: http://www.internationalpoliticalwill.com/2009/06/heard-it-all-before/

Ironically, it’s context that Will is ignoring.  Just about every speech by Bush that Will cites took place inside our own borders.  I commend him for his research acumen, as he’s painstakingly culled all these examples of congruence from over six years of lexicon, far more muted and less specific than that of Obama’s single speech in a Muslim country delivered to Arabs.

It’s a manufactured duck and weave befitting a high school research paper.  No score here Lo.  Your man Will has written a fluff piece.  I’ve taken it upon myself to post an edited version of this critique on his blog.

You know I hope, that I have immense respect for you.  Thanks be that you’re far better informed than most.  I wonder if you haven’t taken the wrong fork on your philosophical/ideological path.  You’re energy and intelligence is lost on wanna be demagogues  like Ralph Nader who only run for office out of hubris and the obstreperous notion they may upset a close election.  If Ralph Nader truly wanted to make a difference he would position himself politically to do so.  Perhaps an earnest and sincere attempt at a cabinet position or a prominent non-profit.

Ralph Nader may be as full of shit as the next guy.

And you my dear, would be better served by getting on board with a society and an ethic that is changing.  Just because I support Obama, doesn’t mean I can’t bitch at him.  It gives greater license to do just that.  See last night’s blog.

I’m not, by any means, hook, line and sinker.  He’s not perfect, I own that.  But in a few short months he’s managed to fundamentally change the way the rest of the world looks at us.  Take the recent elections in Lebanon as an example.  The amount of influence he brought to bear is debatable but there’s no denying he brought some.  This is big stuff.  He’s the best thing we’ve had in a very long time.  Work with me here.

Don’t look away, there’s plenty to see.

Drinks for my friends.

I gotta tell ya, Obama’s absence on all issues gay, specifically Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, is pretty disappointing.  He was unmistakably upfront about being a fierce defender.  He’s dropping this ball.  A civil rights ball that he needs to account for.  This is big picture stuff.  Us heathens deserve to know.  No free pass here, dude.

The sand dollar is underneath the stairs.  The blue juice is in the pantry.

So this is how it happened.  I gather they wanted Palin first and her staff gave the nod.  The fundraising dinner for the Senate and House Republican campaign committees.  The premier GOP money event of the season.  I don’t know if they have another name for it or not.  Anyway, they then discover somehow that Palin was never made aware of the invitation.  Um, yeah, allright, so then, they can’t get a confirmation from Palin.  So they ask Newt.  He jumps on it.  Newt goes on to immediately stick his own ass in his mouth by calling Sotomayor a racist.  They walk it back a little but can’t get word from Palin.  Newt walks it back too by saying he shouldn’t have called her that because he doesn’t know her.

So, Newt’s back in because Palin is being a cocktease, so Newt goes on television and says that Sotomayor might not be a racist but says racist things over and over.  Then he says she’s a “racialist”.

They work out some deal where they both will speak.  Then, Palin delivers some speech that was blatantly plagiarized.  Sheezus.  The GOP announces finally that Newt will be Mr. Keynote and Sarah will hopefully be in attendance.  They went on to acknowledge that Palin could maybe eclipse Gingrich in a popularity contest.

I got a degree in cartography.

Sarah shows up and commands copious limelight.  Steals the show by all accounts.  By the way, the speech she plagiarized?

Wait for it……

She lifted it from an article co-authored by Newt Gingrich in ’04.

Fuck me running, not even I could write this shit.

These are the stars of the Republican Party.  Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.  The new Arsonists Laureate.  Their best and brightest.  The party of Lincoln.  That’s sick.  These two are empty.  Shallow, callow and retarded.  They have no idea what Americans want or need.  They don’t care.  That they haven’t bothered to figure it out is evidence enough.  That this is the best they have is outrageous to me.  Newt and Sarah are a low budget slasher flick that isn’t even funny on any level.

The good news is that more people label themselves Independent these days than Republican.  I got no problem there, at least until we see what they  become.  It could go either way.  From not so judgmental libertarian to deranged, fascist, Lutheran Nazis.  The great unwashed are migrating and that is cause for concern.  We must track them.  No need to shadow them in their own habitat.  No tranquilizer darts or tags with chips.  The science and technology of demography is now at our fingertips.  No chance we’ll lose sight of them.

This country’s bowels are percolating.  We may be on the verge of giving a shit.  I’m more than inclined to applaud the demise of the Grand Old Party but they will show up somewhere.  There’s that and the truth that chaos covets a power vacuum.

These are interesting times.  Better pay attention.

Drinks for my friends.

I like to have more gin than I can drink in one night on hand at all times.  Same goes with pot.  I don’t like to have to budget my recreational drug intake inside of  a 24 or even a 48 hour cycle.

This particular ideal is not necessarily a good one.  And that’s ok, because it’s an ideal I can rarely live up to.  What happens when I’m back in the saddle?  I don’t rightly know.  For now I manage to keep a steady supply of one or the other.

I get my brain to relax in the right way, manage to turn the noise down, and I’m golden.  Can I do that without a better living through chemistry mentality?  Maybe, but not consistently I fear.  Forgive me, it gets loud up in here.

Refreshments are welcome.  Maybe mandatory at this point.

There’s this great Mexican place across the street.  Nothing fancy but flavor perfect.  I’d put the cheese enchilada plate against any for the price.  Hard shell chicken tacos?  Say hello to my little friends.  The grease to freshness ratio is rudimentary culinary perfection.

I’ve grown to appreciate that frontal lobe burn brought on by just enough wasabi in your soy sauce.    And then a cold cold beer.  A little albacore and some salmon, some ginger here and there and you’ve got uncle who goes by Bob.

Ever notice the lack of cheese in any Asian cuisine?

The way white pills and cotton look inside bottles of apothecary brown or green glass soothes me.  Like the way an orange creamsicle tastes.

I tried to write a poem once about hot corn dogs and mustard, that greasy yellow glass on old popcorn makers and the colored lights of carnivals and gave up after six months.  Most poetry sucks because poetry is so damn hard to write.  Far more poetry in life than on paper.  Pick a flower.

Boxing is brutal poetry.  Ultimate fighting is brutality minus the poetry.

I’m sure people who wear sunglasses on cloudy days or inside are jackasses.

I do appreciate girls, but I adore women.

Kinda curious about Kentucky grilled chicken.  My first real job was at KFC you know.

Life is so goddamn slippery.  Rich or poor.  Black or white.  One day you’re the master of your destiny and the next day everything is whirring like a demonic gyroscope and completely outside of your grasp.

I hate that.  I like to have control of my shit.

We have a mutually beneficial relationship based on  individual prosperity that we share with each other.  Wonder twin powers are activated.  She thinks I’m Y chromosome impaired.  She’s wrong, of course.  I’m actually Y chromosome advantaged.

I really like chunky peanut butter.  I like the oily natural kind.

Music informs me.  it is my elixir.  It informs me.  A constant gift.  The power of music is unique among all of the artistic mediums.  There is no more immediate artform  than a single good song.

Man I lament stupidity and I hate willful ignorance.   Twin tragedies.  A friend of mine challenged my championing of Obama’s speech in Cairo the other day.  She called me out on facebook.  I invited her to bring it.  I didn’t hear back.  They never come at me.  I invite them but they don’t.  This woman is my friend.  I’m quite fond of her.  She’s smart and I want to know her mind on this.

What I get instead is wingnuts and whackjobs like Ralph and that asshole Trueblood from a year ago.  Nobody rational.  No big brains.  Where the hell are you who would engage me with intellectual honesty?  Retards like Ralph are entertaining but I tend to covet dialog more substantiative.

Lo, from Dandelionsalad, hasn’t posted anything of mine for at least a year.  My piece on Obama in Cairo she turned down because she is not an “Obama supporter”.  I wrote her back to say so what, it was a historic speech.

What I’m doing here is pissing, moaning and pining for responsible opponents.  I can’t be coming so correct as to intimidate legitimate contenders.  It does get lonely.  Talk to me.  I won’t bite, unless you’re  super dumb.

Somebody get Liz Cheney a ball gag.

Drinks for my friends.

“And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum.” -Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America.

Awesome.

Honestly, I teared up.

I am so very proud of my President and my country.  Our Man was amazing today.  He said things no American President has ever said.  And they were all true.  I was transfixed.  Enchanted.  Slack jawed.  I’m grateful I was alone, just in case I drooled.

It’s worth pointing out that in light of the elaborate smear effort to paint him as some sort of extremist Muslim conducted during the Presidential  campaign, his speech in Cairo today was goddamn courageous.  Beyond that, it was an overt in your face to his neoconservative right wing Christian critics. You know, the ones that so desperately want you to believe that we’re in the middle of some war that is ultimately about our God being able to beat up their God.  The ones for whom ridiculous dogma and apocryphal ideology trump compassion, reality and common sense.

“More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.”

“So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.”

Oh man.  That’s the shit right there.

“As the Holy Quran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.  That is what I will try to do today — to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

There it is.  We are all just people.  Humans first and foremost.  How breathtakingly refreshing.  How important and authentic.

Obama quoted John Adams: “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”

This notion, so widely held, that America is at war with a religion or an ethnicity or even a geographic region is so very wrongheaded, so perspicaciously misguided, that most Americans, along with too much of the world, have no realistic understanding of just exactly what is happening and why.

