Slumming

The late novelist Stanley Elkin once said, "Everybody writes up." By that he meant that all writers strive to write the most elevated prose they can. That's a nice sentiment. But it isn't at all true. Some people write down. Some people write up. Some people write sideways. We aren't all trying to create great art in our writing. And that's true in music as well. The fact is that there is little market for elevated prose or music. As a result, a lot of people slum to try and make a living.

The cliche is that by slumming you are sacrificing your art and your muse. This is seriously bad stuff to do. And like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulker, two writers who tried slumming in Hollywood, you'll suffer emotional and personal consequences for prostituting your talent.

Maybe that's true for some. And I imagine if you have the immense talent of a Faulkner, you have no business slumming. But most people in the art world aren't giants. Even if like Stanley Elkin, they write up, they end up quite a bit short in their quest to write for the ages. After all, how many people besides me remember Stanley Elkin?

Not everyone is cut out to be a Faulkner, Shakespeare or Mozart. You can try. You should try. But the odds are against you. And if you don't have immense talent, you'll be forgotten quickly anyway. You might as well slum at least some of the time. You can earn a few bucks. And I've met quite a few slummers in the music world who love what they do. Slumming is underrated.

I know it first hand. It all started out for me about four years ago when I happened to meet a Sony VP and he listened to my music. "That's great stuff, the kind I listen to at home, but it'll never make it on the radio." He asked to keep the CD. I said sure. (By the way, I can't stand the CD I gave him, but that's another story.)

Then I said, "Anybody can write the stuff that's on the radio."

He shot a look at me. "Anybody? Prove it."

I took it as a challenge. How hard could writing radio friendly music be? The market for pop songs had dried up a good decade before, but there was still a market for songs in country music. I turned on the radio and started to listen. It was the first time I listened to commercial radio in probably two decades at least. The music was almost all awful. Horrible. Just like I remembered it. But I thought, what the hell, I'll slum. Plus every once in a while, you'd actually hear a good tune on the radio; it never went high up on the charts, but it was there. Maybe I could write one of those kinds of tunes.

I started to study contemporary country radio like it was a calculus text. I would break down song after song. What made it a hit? Who wrote it? What were the chord progressions? What was the vocal range? What was the lyrical content? And after a few months of painful listening and writing a good number of imitative songs that were so painfully bad that they weren't even good enough for country radio, I got the hang of it.

The key came when I was talking to the son of probably the greatest country songwriter ever, the one who wrote Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" and a hundred other hits. The guy listened to my music. "Great stuff," he said. "But you have to learn how to write like a Republican if you're going to get a hit." A light bulb went off in my head. I knew exactly what to do.

The 19th century Yiddish writer "Mendele" encountered the same problem I was facing. He was an erudite, educated, urban man trying to write prose for the common Jewish shtetl dweller. To do this, he summoned forth a character in his imagination, a modest bookseller who travelled through the Jewish pale selling his wares, and let that character take over his whole being while he was writing. He would literally sit at his desk when he started the day, close his eyes and say in Yiddish, "come to me little Jew." And then he would commence to write. Stanley Elkin might shake his head, but Mendele was writing down. He was slumming.

Like Mendele, I summoned forth a character when I wrote country music. He was 43 years old with short graying hair and a pasty complexion. He lived in rural Missouri and did a lot of handy work around town. I never gave him a name. But like Mendele, I would start by saying, "come to me little redneck." And it seemed to work.

I actually liked this slumming.

First off, there was a lot of positive reinforcement going on. I'd write songs, and producers and record companies liked them well enough that they would take some for consideration, call me and tell me they were going to the studio and were thinking of using a song, but needed some tweaks in lyrics (sad to say, the recording never happened), and keep inviting me back to play more songs.

Second off, I liked the people. After 15 years in academia surrounded by joyless, uptight, consistently nasty and unpleasant colleagues, it was a pleasure to deal with people who smiled, laughed and had some charm. I needed a respite from the intellectual world, which tends to be at best dreary and snobbish.

That all said, I can't slum forever. I love writing music more than I like anything else. Even writing bad music has its charms. But a lifetime of slumming would be a bit much. Plus the market for country songs started to disappear about two years ago and has now almost completely vanished. There is no use in slumming when there is no market for your product.

I'm back to writing up or sideways. I'll keep writing music now and then, but it's going to be stuff that I find interesting, not stuff written for drunk rednecks and soccer moms with screaming kids in the back seat. I'll be writing fiction and non-fiction and I won't be slumming with that either.