It’s understandable, given the litany of lies we’ve been force fed, and our own failure in laziness and apathy to not even bother to investigate for our own edification, the absolute crap the media has foisted upon us so irresponsibly, so relentlessly and for so long.  The failure of journalism in America is mirrored by the doppelganger of breakdown by Americans ourselves, to question what we’re told, to challenge what we are led to believe.  Exactly why we are in this mess.

Willful ignorance.

“The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.”

As an agnostic,  I am moved  to say Amen.

“Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world……….Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Sheezus.  Wow.  In Cairo, Egypt.  An incredibly bold admission about the abject failure of American policy.  I can’t tell you how impressed I am at this honest confession by Our Man on the world stage.  It’s true, America fucked up by invading Iraq.  We screwed the pooch.  Shame on us.

“And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or forget our principles. Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.”

Of course I was aware of these steps by Our Man, but his restating of them beneath and behind the proscenium of a stage in front of the entire world is nothing less than golden.  And again, the admission of just how far this once great country has strayed, is so brave and nakedly honest, that I am at a loss for words.

He recounts these events, these egregious mistakes, because his intention is to put them behind us by reconstructing our integrity and pride with honesty and transparency, whenever and wherever possible.

Then, he swung the mother of all haymakers:

“On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations — large and small — that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”

“It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That’s not how moral authority is claimed; that’s how it is surrendered.”

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.  This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Unbelievable.  Finally.  A sitting American calls Israel on it’s shit.

This is change.  I can’t speak for you, but this is why this man earned my vote.  It is why I didn’t hesitate to hope.  I believed him then.  I believe him now.  I believe in him.  As I write this, I am inspired and awfully proud.

This speech will no doubt be read, remarked upon and lauded for decades.

This guy is so fucking cool.

Drinks for my friends.

I hope you’re not yet tired of me railing against all things Dick Cheney.  I know I’m not.  History will will estimate him to be nothing more than a misanthropic war criminal.  Besides that, I admit again that it’s morbidly cathartic.  What began as an effort on his part to rewrite history and burnish his legacy, has morphed into a risible rhythmless boogie of dodging bullets fired at his feet by truth empowered gunslingers.

Today he tells us that there was never any evidence of a connection between 911 and Iraq.  Um, no shit.  This despite his persistent insistence that there was ample evidence, long after it was thoroughly discredited. He said:  “pretty well confirmed” that a 9/11 hijacker met with Iraqi intelligence officials before 9/11. -thinkprogress.org

Understand how deliberate this dog and pony show was.  In the ’04 Presidential election, over 70% of people who voted for Bush/Cheney believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the attacks on 911.  One could rightfully argue that these two assholes were re-elected by and large because Americans believed their lies and the spell of fear they so successfully instilled.

You gotta love the great unwashed.

He also tells us that those memos he wants declassified don’t necessarily prove, as he claimed just days ago, that torture saved thousands, if not hundreds of thousand of lives, but rather the entirety of the interrogation program did.  What the hell does that mean?  Olbermann wondered if he was referring to instances like the fact that we gave sugar free cookies to a diabetic terrorist.

Then, he has the audacity to blame his lies on George Tenet.  That’s right, the infamous dickhead in charge of the CIA at the time, who said that making a case for invading Iraq to the American people and the world was a “slam dunk”.  As if to say, it wasn’t his fault because that’s what Tenet told him.

After months of pressure and obtuse harangue by Dick truly and his mob.

For his part, Tenet received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

It’s gets better.  He now claims we missed 911 because of former terrorist czar Richard Clarke.  I suggest you read Clarke’s book on the matter.  One of the very first insiders to be overtly critical of the reckless and ideologically driven Dick-in-Bush administration and the Keystone Cops approach they took to every single circumstance after that fateful day.  If Clarke is to be believed, and I believe him, he had been ringing the bell since day one.  The book is titled “Against All Enemies” and it’s a page turning indictment of the whole crew, from Condoleezza Rice, on up.

While you’re at it, pick up of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s book, “The Price of Loyalty”.  An astounding glimpse into the pre-911 days and the Bush administration’s determination, even then, to to invade Iraq.

What baffles me is how so many talking heads, Dan Rather included, seem wont to purchase that at the very least, Cheney is sincere, that he believes what he says.  No sale here.  He’s a charlatan and should be tried and convicted for war crimes.  Every prediction has been wrong.  Every “fact” he’s ever foisted has been a lie.  The idea that this prick is able to command a single American’s attention on any public airwave, makes me want to puke in technicolor.

Here’s where we are.  No WMD.  There never was and there remains no credible reason to tell Americans it was…..was.  No connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.  No connection whatsoever between Saddam Hussien and the events of 911.  Again, never was and no credible reason to tell Americans there was.  Nothing, no symbiosis between a secular dictatorship and an extreme religious movement.

No was.  None.

Here we are.  Not a single fucking reason for invading a sovereign country that posed no threat to us or even it’s neighbors in the foreseeable future.  No reason for killing hundreds of thousands if not more than a million innocent people.  No reason for displacing millions of innocents.  No reason for the deaths of thousands of proud American men and women.  No reason for the incalculable grief visited on millions and millions of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers across the entire planet.  No goddamn reason at all for any of it.

No was and no is.

I usually endeavor to bring a little humor to you the reader, while drawing your attention to the horrible events that surround us all in this world.  Forgive me, this just isn’t funny.  There’s nothing funny about it.  It’s all tragedy kids.  A long slow, brutal and still developing nightmare that will disturb the world’s sleep for decades because Richard Bruce Cheney was somehow allowed to have far too much influence on the course of human events.

More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for a consummately unjust war with Iraq.  More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for the abject and utterly reprehensible torture America visited with malice and viciousness on America’s “enemies”.  More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is culpable for America’s woefully reduced standing in the world.  More, than any single other human fucking being, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for the hole that we are now at the bottom of.

One of the prevailing messages of the Obama administration is to look forward and therefore not dwell too zealously on our recent past.  It is ever more apparent to me that however wholesome and well intentioned such sentiments are, they are naive and for lack of a better adjective, simple, in an increasingly complex world.

Richard Bruce Cheney shits where he eats.

Hold Dick Cheney responsible.  Show the world that accountability is still a respected idea in America.  Prosecute this prick.  In so doing, we will demonstrate the best we have to offer as a first step, to ourselves and the rest of the planet.

Fuck this guy.

Drinks for my friends.

Fuck that shit.  CHRISTIAN TERRORISM.

Timothy McVeigh was a domestic terrorist.

Whackjobs like Scott Roeder, who assassinated Dr. George Tiller yesterday in his own goddamn church, what should be a sanctuary, do so in the the name of their Christian God.  No surprise here that Roeder was a homophobe as well.  Christian Terrorist, nothing less.

Thank God I’m agnostic.  I crack me up.

“A man named Scott Roeder was convicted in 1996 of criminal use of explosives and sentenced to 24 months probation….” -CNN

Imagine this man was Muslim and he was known to stalk and then kill a Rabbi or a politician.  Think about it.  Really.

Like it or not, George Tiller was engaging in a legally protected activity.  Do these assholes really think these women simply wake up, watch an episode of Maury Povich and decide to seek a late term abortion as a matter of convenience?  I’m not even going to look it up, I’m confident that’s not the case.  Shut up, I will not entertain the issue.

Enter the glowering spectre of egregiously irresponsible “journalists” like Bill O’Reilly.  How much blood on his hands?

“Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006″ -salon.com

As of today, no apologies from O’Reilly.  In it’s stead, Bill the pinhead offers that: “The far left is exploiting the death of [sic] Dr. Tiller to stifle any criticism of abortion.”  Note the euphemism “death of” in the the place of what should rightfully be “assassination”.  As though, “Tiller the Killer” some how expired or succumbed to natural causes.

There is no doubt in my mind that O’Reilly and his ilk are responsible in some degree for so recklessly fomenting the hate and fear for which such tragedies are an inevitable conclusion.  Inevitable, you douchebag.  Time to man up, you penisless reptile.  Do you imagine your useless vitriol to be without consequence?

To quote Snoop: “Fuck Bill O’Reilly.”

Man I hate these guys.

In other news, I’m thinking Sonia Sotomayor has benefitted  from the magic of rhinoplasty.  Good decision methinks.  She used to have a honker like a potato.  Seriously, she’s hot, smart and exotic, at least to me, self confessed trailer trash.  I’m saying that under the right circumstances, I’d hit that.

For the record, my current significant other is very smart and way hotter.

I gotta tell ya, I think Barack taking Michelle out for dinner and a show in New York is unbelievably cool.  He loves his wife and so do I.  Class and glamor.  A little Camelot for us all.  I am only able to muster a mere modicum of amusement at the FOX news talking heads invective over the cost of the outing.  Vainglorious and vituperatively disingenuous valor on part of their talking heads pretending to give a mad fuck over the expense to you, dear reader.  Did they complain, on your behalf, about Dumbya’s record amounts of vacation time to clear brush in Crawford?  I think not.

Assholes.

Man I hate these guys.

Drinks for my friends.

If Dick Cheney’s lips part at all, he’s lying.

I’m nurturing a man crush for Senator Carl Levin after he bitch slapped Darth Cheny and his little dog Liz with what I’m certain will be the facts.  You know those classified torture memos Darth and Liz persist ad nauseum in referring to? The ones they say prove torture works and saved hundreds of thousands of lives?

Senator Levin said last night that Darth and his little dog too, are full of shit.

“When former Vice President Cheney said last week that what happened at Abu Ghraib was the work of “a few sadistic prison guards” acting on their own, he bore false witness. And when he said last week there was no link between the techniques used at Abu Ghraib and those approved for use in the CIA’s secret prisons, he again strayed from the truth. The seeds of Abu Ghraib’s rotten fruit were sown by civilians at the highest levels of our government.” -Daily Kos

“Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction. Mr. Cheney has made other false statements. For instance, his claim that the techniques used on detainees were the “same exact procedures” used on our own people in the SERE training regime. That could not be farther from the truth.” -Daily Kos

Booya!

Bear in mind that Levin is no partisan firebrand and certainly not an ideologue.  Level headed, reasonable and very well respected on both sides of aisle, when Carl speaks, people listen and they are inclined to believe him.  In contrast, the Cheneys’s aren’t exactly the picture of sartorial splendor.  Dick is the most accomplished and prolific liar to ever sit at the second highest level of our executive branch.

Man I hate this fucker.

In the post Dick-in-Bush era, Darth Cheney has taken it upon himself, with earnestness, to incite and maintain the market for debate over all egregious actions and policies of his administration, despite legitimacy, credibility or even relevance.  My guess is that history will judge this man with an earned but graceful combination of malice and impunity.  He is without question evil and black of heart; his legacy will suffer accordingly.  It is my sincere wish that his charred and diseased cardiac will endure long enough to afford him a fulsome mouth full of what he has wrought and the disgrace he deserves.

It’s ironic that we’ve arguably heard more from this prick in the last few months, than his entire reign as puppet master and dark lord.

He got hammered, shot a man in the face, and somehow orchestrated for his victim to apologize for the inconvenience.  Who would even attempt to question his prowess for malignancy and obfuscation?

With such a thorough biography of lies and deceit, what will it take for America to stop listening to this vainglorious asshole?  No amount of pride or shame seems enough to compel him to shut the fuck up and disappear.  Are we a nation of masochists?

Fuck this guy.

I confess to a certain vulgar delight in writing about him.  Such an easy target.  So obviously flawed.  He is nothing if not compelling in a macabre sort of way.  I love to loathe him and perhaps that’s his appeal.  I can only hope it’s that simple.  Whatever the case, I’m certain his post Vice Presidential fifteen minutes do far more harm than good to the causes of conservatism and Republican ideology.  Perhaps he unwittingly performs a profound favor by not yet letting America forget just how much his administration sucked.

Drinks for my friends.

It is indisputable that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be the best looking justice to ever sit on the Supreme Court, despite being stupid, under qualified and racist.

Fuck me.

“The Senate needs to asses her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender or political preferences.”  -Senator James Inhofe (R) Oklahoma

“They’re just like ‘hey Hispanic chick lady!  You’re empathetic?’  She says ‘yup!’  They say, ‘you’re in.’  That’s the way it really works.” -Glenn Beck, High Priest of Douchbaggery

“Not necessarily, I know lots of stupid people who went to ivy league schools” -Karl Rove

Think he was thinking about Dumbya?  I did not steal that joke from Olbermann, we just happened to be like minded.

“I’m telling you, she appears to be a racist…” -Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo

“White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw.  Latina woman racist should also withdraw” -Newt Gingrich

“This is someone clearly picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she’s the best qualified” -Curt Levey, Committee For Justice, Head Asshat

“She’s a bigot, she’s a racist.” -Rush Limbaugh, Human Shitsmear

The egregious irresponsibility of such claims notwithstanding.  The resolute ugliness aside.  Typical obfuscation by a cavalcade of morons speaking for the Republican party.  Methinks they doth protest too much and certainly too early as well as too vociferously.  Textbook example of a pot decrying a kettle as all things black.  Man I hate these guys.

As for me, I don’t yet have an opinion.  She is among the most experienced and qualified of any justice nominated for about a hundred years.  She’s had three decisions upheld by the highest court in the land, two overturned and one still pending.  Given that about seventy five percent of decisions are overturned by the Supreme Court,  she’s batting like a superstar.

She obviously deserves consideration in light of her education, accomplishments and distinction in that arena.  Her extensive experience in all matters of jurisprudence.  This woman is a bit of a rockstar on paper.

That’s all I know.  Fer cryin outloud, it’s been two days!

What makes me angry, is that it’s so predictable.  So goddamn obvious.  For people like me who pay a modicum of attention, there are no surprises here.  What exactly does all this say about the contemporary conservative movement?  The abrupt, violent knee jerk so predictable and anticipated, that I could have written their talking points for them.

This country desperately thirsts for and needs something beyond a two party system.  My dismay is that the GOP cannot even provide an intellectually honest contrast in a a tragically flawed and nearly broken government of a mere two parties.  We are fractured from the inside.  The catalyst for most of the internal bleeding is the absolute onus of the modern conservative movement.  Neocons.  They are fools.  Jackasses, unwilling to look further than their own noses, fears and absurd bias.

California’s prop. 8 debacle is a flaming example.  Pun intended.

Unable and unwilling to avoid stepping on their own withering dicks.  I’m talking about the groups who campaigned for it’s passage.  They think it’s a victory.  Pathetic.

The Republicans have failed us in more ways than one.  I’m a Democrat, for lack of a more appropriate political designation.  I have little enthusiasm for what the implosion of the Republican party means for the long term chance America has for prosperity.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

At the very least, we require a reasonable ballast.  We really must have a more diversified collection of voices and ideas.  The abject failure of the GOP to even make sense, much less own a viable stake in any ethical argument, will amount to a tragedy for us all, regardless of political stripe.  The Republican party has not only failed itself, it has failed all of America.

Fools.  Goddamn them.

A new ethic is emerging and it is muscular and potent, yet without intelligent and honest contraposition, it cannot evolve.  What we are staring at is a massive shift.  It might be an excellent thing for humankind, but it must endure smart debate and insightful criticism or it will atrophy and we all lose.  This new ethic must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or it will crack when tested.  If not allowed to arrive with a confident consensus, it will crumble.  

We may be looking at our last best chance.

A last dance.

You people need to contact these assholes and give them a heads up.

Drinks for my friends.

I dove farther and harder into obscurity.

I was stung.  Once bitten twice shy.

I worked nights as a janitor.

The Todd on phones.  He played his Strat upside down and backwards like Hendrix.  I always liked Todd Montgomery, it would take years on up to today to fully appreciate him.  He rode Japanese steel.  Him and Symington.  The grunion run.  His wife was and still is a successful  comedienne.  Tall goofy guy with a ridiculous grin who made friends easily, but chose them carefully.

Easily underestimated.

I ran into him in Vegas a few years back, his wife was performing where I was staying.  He was gracious and sweet.  We had a quick drink.  I had some place to be but he was happy to walk with me to my room so we could talk.  He hung with me while I changed clothes, brushed my teeth and even walked with me and talked with me on my way back down.  He was happy with himself as well as his life and family.

He was sun through the clouds of the mission I was on.  My crew actually traveling with bodyguard.

A lung full of clean air in my toxic life.

We’re still in touch.

Otherwise, I did the best I could to land in studio C.

A little 32 input API.  The most rudimentary of the five rooms.  The redheaded step child of the entire complex.  If you were in there, you were probably assisting on a demo, as in not a record.  The engineer usually understood he was getting someone with training wheels attached.  Not quite live without a net.

It was the lowest profile gig to be had that still afforded an opportunity to learn.  My place to get the big picture on at my own pace.  So, I did just that.  I pushed hard for gigs in C.  I would divine the process and what was expected of me.  The room belonged to the record company, as opposed to the studio, from nine to five.

Bonus.  Sane hours.

Work hours in a recording studio, unless your role is administrative or clerical, have no thing to do with eight hours a day, five days a week.  Twelve hours a day, six days a week is pretty tame.  Hundred hour weeks were de rigueur.  I was to sleep there often.

Thing was, I would still be pushing someone out of a comfortable seat.  Scott Symington was studio C attending.  Symington wasn’t well liked and I never understood why.  At least not completely.  He seemed nice enough.  He had a smarmy cop mustache.  I think he might have shit talked me a few times but beyond that I didn’t think too hard about him.

No trouble there.

It didn’t take me long to displace Symington.  I got the idea he was on his way out.  I doubt he saw me coming.  I’m not sure he cared.

Joe Borja was really my first mentor.  A thick, short Filipino guy with an over sized head and the voice of a ten year old.  Joe didn’t have a car.  Once in a while, on a good pay day for Joe, I’d take him to his hotel in my shitbox and we’d stop on the way at Yamashiro’s for drinks and to do blow in the gardens.

I almost flattened him one day in a crosswalk.  Didn’t see him.

My first gig with Joe was tracking in C.  He assigned me one task.  We had a guitar amp in the machine room.  We were using it as an iso booth.  Two sliding glass doors between the control room and the machine room.  Joe asked me to make sure both doors were closed always before we were rolling.  Wax on wax off.  No shit.  He showed me how bad I could be at a very simple thing.  Then he showed me a microcosm of what I needed to pay attention to in the time I’d forgotten to make sure both doors were closed.

He wasn’t a dick about it, he just pointed it out.

I would assist Joe on and off for years and he did his best to teach me something.

Joe wasn’t always easy on me but he was good to me.  A solid engineer with a giant heart.  He taught me with patience.  Showed me how to hold the hammer.  He demonstrated what happened when it was swung with a good arc.