My slumming days are mostly over or at least I think they are. I've met a few people who have told me that the reason I got bored with science was that I was slumming there too. According to these people, geophysics simply wasn't that interesting or intellectually challenging. Had I gone into the "real sciences" of physics or chemistry I would have found a lifetime of intellectual challenges. I doubt it. It's just the usual intellectual snobbishness of academia at work. But maybe I've been slumming all along and will keep slumming until my dying day.

I'm not concerned. I long ago realized that I don't have the talent in science or art to be remembered for the ages no matter how hard I work or try. I'm a very talented bit player, not a potential Nobel Prize winner. And given my limitations, I might as well have fun creating and doing my thing. My slumming days may be over, but I'll never reach for the stars. I'm just trying to do as good a job as I can and leave it at that. Is that "writing up?" Who knows?

Sonim (Enemies)

At the request of someone who reads this blog regularly (and who is very bored with my political commentary), I'm starting a Friday "stories from the old country and beyond" series about my crazy and eccentric family. These are stories that were either told to me or I peripherally experienced. I don't think I'll dwell on my own experiences. Rather, it will be about my parents and their generation.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these stories. I was very young when they were first told to me or when I witnessed them. I have extreme doubts about my father's stories actually being anything close to truth. He was a wonderful storyteller, and like all good storytellers I know, loved to embellish (don't look at me; everything I say is 100 percent true, honest! ;)). As for my mother, she was a lousy storyteller and would frequently mix up places and years into a strange soup. But oh my, the life she led.

There will be, in these stories, omissions to avoid besmirching the names of those still living. Writers abuse family trust routinely to tell a good story. I'm going to try to avoid that here. If it means these stories are a little more boring than they would otherwise be, you'll just have to deal.

Anyhow, here goes.

My father was born and raised in the town of Ludmir*, a shtetl of some 22,000 Jews, almost all of whom died in WWII. The citizens of Ludmir were rounded up sometime in 1941 or 1942 (this information is all contained in the Remembrance Book of Ludmir, which is written in Yiddish and Hebrew and can be found in a few tens of libraries), murdered and buried in a mass grave outside of town. There is a marker in a field in the Ukraine that was erected sometime in the 1970s where these men, women, and children are buried. There are many killing fields like this in the Ukraine.

The mass murder is described in the Remembrance Book in such savage detail by survivors that it leaves a chill. Reading material like this can make you doubt all of humanity. It's worth noting that the Germans moved their mass murder of Jews to more centralized extermination camps partly because many ordinary soldiers suffered trauma from killing Jewish civilians.

There were less than 100 survivors from Ludmir. From all of my father's family, only he and one first cousin survived. My father grew up in a very poor and devout home. His father was a furniture maker as was my father. He loved playing soccer, and according to him was a skirt chaser even at an early age. He was tall by shtetl standards, broad shouldered, with full wavy black hair, and swarthy skin. Jewish women would sometimes tell me when I was a kid just how handsome my father was when he came to this country. The phrase "like a movie star" would come up more than once.

Anyhow, my father told me about his skirt chasing when I first got pimples and he encouraged me to get laid so they would disappear. "It worked for me," he said. I asked him how old he was. He smiled broadly and said, "Fourteen." When my pimples persisted despite having taken the "sex cure," he was convinced I was lying. He really believed sex cured pimples. Ah, if it were only so easy.

My father was a "vilder," a wild one. I don't know how many brothers and sisters he had, but I believe he was the oldest of many. He and his father didn't get along, mostly because my father would not attend synagogue. His father would beat him mercilessly, something he unfortunately did to me as well (but that's another story and one that I probably won't tell in any detail).

Sometime in the mid-1930s my father and grandfather (Pinchas) finally had it out. My father was kicked out of the home. He was 14 or 15 and moved to Warsaw to live on his own where he found a job in his trade. My father would regularly send money to his family to keep them from starving. My father felt free in Warsaw. He could live the modern life he wanted and the women were a lot more available. For him, it was heaven and he didn't ever go back home until war broke out.

In September 1939, the Germans and Russians invaded Poland and the Polish army quickly crumbled. My father, who read the news regularly (he was a news hound when I was a kid as well), immediately fled Warsaw in fear of the Germans and went to Ludmir to try and convince his family to flee with him to the Soviet Union. His father and aunts and uncles listened to him, but simply did not believe in what he was saying about the Germans. "God will help us," his father said.

He managed to convince one female cousin, another "vilde," to go with him. I've forgotten her first name. Channa I think it was. She too survived. She moved to Israel and married someone named Wolf. I don't think I ever saw her. I remember a picture of her. She looked a lot like my father. She widowed at the age of 60, and announced to my father that she was tired of being of poor, was going to find some rich American living in Israel, and marry him. Like my father, she did not make announcements idly; it's exactly what she did.