It occurred  to me I was to be a shitty assistant and Joe was in silent agreement.  He still did the best he could by me, even though he knew I sucked.  I could tell by the way he looked at me that his hopes weren’t high.  We both understood that I didn’t have the temperament or the patience.

Thanks Joe Borja, for all of it.

There were others.  John Bogosian helped me a lot.  Tall good looking guy with cool hair who smoked Marlboro Reds and used a Zippo.  Swagger.  Bogosian was a good friend to me and even went after chief tech Mikey Morongell on my behalf one morning.  Mikey was spewing his coach cleats schtick on me as the underling.  Leveraging the pecking order.  Bogosian called him on it.  Mikey walked away.  Pretty cool.

Mikey wasn’t a bad guy.  He was a somewhat volatile Italian prick threatened by a squad of insanely talented and capable techs beneath him.

John came to the deep Valley one night to get me after I’d fled my Koreatown apartment during the riots. His old man was a coach for the Seattle Seahawks.  He took me to a party with a band we were working with called Aristocratic Trash.  I got drunk and I got laid but I can’t remember how I got back to the valley.

John was kinda damaged and struggling to adhere to the twelve step thing.  Sometimes gracefully and sometimes not, he’d leave the control room.  I would take over.  It is the simplest explanation of how I won the trust of a band called Rat Bat Blue.  Thank you John, Dabro, Allen, Ace and Fraulein Sniffy.

Fraulein Sniffy was the drummer.  The roughly two women drummers I worked with were both excellent.

Here was a band that could play. Rat Bat Blue was to be be my ultimate pig guinea.  Along with bands named Wink, Undercity, Agnes Gooch and dozens of others and eventually some punk band named Down By Law.  I’m not sure how many songs we, Rat Bat Blue and me, completed over the years.  More than twenty is my guess.  Wonderful people, excellent band.  My chops began there as well as my understanding that the only benefit I would enjoy from being an assistant engineer was to learn to from others how to make things sound the way they sounded in my head.

The first time I did that, was with Rat Bat Blue.  I knew it immediately when it happened, it sounded like it did in my head.

It’s a story for another day.

I realized my future in pro audio would only be jeopardized by pursuing excellence as a second engineer.  I knew I needed to bypass this step as much as possible but realized I’d have to wade in as much as I could stand.  My only shot was to make it sound like it did in my head.

To be a good engineer.

Drinks for my friends.

I had a pretty swell day today.

I actually went to a barbecue.  I brought a couple good zinfandels, one was a Pejut.

I contributed in other ways.  I grilled some pineapple.  Quartered slabs of it.  I brushed one slab with teriyaki and another with a with a blackberry preserve based homemade bbq sauce.  I sprinkled garlic on both.

I like that both Deanna and Lisa don’t like to smoke in front of the kids.

Me, I don’t care.

I grilled red onions too.  I think my pineapple went over pretty well, it was gone fast, but I brought home some onions.

Extraordinarily nice people.

We watched the first half of the laker game and these women were on it.  I was the only adult male of ten people.  They sort of assumed I’d be some alpha male grill master.  We had ribs, hot links, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers and I grilled pineapple and red onions.  The women and children were forced to cook the meat as my emasculation bloomed.

I supervised while I smoked a few of Deanna’s Marlboro Lights because they tasted interesting and I was drinking good zin.  They seemed to have a handle on it.

Anyway, shoulda heard the women talking the game.  Awesome.  Kinda bitchy but not missing a single thing.  I’m not a sports guy but I likes me an NBA playoff game.  I was sitting with at least three women that had been paying attention all season.  One told me the Lakers could for sure stop Cleveland.

There was too an enclosed porch on the second floor with widows on three sides.  As it got chillier it was a nice place to watch the sun sink and have a smoke.

Children were the stars of my day.  These little girls, sisters, were diamonds in platinum.  I tried not to smoke in front of them.  They sang to us on the way home.  I can’t put my finger on it.  Their obvious independence, their overt dependence on mother and whatever innocent sweetness they threw my way.  A rosy spotlight on them.

Two sixteen year old boys named Jonathan and a very pretty girl about the same age.  The young lady such a wide eyed doe.  All three literally teetering between adolescence and early adulthood.  I see it in their eyes and read it in their gestures.   Charismatic geeks and thank the powers that be.  Smart, funny and not thugs or idiots.  Good kids.

Then there’s me.  Huffing on Marlboros, drinking wine and soliciting the cooperation of any teen I can coerce into my onion and pineapple experiments.

It was an unconscionably pleasant day.

I brought a plate home.

It is Memorial  Day, a year and a half after the Thanksgiving I first and last met the Grandma.  No sooner did I enter the living room than she was pulling the thin tube for oxygen that ran across her cheek up so that I could kiss her there.  Not much can make you feel that welcome.

I hate war and I don’t believe in your God.  I am respectful of every single American that has served his or her country in any capacity that includes war.  It is a very big deal.  I have an uncle that served and he is damaged.  I’m an agnostic and a Democrat but I’m also an American.  I love this country, but  I’m not afraid to express my disappointment, disgust and dismay.

I am a patriot.

I take it very seriously.

Would any of you out there be willing and of a mind to come at me from there, I respectfully invite you to bring it.

My gratitude for every man woman and child who has defended these principles and this country.

Drinks for my friends.

http://www.truthout.org/052209R

Cut & paste.  It’s unbelievable.  It scares me.

Darth Cheney.

I cannot countenance who we are.  I can’t stand what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.  I can’t stomach those who would defend these bastards and the actions they so relentlessly try to sell us as performed on our behalf.  For our safety, they tell us.

This is bullshit.  These are egregious crimes.  These people are lying.  The media pads around it with careful feet on deep pile Berber, giving them their say.  People died in custody of the United States government.  The sickest aspect?  They probably expired whilst we pursued our efforts to extract reason for a war that Darth fucking Cheney knew was complete crap.

Bullshit.

Despite all this, we still have to suffer through the airtime the mainstream media affords this lying, disgusting evil jackass who spent his eight years in office doing his damndest  to pervert, distort and destroy all things that allowed Americans to be proud.

I bet this guy is hung like a gnat.  Had a giant safe in his office.  Kinda the bureaucratic equivalent of a big stupid truck in the ‘burbs.  See what I’m saying?

Look, I’m not naive.  Any American who’s lived with eyes wide open for the past handful of years, understands all too well what the Dick-in-Bush regime has done in our name.  What chaps my ass with such profound cheese grating efficacy, is that this pinhead Cheney, is allowed for a single second to utilize public airwaves in an attempt to mitigate, in such an obvious fashion of puerile necropsy,  policies and actions that have indelibly stained us all. 

Actions and policies, for which he should clearly be behind goddamn bars.

It’s crap.  Elaborate falsehoods.  Complete shite.

The neocons and this dickhead Cheney in particular, are attempting to rewrite history as we let them into our living rooms every evening for such dubious ends.  Man, I hate these guys.  In the words of Reverend  Jeremiah Wright, “Goddamn America”.  Any asshole who even attempts to change the elaborate and true path of human events past, should be muzzled and pelted with rocks and garbage.

“They pelted me with rocks and garbage”.

History is sacred and Cheney will do his best, but his legacy will ooze a vile, stinking sewage.  Not even gulls will go near it.  The EPA will get involved.

Write your local network affiliate, tell them you don’t want to see the vulgar and vile visage of this man or any of his lackeys on your television anymore.  Lying to you and impugning the efforts of the man we elected by an unprecedented majority to right the wrongs his administration and office so recklessly and relentlessly pursued and wrought.

I’m all for free speech.  But not if what you say on our air is an incendiary lie.  It is crying fire in a crowded theater.  At the very least the crawl underneath should go bold and all caps when he lies.  Cheny’s kinda soft spoken so it would be like someone yelling from underneath.  I’ll call Rupert.

We, America, tortured.  We killed people in our charge.  Worse, we killed hundreds of thousands and visited life altering suffering on millions for no good goddamn reason.  I’m ashamed of my country and you should be too.

Who are we?  What have we allowed ourselves to become?

This tumor is us.

This parading of a simple dog and a forlorn pony is contemptible and absurd.  Stand up.  Be an American.  Do not tolerate this man man and his lies.

We are so much better than this.

Tell Rush Limbaugh he can blow me.

I’m trying to tell you something and you should listen.

Drinks for my friends.

Hello,

Fuck this guy.  Cheney is a vacuum of credibility.  A black hole.  He is a liar and a thief.  He and his cronies profited immensely from the war in Iraq by engaging in fraud perpetrated on our own troops and we the people as often as not.  Haliburton and KBR.  You think this guy gives a mad fuck about you?

Yet he deigns to flatter us with his opinions by the hour, or so it seems.  Who exactly does he think he is?  What new arrogance is this?  Dude, you were the Vice President and most of us agree you sucked.  Go away.

The CIA isn’t exactly a pillar of truth, justice and the American way these days.  They, both the CIA and Darth, deliberately “fixed the facts to fit the policy” that led us into one of the most unjust wars in history.  Can you say Downing Street Memos?  Nonexistent yellowcake uranium or mobile bio weapons labs that turned out to be balloon trucks?  The Keystone Cops in color.

This guy gets on TV.

They tortured in fact, to gain and supply reason and rationale for that very war.  With every fiber of my being and every ounce of conviction I can summon, I say fuck these guys.  Furthermore,  I invite Dick Cheney, with zero respect due, to shut the fuck up and go away.

Or, we get to waterboard the prick bastard.  I’ll settle for either and sleep soundly.

Dear Dick, You suck.  Please vanish.  Go gentle into that hot cave.

Fear, fear fear.  This is a mess created by our former arsonist laureate, the Dick-in-Bush administration.  “…if we continue to make decisions within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes…..” -President Barack Obama.  Cheney calls Our Man’s policies, “recklessness cloaked in righteousness”.  I can’t help but wonder just what Darth Cheney knows about righteousness.

The past administration swore up and down that we did not torture.  Upon that lie of extraordinary magnitude becoming as common as the knowledge that one should avoid using motorized garden shears for personal grooming, they try to convince us that torture kept us safe, was justified and wasn’t really torture but “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  My guess is Cheney’s next career will be in real estate.  You know, bridges, swampland, timeshares in Baghdad, that sort of thing.

Or maybe the latest incarnation of Swamp Thing.

I am in awe that this douchebag Cheney is able to command any attention at all.  Why is anyone even listening to such a notoriously full of shit, black hearted blowhard?  Why?  He’s been wrong about everything, caught in more lies than Baron Munchhausen and he should be in goddamn Leavenworth.

It’s all smoke and mirrors.  It’s all they’ve got.  Fear wrapped in the worn gauze of  some obsolete notion of security.  That’s it kids.  There’s nothing more to see here.  It is exactly as it appears.  Move along please.  Please.

Understand, this man, our President, has more on his plate than you can possibly imagine.  The tasks he faces every morning require superhuman effort, attention and acumen.  Most of what our man struggles with in the shower, the great unwashed are willfully ignorant of.

This guy is inside a cat 4 tornado and he doesn’t need Dick Cheney’s irrelevant shit right now.  If Darth were an actual patriot, he would pull a fade starting now.  Cheney, of all people is intimate with the toxic pile he and that little monkey left behind.

This subject of torture has become far too convoluted.  Too nuanced even.  It’s simple.

Torture is immoral because it is cruel and inhumane.  At the very least it pollutes the soul of anyone who orders it and any who would administer it.    We must understand that these people, these candidates for and of torture, are human beings.  Right or wrong, these people believe what they believe just as fiercely as we do.  Under the last administration, anyone who believed differently than you or Sean Hannity, could literally be tortured for disagreeing, whether they knew shit or not.

Surveilled.  Wire tapped which means computer tapped.  ……..anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law……..

Torture is unethical because the result is at best dubious.  With resolute men, the decision about what they are willing to disclose, even when faced with death, has already been made. Count on such men to spew crap when tortured.  It’s useless.  Even the economy of the concept is bankrupt. They think it’s a game of Stratego.

Drinks for my friends.

She.

Prowess and power to have survived from a time before man walked or even swam.  In the interim millennia,  She evolved in wits and wisdom.  Efficiency of things like propagation of the species, were the domain of a hyper Darwinism with a divine sway.  She.  Always a She, was to be born pregnant in perpetuity.

One at a time.  Never more than two at a time.  The gestation period best estimated in centuries.  She dies and the daughter births.  Over and over, one at a time.  Fire and blood.  Screams  shake your torso and the femurs rattle.  A giant infant three or four times as long as a man is tall.  Violence and blood.  Heat and sulphur.  She lands on all four.

Eyes a fiery pool of refract and gold.  She blinks slow and aware.

Far from malevolent, She is of her own mind.  She does not suffer fools.  She understands almost all human beings to be fools.  Light speed quick and clever beyond, discourse with She will ultimately cost far more than such an experience is worth.  Absent an acute illness within weeks or months, madness will visit sooner rather than later.

When she glances, the weight impresses like twenty feet down in a swimming pool.

There is one thing.  Um, legend.  The way I understand it, I’ve studied it.  I know.  I’ve talked to a lot of people and they all know.  You get one to talk to you right after being pushed out and She is your bitch.  Each She needs to have some sorta relationship with at least one of us.  I can’t find the actual rules.  The idea is to be first on the scene.

I need to locate the beasts, get close enough to evaluate the health of the elder She, make pals with the younger She while making sure She’s ready to kick open the furnace door and produce a flaming prodigy.

What this is, is a stroll in the garden.  Walk in the park.  A BBQ with friends and decent hooch.  Fun will be had and I’ll have giant flying mammal reptile as a courtesan.

My name is Gerald Frankenhammer.  I dabble in finance and intrigue.  Legends and myths.  Ghosts and extraterrestrials.  Conspiracies and the macabre.

What I’m about to tell you,  will astound you.

Drinks for my friends.

I talked about it last night but didn’t realize that Senate Democrats had walked away.  Seems they want a specific plan.  As in, where exactly will the money go?  That seems reasonable to me.  $80 million is a lot of cake.

You know, Gitmo.

What baffles me is this:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “I can’t make it any more clear,” Reid said. “We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.”  Was he quoted out of context?  As far as I know there’s no debate here about what town or city street they’ll be dropped on, they are to be incarcerated.  Harry is a friend of my Mother’s.  I got an inscribed, autographed copy of his book for my birthday.  I’m wondering if he’s getting a little old.  His handwriting describes the drawing of sea monkeys.

What is the deal?  There’s two hundred and forty of them and we already have more people behind bars per capita than any nation on earth.  There’s two hundred and forty and if America has a specialty these days, it’s locking people up.  Specialty?  Industry.  Bring them here, try them like Americans because we still have a system of justice and courts in which they may prevail if they aren’t guilty and are allowed to prove it.

Regardless of the outcome, the truly guilty ones will burn in a Christian hell.  Right?

What scares politicians so much about our justice system functioning as an equitable litmus for these particular “detainees”?

Anyway, it get’s better.

“Republicans are poised with an amendment by James Inhofe of Oklahoma that would block any of the Guantanamo detainees from coming to U.S. soil to stand trial or serve their sentences” -yahoo

Republicans just keep on sweetening  the elixir that will be the lubricant of their demise.  Ha!  Can I make that stick?  I’m way ahead of you.

“Shuttering this facility now could only serve one end: and that is to make Americans less safe than Guantanamo has,” said GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.”  -yahoo

Guantanamo made us safe?  I’d say with the torture and death and all, the hawks would be lucky to slide into obscurity as opposed to jail.  Zero sum for them but a nasty stain on the rest of us.

Mitch McConnell is a scurrilous,  multi-chinned rodent of a Senator.  A nasty, long of tooth and sharp of teeth, a warm blooded, razor incisored dumbshit.  Even his dog hates him.

He warned that if the United States withdrew from Iraq, “the terrorists would come after us where we live.” -1/10/07 CNN

I can actually smell that sentence.

He loathes the idea of campaign finance reform.  He get’s giddy over the NSA listening to whatever and whomever blows their skirt up.  Sans warrant.  He’s very pro Iraq war as a central front for the war on terror.  I love how they accuse us of dangerous political stripes like socialist, when they stand to applaud fascism and nearly shit themselves with glee.

The cherry atop my shit sundae is the reality of scripture superimposed over  dramatic military landscapes as cover pages for top secret war memos to Dumbya.  While we were beating and abusing, torturing to death, people confined and bound.  Dumbya got a report with an inspirational poster for a cover.  I hear he really likes pears and carrots from a jar.  We did this to extract corroborating evidence for what we were about to do and then continue to do in Iraq and everywhere else.  On the off chance there was to be a super secret memo on Sunday, it was wrapped in Easter themed paper.  A candy bar tied in the bow.

Spuriouser and spuriouser.

Dumbya knew there would be pretzels later.  With supervision of course.  Plenty to wash them down with.

Drinks for my friends.

So the titular head of the GOP says, “The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over”.

Huh.  You think?  In light of all the malice, avarice and incompetence your party has fomented and been complicit in for the last eight years, you’re no longer accountable?  Not to be asked or even compelled to apologize?

Michael Steele issued this proclamation.  He has giant balls made of flaky, semi solid, foamy stuff.  Premier asstard of the GOP.

Hey Mike, wanna bet?

Mike is a loose lipped cashier.  He’s also an idiot.

Looks like somebody picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

This dark stain is your legacy.  I’m thinking you guys need to make peace with that.  It’s a blood stain.  You won’t be taken seriously until you do.

It is this exact brand of arrogance that keeps Republican stock in the shitter.  That, and the looming visage of dickheads like Darth Cheney and  the Human Shitsmear.  These two aren’t the only ones tripping over themselves while waltzing  through the GOP’s intestines.  I adore how jacked up they are.

Somebody doesn’t get the difference between consonants and vowels.

Meanwhile and just in time, swine flu rears it’s ugly head again.  Somebody died!  Quick, call Mr. Little, first name Chicken.

In other news, two groups are seeking disbarment of twelve Bush administration lawyers.  Despite a rather overt political posture, their argument is pretty airtight:

“Just as the bar would suspend an attorney who advised a police officer to torture and brutalize a detained immigrant or criminal defendant, the bar must suspend these attorneys for advocating and causing the torture of war detainees,” said Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for the groups. -UPI

Fuckin A, I’m good with that.  All the assholes were named.  Yoo, Ashcroft, Gonzales and Mukasey et al.  Don’t know about you, but I’m getting a half leaner over here.  It won’t amount to shit.

Hi.  I oppose birth control and abortion in the same breath.  I really believe you should get married to experience live dick insertion.  Who am I?  I’m the Catholic Church and I’m okay, I lust all night and I hypocrite all day.  Premarital sex is a sin but ass raping young boys isn’t even outre’…………

When did prisoners become detainees?