Of the less than 100 survivors of my father's home town, I met three. Two lived in Chicago, Moishe and Sheia. I don't remember their last names.** Moishe was like my father; he had a manic personality and was extremely intelligent. Like my father, he went into construction when he came to the US and was successful at it. I'll talk about him another time if I remember to. Sheia had a strictly from hunger tailor shop in Skokie.

The other Ludmir survivor who I met lived in Milwaukee and was my father's mortal enemy, Marvin Tuchman. Like my father and Moishe, he too was in construction. I don't know how he survived the War. He never came to our home. I would sometimes see him in our synagogue, Beth Jehudah, an Orthodox congregation composed mostly of Polish survivors that was founded in 1939. But whenever his name was mentioned by my father or mother, it was with a tone of pure loathing and disgust.

Polish Jews (my father's town is now in the Ukraine, but when he was a kid was part of Poland) are known for their pettiness and their ability to hold a grudge. There's a bestselling Israeli book written about just how easy Polish Jews are to insult. It's a cliche in Israel to talk about "Polinyut" and their pettiness. But like most cliches, it is oh so true. I can't tell you how many times I heard the phrase, "it's an insult!" shouted in Yiddish in my household.

As a kid, I thought this "easy to insult, never forgive" way of living was just something my crazy family did. But when I was taking my bar mitvah lessons from my synagogue's old rebbe, I'd have to wait in his home while he held counseling sessions with members of his congregation beforehand. For some reason, he assumed I didn't know Yiddish (which was an odd assumption) and he would keep his study door open as these counseling sessions took place.

In Polish shtetl culture, the rabbi is the social glue. He is the judge in disputes. He offers advice and that advice is almost always taken. So it was with the Polish congregants who came to my rebbe. These sessions I would hear before my lessons were always about family and business. I would listen in and I would try to pretend that I didn't understand a word. It was fascinating stuff. I got to know the entire community's lurid gossip. And I learned that all of the overheated emotions that were present in my family were just run of the mill stuff.

Everyone in my little Jewish community seemed to have at least one mortal enemy. For my father, it was Marvin Tuchman. Mr. Tuchman had no children and didn't marry in the US until late in life. He might have been married in Europe, had children and lost all of them during the War. Such stories involving reluctant to marry immigrants were fairly common; whether that applied to Mr. Tuchman, I can only speculate. He was a few years older than my father and the word was that there was bad blood between the two families in Ludmir before the War.

How these two survivors ended up in the same town in the US with the same profession was an amazing coincidence. Since, they were lansleit (Yiddish for from the same town), they decided to bury their old family grievances and be friends in the US. After all, how many people could either share their roots with? But then something happened. I don't know what. Whatever it was took place when I was about one or two years old and it involved money. They would rarely talk after this event.

But then something happened a few years later that finished the relationship for good. It involved a remodel of the synagogue. Mr. Tuchman took the lead on this remodeling and again something happened about money. As far as I can tell, Marvin Tuchman asked for a donation from my father for the remodeling. At the time my father was barely getting by. Marvin was doing far better. The words my father said to him in Yiddish were simple, "Kiss my ass."

Let me try to interpret what was going on in my father's head when he said this. Here's my effort at channelling my father during one of his less than exemplary moments: "You have all kinds of money, probably are going to skim from the top from the donations and make more from this supposedly charitable job, and here I am with a wife and two kids to feed, and you know I'm struggling trying to put food on the table, and you have the nerve to ask me for a donation? You're twisting the knife on purpose trying to show off and making me feel bad I don't have the money to donate. It's a insult!"

Apparently, Marvin Tuchman let the entire congregation know that my father told him to kiss his ass. This public shaming of my father did not sit well. They never spoke again. Once, I remember a longtime landscaper of my father's was rumored to have said in response to a question from a potential customer that Tuchman built a little better home than Rojstaczer. My father was livid. Every dinner conversation was filled with invectives about this landscaper for the next two weeks. He was never hired again.

When my father died, I went with my mother to look for a plot in the old Orthodox cemetery. "How about here?" I asked. "It's on high ground. He always liked high ground." My mother looked at the tombstone next to my suggested plot. "Not a chance," she said.

"Why not?"

"Look who's buried here."

I looked at the tombstone. Oh my. There he was. Marvin Tuchman.

"I'm not going to be buried next to those two when I die," she said. "I'll hear them screaming at each for forever." Apparently, grudges last for more than a lifetime when they involve Polish Jews.

*That's the Yiddish name of the town. The official name is Vladmir-Volinsky.
**I remembered one of the names one week later, Moishe Roiter.