John Boehner actually said “our constituents don’t want these terrorists in their neighborhoods”.  He fucking said it.  The subject was Gitmo detainees.  Boehner’s neighborhoods are in Ohio.  How do you say that with a straight face at a press conference in front of cameras?  John Boehner’s neighborhoods in Ohio, are light years from a military prison in Kansas surrounded by a military base.  This whole debate is regoddamndiculous.  Boehner needs to lay off the bronzer.  His eyes are particulary reptilian in contrast with his earnestness to become a lite skinned black man.

Who is this fuck?

Boehner is creepy weird and an astoundingly magnificent dickhead.  He’s so full of shit his caramel orange pallor may just be benefiting from the tremendous output and efficiency yielded by his super human shit producing capability.  It’s all he can do to keep from vomiting actual warm crap while speaking.  Several times a day he burp-pukes and swallows turds back down into his gullet.

Let me tell you how I feel about John Boehner.

This guy is more queer than a pole vaulter in an ice storm.

What the rest of us need to remember, is that are we to march jackbooted in lock step like the Republicans did until the obvious consequence of rot and implosion transpired, events will be eerily similar.

Or, diversity will emerge as strength.  It already has.

Diversity could be the next exclusivity.  Beware.  Don’t laugh, because I’m not kidding and that could be scary.  Ubiquitous caucasian males would be in for a tough time.  Too many of us.

White power!

Drinks for my friends.

I’d made it out alive but it cost me some time and I had two brand new enemies, Sheri and Bill.  A lovely couple, each swinging a bat far heavier than mine.

I didn’t like Bill for shit, but I wasn’t trying to throw him under the bus.  Wasn’t my fault he ended up under the wheels.

I was moving from under Bill to back under Sheri.

Straight to the night shift.  Six p.m. til whenever.

There was new talent down stairs. College boys. Frat boys. Sharma and Bamford. Fags both of them. One with wholesome looks and the other with sorta terrorist Tom Selleck charisma. They golfed and played lacrosse. They both had college degrees. I hated these pricks until I liked them. They turned out to be among the coolest and sharpest engineers ever hired as runners. They were actually overqualified.

Excellent drinking companions.

I had the good fortune to share misery with them and have them as my bitches for a short time.   I believe Bamford did a Weezer record recently and Sharma did a goddamn Stones record not long ago with Don fucking Was.   If either of you two are reading this, you were each my bitch for a time. Pricks.

You can imagine I was threatened back then.

I could feel it, palpable. I hadn’t engineered a thing and had barely assisted on a handful of sessions.  Mark Harvey, may he rest in peace, saw something that was before scared.  He began to move aggressively on my behalf by putting me as a second on high profile sessions. Pardon the misnomer, just about everything that happened there was high profile.

He threw me in the river.

I loved that man, at the very least because he believed in me. Tough but fair.  He saw me in a way I couldn’t yet see myself.

There was a schedule published everyday.  What act was in each of five rooms, start time, producer, engineer, assistant and second assistant.  On the same page were the runners times and mastering schedules. It was to be distributed before five p.m. to all departments and specific offices.

Night shift for runners started at six p.m. When I was on days, I called shotgun on the schedule delivery because I had to establish dominance and maintain my relations with my friends around the lot.

It seems like the first time I saw it was on the schedule. Where your name appeared on that schedule could mean months of misery. What you read there could make your heart sink or burst. What you saw there was your fate. Your rank, your potential. Updated every twenty four hours.

The Harvinator put me on a Guns N Roses tracking session in studio A.  The big room.  The most confusing console; a custom desk built by Rupert Neve for George Martin.  I was to be the second under Hedley Godot.   Ed Goodreau.

To not talk about Ed right here would be remiss,  yet I can’t think of what to say about him.  Smart guy, can’t speak for his engineering because I don’t remember any of it.  I was to see him in many situations beyond this drama.  I’m not sure if he was hard trying to be soft or soft trying to be hard.  I doubt he knows.

Mike Clink was producing and engineering.  The album was to be “Use Your Illusion” 1 & 2.  It would be a fascinating disaster for me.

The very first morning Clink was on my ass for how I draped the cable down the mic stand.  I asked him if he wanted ten pads on the 451’s.  He looked at me like I was an idiot.  No one uses a 451 without a pad on a hat or a ride. He did.  Years later I watched this guy struggle with a kick drum sound for an hour that I or just about any front office jockey could have nailed in five minutes.  Not like he couldn’t fire a sample.

Find the low middle and suck it out.  Somewhere between three and five hundred hertz.  It’s how you find the bottom of a kick drum, capture it all and subtract what’s ugly or messy.  Works on other instruments too.

What has Clink done since Guns & Roses?  Thompson and Barbiero mixed Appetite For Destruction.  His only noteworthy record after Appetite was “Use Your Illusion” 1 & 2.  I watched him ruin a band called I Mother Earth.  I have to tell you that Mike wasn’t a bad guy but he was simultaneously an arrogant prick with mediocre talent.

Hedley had me drive, which meant running the multitrack.  A very demanding job for someone who barely had any experience and a good move on Hedley’s part because I didn’t know the console or the patch bay.  Operating the remote for the tape machine on a tracking session requires a very long and focused attention span, particularly with an engineer like Clink who does dozens of takes for the sake of numerous variables and often edits on the spot.

Many engineers and all producers are loathe to drive the multitrack as it demands so much real time concentration, it limits the ability of an engineer to devote enough creative acumen to the big picture.  I was wood.  Best place for me was on that remote, even though I was tragically inexperienced.

The simple is thus, the recording engineer is analogous to the cinematographer and the record producer is not unlike the director on a film.  Financing can still happen from hell to breakfast.
Wide eyed and panicked but I handled it.  Barely.  I didn’t impress.
The band was a mess, Slash drinking a fifth of Jack a day and Duff doing similar damage to a bottle of Stoli.  I will tell you this, they could fucking play.  Matt Sorum had replaced Steven Adler on drums and he was not less than a goddamn freight train.  One of the best rhythm sections I would ever have anything to do with.  It was a thrill.

These guys could fucking play.

I remember Mike Clink being embarrassed when Slash pissed in a trash can.

Axle Rose was a self involved douchebag.  The band wanted nothing to do with him.  They left as he arrived each day if not before.

I wasn’t killing it but I didn’t suck.

Maybe two weeks in, the last straw came.  Not exactly inspiring confidence in Clink and it felt more and more like Hedley was determined to deliver my first trial by fire by burning me.  Sink or swim.  He wanted for me to go under.  He was anxious to hand me a humility that would be the last thing I needed.  He was a dick.

He expected a pro when he knew he had an amateur.

Last order of the day was to make sure cassette copies of the day’s work were ready for the band before they left.  One morning Mike Clink pulled me into an iso booth to tell me that the stereo image on the cassettes from the day before was reversed.  Left was right and right was left.  He had already spoken to Mark Harvey and asked for me to be removed from the project.  I finished the day knowing it was to be my last.

Late that night after everyone was gone, Hedley brought me a bottle of whiskey and encouraged me to drink it.  I was to meet with Harvey  the next morning to determine my fate but I was off the session for sure.  His demeanor was an impossible dichotomy of smug and sympathy.  I drank most of that bottle.

The patch bay is a wig of wires like an old school telephone switchboard.  Complex signal flow that determined everything from where any part ended up on any track, to what gear was in the signal chain, to what effects appeared on the console and where.  If you were the only assistant on a gig, you covered both, otherwise one drove the machines and one handled the the patch bay.

The thing is this, I didn’t make that patch.  Hedley did.  It wasn’t my mistake.  I never said a thing.  I was sure it would sound like an empty excuse. I understand Ed’s version is disparate.  Ed, although you were to do a lot for me in the years to come, you are not forgiven,  you should apologize.

I was now in the river, whether I liked it or not.

This chapter is dedicated to Baumgartner, Aguto and Korengo. Old studio rats from back in the day. Ran into them on a sidewalk just yesterday.  Ten years at least. We talked for at least four hours and no one did anything but get up to piss. They were more peaceful than I remember so I hope I was too. They were just as bright and funny as I recall. Good times.

Drinks for my friends.

Time for my sentence in tape copy was at hand.

It was kind of an unwritten rule that runners did a stretch in “Post Production” in order to get time in the rooms. Post Production in a recording facility/record company, meant tape copy. Bill Lazerus ran the tape copy suite designed and implemented by Steve Barncard and the ridiculously smart and talented A&M tech squad.

Barncard killed it. By that I mean he nailed it. He designed that room so intuitively well, it was clear he saw the whole thing in his head. Barney is one of those guys that functions above the rest of us in ways we don’t quite grasp.

I was to be flattered to engineer for Barncard years later.  The artist, some crazy but sweet child psychiatrist, flew me to Detroit, put me in a suite and didn’t work me very hard.  Decent cake.  Good gig.

It was brilliant. There were one hundred black, rack mounted, Yamaha cassette machines stopped, started and synchronized entirely by a crude little MAC in the middle of the room. We had quarter and half inch ATR’s and Studers, DATs and U-matics. There was a headphone listening system that fed five or ten seconds of audio from each of the hundred cassette decks. You wore the cans to listen to the job while you typed the labels.

You were mandated to hear every project you did.  Not merely listen.  It was about the discipline of hearing. Not a bad gig on it’s face, as your job was to hear new, unreleased music all day or night.

I knew Paula Abdul had a hit with Straight Up before you did. Not my music but I knew.

You assembled the package by inserting the “J card” into the cassette shell, affixing labels to the tape itself, packing them in boxes of ten, all with the A&M logo.  There were jobs that ran into the thousands of copies and that was your day.  One song over and over.  The caveat here is you’re not working on that song.  You are copying it over and over, hearing it over and over, without the remotest power to affect it any way.

Some thought me lazy because I grabbed the small jobs and although that was true, I didn’t listen to the same shit all day either.

We learned to align analog two tracks and to listen, and really hear. You had a window of just a few seconds to identify a bad copy out of a hundred and pull it.  I used to touch the lid before I hit eject.  Sometimes I could feel it in the machine.

After that, 1/4″ and 1/2″ copies and transfers from one medium to another including the brand new and fabulously shitty sounding DAT format. Sixteen bit chaos.

CD burners were years away.  Mp3s?  I remember working in a vinyl record store when CD’s first arrived.  I kept blowing fuses on the store stereo with Pachelbel’s Canon.  I’d make it through the whole thing,  the first cannon would fold the fuses and the amp would die and then a faint gust of ozone.  Never figured out where the fuses were, so Tom always knew who and what the next morning.

I learned all I needed within a month or three.

What it was, was a factory with ears.

My plan was to do four to six months and exit Dodge.

I liked it at first.

Bill, my boss, a female deer……. an ugly but charismatic little man, did analog edits, the occasional voice over, smoked cigarettes and redlined unpredictably. I’ll put a finer point on that. He erupted like a dwarfish, silver haired, angry and frustrated man. Marriage to Sheri Lazerus must have been a fucking nightmare.

Copious amounts of hair and a round waist that was slipping. It was nearly a front butt.

He always wore sweaters and cheap cologne. He drank coffee like it was water and I’m sure did the rest of his drinking at home. His breath made me think amphibians.

He could cut two track tape like a bastard.

It didn’t work the way I thought it would. I was ready to go long before Bill was ready to let me go. The roster of runners had stagnated. None had quit or been fired for months. Weird. No slots for me to assume. Purgatory.

By then, the entirety of studio staff had begun to liken tape copy to Alcatraz, as in “Lazatraz”, named after it’s redfaced warden.  My boss.
I met nice people up their too. David Chow and Ron Rogers are two of nicest people to use air. Ron turned out to be this excellent artist and musician. He had this great band called the Bowling Ball Mechanics. A friendly Texas twang; he pronounced my name like “mahckul”.

My good friend Keith Woods was down the hall in the tape library and our friendship came into it’s own then. I had to go the library several times a day. Keith died some ten years ago of Mad Cow Disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy. That’s another story, but may he rest in peace. It was so fast. There wasn’t then and there is not now, a single human who would or even could, disparage this man in any way.

He was an excellent and loyal friend to me.

I began to make friends in the A&R department and Bill Lazerus did not like that one bit. He was jealous. He told me it was a mistake to make friends and that it would only get me in trouble. He was wrong.

Bill spent the last three to five months kicking the shit out of me. His breath stank from coffee and cigarettes and he took great pride in being militaristic. He was a miserable bastard, but I have to tell you, I stumbled upon some James Taylor records he did and they are gorgeous. Beautiful recordings.

He had the gift.

I lost almost a year up there. Cheryl Engles, head of QC, became my Betty in shining armor by witnessing Bill meltdown on me. She was horrified enough to go right to Mark and Shelly. Meet Mark Harvey, aka The Harvinator, hard drinking intellectual and Studio Manager. Shelly Yakus, Giant Vagina, President of Recording, will entertain you much, later.

I think I was getting used to the abuse because her move confused me. I was further confused to have Mark and Shelly intervene on my behalf and bring me back downstairs into the lowest echelon of any recording studio’s gene pool.

I couldn’t wait to dive back into obscurity. I’d attracted too much attention.

Drinks for my friends.

I think it’s great Sarah Palin got a book deal. I mean, maybe rednecks and backward ass country fucks will learn to read.

Krakow!

Let me tell you something else. Friendships are about honesty.  Not tactics.  Loyalty, not gamesmanship.  As selfless as possible. We live once as far as we know,  so integrity should be integral. I hate not knowing, but finding out really sucks.

I’ve been in a few fights.  At first, I sucked at it.  I got my ass beat.  Later, after my father explained to me that it wasn’t the toughest, strongest, biggest or most skilled that prevailed in man to man, it was the meanest, I did a little better.  Held my own.  My old man was a serious brawler and he didn’t want me to fight.  He begged me not to.  He also told me that one of his worse beatings was at the hands of some guy he thought was a sissy.  The truth from a man one eyed after a bar fight before I was born.

I had no interest in it.  I’m not a violent guy.  It creeps me out.  I’m just not mean enough.  Even if I did all right or got the best of someone, it totally rattled my cage.

I like to watch boxing because it’s poetry, but not really feeling the ultimate fighting thing.  No worries, I like big tits and fast cars.

You know what I can’t wrap my brain around?  The idea that the Dick-in-Bush administration fomented and engaged in torture to lend truth to the lie of Iraq’s complicity in 911.  Some 70% of the voters in 2004 believed there was some connection between Saddam and the horrible death rubble in  New York.

A cowardly, despicable lie.

It was to be the biggest lie ever told by the highest elected American executive in the land.  Prove me wrong.

Since then they’ve all pretty much admitted that the two were unrelated.  Mutually exclusive. And there was no goddamn WMD.  That it was a lie.   Pricks.

That really chaps my ass.  People are pedestrian and government is increasingly evil.

My cooler head will not prevail today.  These motherfuckers lied to us and tortured people to back them up so they could see what riches were to be had in Iraq?  In the meantime, thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead at least, and millions displaced.  America is broke and broken.  Her people are fearful and distrustful.  She is struggling to revive her image and standing in the world.  It’s true, we are not what we once were.

All this trouble.  The world.  The climate.  The people and the wars.  It’s some sort of goddamn gravity vortex like a black hole that’s beginning to dim the lights.  As it sucks more and more matter and light, it gets more and more powerful.  All this mayhem and carnage and abject suffering.  Because these fucks, these PNAC fucking hawk/Vulcans had a plan to rework the world order in their favor. Google “Project for a New American Century”.

A self described neoconservative think tank.

All these bastards with faces like melted bags of caramels, were just pissing themselves waiting for something, anything, like 911.  Back in ’98 they said they needed a “Pearl Harbor” like event to basically pivot on, and change the way the wind was blowing.  Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Bill Bennet, Cheney…………not your average cavalcade of cock teasers.

I’ve written extensively about the notorious and filthy PNACs.  I heard Randi Rhodes today posit the idea that the torture was on purpose to advance the PNAC agenda and I lost all motor control in my jaw over not having thought of it.  Brilliant, if it’s true it might be time for liberals to arm themselves.

What worries me is we can never go home again.

“out on the road today
i saw a dead head sticker on a cadillac
a voice inside my head said don’t look back
you can never look back”  -Don Henley

From Realtime with Bill Maher:

“By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, conservative intellectuals had no party.  The inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government.” -Richard Posner

Here’s my take on the torture photo conundrum.  I’m disappointed in Obama.  I imagine he’s doing his best and I’m not worried at all about him changing his mind.  He’s smart, he’s allowed.  It’s just that I disagree.  I admit the national mood is fragile and precariously bipolar.  I myself have no desire to see these photos.  There’s no reason.

I need to be blunt.  God bless America, but I’m not sure enough humility has soaked in yet.  I think this photographic evidence should be made available to anyone of age enough to join an institutional paramilitary program.  The photographs should by legal mandate, be stapled to the head of every dipshit Hannity fan who thinks we’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.  You assholes need to see what you’re talking about.  You really need to see it in other people’s eyes.

Drinks for my friends.

Republicans are a hot mess.

This poor bastard, Sgt Russel, and the five brothers in arms he felled. All the families too. A big bag of tragedy for no good reason. Not that all involved weren’t brave committed men who’d sacrificed for America more than we can comprehend. All the more sad.

It’s just that it didn’t have to happen. A man on his third tour of hell lost his shit. It seems so random but it’s not. He was in treatment for “stress”. These guys are fucking tough. They are crackerfuckingjack. They tipped Iraq over in weeks. Lots of things are very wrong with this story.

A badass soldier whom I presume was sane before he arrived, killed his own, not just his own, but his fellow soldiers. The antithesis of anything like heroic bravery. Almost as curious as it is tragic. PTSD. A political potato of some heat. Inconsistent to nebulous in terms of definition or perception. Through the roof nonetheless. Our veterans are struggling on a scale we’re not even aware of.

This is a gift from the Bush administration that will keep on giving for years to come.

Just like Vietnam!

The dude does not abide and neither do I. This is insane. See what I’m saying?

I really need for you dear reader, to concentrate here. I’m going to cut and paste a news item from today below, and I want you to compare and contrast the news I’ve written about above with this actual piece that appears below inside quotes. All I will say is that I think the two issues at hand are symbiotically entwined:

“In an interview on Fox News, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney sharply criticized the new administration for agreeing to release photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration.

“I think it is really appalling that the administration is taking this step,” she said in the interview. “Clearly what they are doing is releasing images that show American military men and woman in a very negative light.”

“I have heard from families of service members from families of 9/11 victims this question about when did it become so fashionable for us to side, really, with the terrorists,” she continued. “You know, President Obama has a lot of rhetoric about support for American military families, support for our men and women who are fighting for us overseas. But if he really cares about them, then he wouldn’t be making such an effort to release photos that show them in a negative light.” -CNN

Ok, I can’t help it. Liz Cheney you stupid fucking cunt. What about this whole egregious clusterfuck do you not understand? You actually seek with all gallows composure to spin this tragedy into some lame evidence that the Obama administration attempts “….to side, really, with the terrorists”?

In a war started by your father without reason?

Look up her name and insult her personally. Liz, you ignorant slut. You have betrayed your country and if Olberman or Stewart did the same schtick I swear I just turned on the glass teat.

Time for a fireside interlude. Picture me with a blanket over my legs in a wheelchair beside a crackling hearth:

A tale related by an excellent friend.

This story is about a man named Donald.

Donald farts in the car, back on a sweltering day. Turns out to be a withering expulsion, weakening the senses of the propagator. He’s impressed by his own ability to generate an odor that would be a captain of any industry. So inspirational that he wonders about his own health.

He then ventures into a video emporium of the strip mall variety. He feels the build. Pressure in his lower abdomen. And it’s hot. It’s temperature is like heat from a crack in the Earth. As though his bowels are about to volcano.

The gastrointestinal expulsion is nuclear but not cacophonous.

He’s grateful he’s not shat himself.

Get my drift? More or less silent but indisputably toxic.

He understands the affront he’s just committed. He flees to the right, past the first few letters of the alphabet. He works his way quickly to the D’s and F’s. Doctor Detroit to Fargo.

A fresh couple enter the emporium. They immediately ventiure into a cloud of Donald’s anal vapor in the A through C sectiion. They are apalled and disturbed. Their faces are an ugly mask of assault and disgust.

This is Donald’s story.

Drinks for my friends.

The dipshits are pissed at Wanda Sykes for skewering Limbaugh by hoping his kidneys fail and referencing his drug abuse and calling the Human Shitsmear of all things, a terrorist. The 20th hijacker on 911 even.

That shit’s funny. It’s funny because I don’t take her seriously. No more serious than I take a jackass like Rush Limbaugh. It was about her vicious and inspired disgust with a lying, manipulative, hypocirtical, blowhard entertainer who “entertains” by scaring the great unwashed and giving the GOP bots and hardliners talking points as well as someone to worship.

Not funny, as he’s a disingenuous dickhead. His comfort level with lying is astounding. His composure while doing his level fucking best to support the plutocracy is chilling. I’m impressed. And he’s a goddamn racist. Preeminent ludicrous douchebag spokeshole for the entire graying elaphantine party it seems.

It’s funny, the sheer volume of their lather over this White House Press Dinner as opposed to the one Stephen Colbert did a few years back. Dumbya walked out of that one with cracked ribs, a punctured lung and a broken facade. Colbert was astounding, wielding sack and fruit of steel and various other alloys in a hall full of crazy neocons, crooks, brass, sychophants, sociopaths, serial murderers and the press.

He rocked out with his cock out.

Know what’s not funny? Everything I just said about Rush Limbaugh could be said about Dick Cheney. Plug him into the last four paragraphs. It all still applies. It’s like shifting from third to fourth on a wide empty road.

Know what’s funny? Obama said Cheney was absent due to writing his memoir “How to shoot friends and interrogate people.” -Huffingtonpost

What goes up must come down. What’s not funny, is the embarrassing desperation of almost the entire GOP. The trinity. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Congress, rednecks and the true American elite. The super rich. The one percent that owns fifty percent of everything. I won’t pretend we don’t have archangels in their architecture, but today’s GOP is odious and insipid.

What they’ve become is my latest favorite expletive, ‘assclowns’.

Maybe it’s some sort of supersecret conservative caper? Some retarded idea of martyrdom, where the perceived leaders of the cause make complete asses of themselves instead of suicide or assassination. They annoy and bewilder everyday with rhetoric that implodes on the pad. They seem hellbent for less than leather. An inch from a legacy that will conclude them to be doddering, greedy and malicious fools.

At this point I could be talking about either Limbaugh or Cheney and that’s somehow not funny.

All the assclowns talked about Obama’s choice in mustard for two fucking days.

The Inspector General’s report from ’05 states:
“Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that “there was no a prior reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.”

Dick has been lying his ass off to you for over eight years. Darth Cheney is a sociopath and he thinks you’re stupid.

All the Republicans have left is a horse named National Security to beat and abuse. They’re so goddamn dumb they have no clue what that word means to most of America and the new administration in 2009.

National Security under the Obama administration is a much broader precept. These guys are smart and focused on all things threatening. From climate change, to pandemics, natural disasters, man made disasters, adversaries and allies. It seems we now have frontal lobes. That’s kind of exciting.

Read about it in the latest Rolling Stone.

Know what’s cool? The Space Shuttle rocked off the planet today to make the Hubble Space Telescope about a hundred times better at being a telescope. This, is going to be great. Scientists are cool motherfuckers.

Drinks for my friends.

Certain times of year, a full fat butter moon would billow up in the west over over the main gate and guard shack. A dish hanging over the ocean with even more drama than it did over Hollywood.  I saw it on the water. It was huge.  It kept place for the sun next afternoon.

Our star busted hard on those mornings and then withered reluctantly as did the moon at the end of my day. I worked nights. Six p.m. until whenever.

There to the left, day and night, was the A&M sign with the trumpet in the logo. Some nights in the fall, it’s luminous disc did harmony with a crescent moon.

A night for me and Jimhead to climb to the roof of the Chaplin stage and throw mustard bottles and leftover fruit at cars on La Brea.  Jimhead would suggest we “throw shit at cars”.  He had a well developed sense of chaos and a fine nose for the absurd. We were both fond of explosives.

We barely hit any. It was a good fifty feet up. Years later, we would have parties up there. Five or ten of us drinking and doing bong rips at three in the morning, striving merely to avoid the attention of the record company’s crack security. We failed at that over and over.

Remind me to tell you about The Secret Pizza Lounge.

Like a promise, said solar star heated those slate steps in front of the monolith door at A&M Recording to a point where you could feel it around your head when reaching for it’s enormous handle.   Twelve hours later, the giant moon would cool them again with equal parts sugar and mint.

The end of the Raygun Bush years, late eighties early nineties. Iran Contra and the first Gulf War. Homeless population way up. Crazies on my block.

For the eight and a half years I worked there, the studio barely ever, really closed.  There was almost always someone there.  If not, the respite was brief, a few minutes or barely a few hours.

For a decade, I had a key to that sixteen foot high front door. I may have it still.

I was to struggle for years.  Behind in an environment that challenged me in every way.  Worse, being surrounded by people at least as smart as me if not smarter.  Some of them a lot smarter.  I was overwhelmed by the confidence I encountered everywhere.

I was a a goddamn hick.

Nothing in life had prepared me for this.  I was always the brain.  The most capable.  The one everybody else looked to for leadership.

I got my ass handed to me every fucking day.

I laid low.  Did my job.  Sucked up.

I became ‘King of The Fruit’.  Seniority.  Everyone underneath me had either not been there as long or had been fired.  As King of The Fruit I had certain privileges.  Some control over my schedule and the ability to delegate responsibilities to other runners.  I had become an excellent runner.

Good news?

Nope.

I was to be sequestered, to serve time elsewhere, for nearly a year.

Drinks for my friends.

So Darth Cheney declared today that it would be a mistake to for the GOP to “moderate”.

“This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles,” Cheney said in an interview with North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen Thursday…… -CNN

North Dakota radio, heh.

Dick Cheney is a consummate douchebag. Commitment to the constitution? Fuck you, you lying hypocritical sleazy piece of shit. The object was for you to serve at the convenience of The Costitution, not for it to serve at yours. This statement by you makes me so angry because it reveals you as a world class liar and you still have the withered stones to beak sociopathic bullshit.

You Mr. Cheney, are the depth and breadth of the entire aggregate from dipshit to insanity. You are it’s evil and myopic, it’s misunderstanding, from front to back, from top to bottom. You pull strings for Limbaugh to Hannity, from Bachman to Lieberman.

You’re a dirty bastard.

You think you know, you imagine you have a handle, all in your hands is calcified turds. The fate of sucking is really bad enough. The idea of sucking and not knowing, is about as bad as it gets.

Poster child.

What’s occuring in the Republican party of late is beyond fascinating. It’s a multi car pileup with people face down on the pavement in their own gore. It’s that and a hokey, amateur production of The Music Man or Dirty Dancing or maybe a circus with only invalids for performers. They are breathtakingly out of touch.

Matt Taibbi wrote a great piece about it recently in Rolling Stone. He rocks.

With GOP spotlight whores like Michele Bachmann, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin and Tricky Dick Cheney, it’s not about to get any better. These people are clowns. Forgive me, it’s fucking awesome. The best and the brightest.

Too many of them don’t get it. It amazes me. They have zero grip on the simplest of things like conventional wisdom, current polls and even the goddamn news. The GOP has lost it’s romance with America. They were lying. Thank Sheezus we smelled the goddamn Joe.

I loathe right wing Christians. They’re stupid and diabolical.

Have you noticed how close together their eyes are?

I reserve the right to tell people their beliefs are stupid if they knock on my door or approach me in public. If their shit ends up all over the news, they should practice pissing up a rope.

Drinks for my friends.