Pop Songwriting 101

Yesterday and today, I worked on a tune for the American Idol songwriting contest. It's ostensibly a contest for amateurs, but last year's winners were professionals and I imagine that this year's will be too. The payout from royalties for the winner(s) is probably around a half million dollars. It's too good a pay day to pass up even if the odds are long.

If you write 75 to 100 tunes radio friendly tunes a year, something that I've been doing for a few years now, the internal clock necessary to write a song like this gets very well calibrated. I tend to work backwards. I usually start with the finish of the chorus, which is almost always a four bar melody that soars that's well wed to an interesting catchy phrase. In songwriter's parlance that's called the hook. Without a good hook, you don't have a decent pop song, which is why most songwriters work backwards just like me.

Then I build around that hook. Usually there's a four or eight bar intro that introduces the listener to the theme or hook. You follow that with 12 to 16 bars of verse. That verse needs to lead up to the catch phrase in terms of its lyrical content. For instance if your hook is "black coffee," it would be a good idea to start with a verse about not being able to sleep and smoking cigarettes (yes, it's already been done and done very well). That's called "writing to the hook."

The last four bars of the verse need to build or lift to the soaring chorus melody. And the chorus does need to soar. Otherwise, you can kiss radio good-bye. Pop music is like an opera aria that way; except it isn't as good melodically. There's a reason for that. The idea behind a hit pop song is to make the listener want to sing along to the chorus while they are driving in their car. Singing an opera aria is just too hard for the average listener (or pop singer for that matter); you need to simplify.

Before the finish of the chorus, you need about an eight bar chorus vamp that sets the hook up both melodically and lyrically. It's the part of the chorus that makes the listener want to sing along. That vamp should stay within an octave range, a few notes up from the verse (you don't want to go too high otherwise you'll lose potential singers who have limited range).

Now you have the verse and chorus. All you need to add is a bridge and a finish. The bridge gives the song a little four to eight bar (sometimes called the "middle eight") melody change to keep the listener interested at about the two minute mark. The finish is the final melodic emphasis of the hook.

Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chrous, outro (or finish). There it is. That's 95 percent of commercial pop music today. It's about 11 seconds of intro, 30 seconds of verse, 30 seconds of chorus (choruses as of late seem to be getting longer and longer), and another 30 seconds of bridge and finish. Add it all together and you have a 3:11 song, right down the pike commerical radio music.

If you're a pro, it shouldn't take you more than a day to do this. A song a day. Your typical pro hit songwriter has been doing this many years and has several hundred to several thousand songs in his or her catalog. Of those, you've probably heard no more than a dozen, sometimes only one on the radio. It's like fishing. It takes a lot of casts to catch one big fish. You have to have skill. But you also need a lot of luck.

I've enjoyed writing this American Idol song. It's pretty damn good. But there will be a lot of wonderful songs entered, most by pros, but probably even more than a few by amateurs. If I get very, very, very lucky, my song will be chosen.

That all said, I'm winding down on this radio-friendly, write a hit, song thing I've been doing for a few years. I'll probably talk about that next time.

The Left's Patriotism Problem

If you spend a lot of time with people on the left, and I certainly do since I am a liberal, there's a little phrase that shows up not infrequently in conversations, "I'm going to move to." Usually that phrase is finished with the word Canada or Europe as in, "If the Republicans win again this year, I'm going to move to Canada."

I wince when I hear people say something like this. My reply is usually, "Don't move to Canada. Move to Ohio. Or Florida. If you're going to move anyway, move to a place where we need you." I usually get a strange look in response. But I'm perfectly serious.

The fact is if the Republicans win this year, I'm staying right where I am. I love this country. My parents were immigrants. I can tell you just how lousy living in Eastern Europe was and still is. I've lived in Western Europe. Being a Jew there is a very uneasy thing. Canada is a great place for fishing and ice skating, but it has its own problems with corruption. Israel is a place I love too, but it's no place for me to live. For me, the good ol' USA is the best place to live in the world. It is my country.

When people on the left tell me this "I'm going to move to" garbage what they are saying to me is that they think they are better than the rest of the American citizenry. They are smarter. They are more sophisticated. And they long to go to a place where people are smarter and more sophisticated than they are in the US. This idea is ridiculous. Dummies exist everywhere.

Don't like rednecks? Neither do I. But no thanks to the idea of moving to England so I can change over to skinheads and vacuous Eurotrash.

My view is that the left has to stop living the pipe dream that there is somewhere else where they will be more respected and accepted. They need to believe in this country that they live in instead of thinking that they deserve better than America. In a nutshell, they need to get patriotic.

Patriotism doesn't mean "my country right or wrong." It doesn't mean you have to suffer fools and dummies, and this country has, like all other countries, plenty of both. But it does mean that, like family, you put up with all of this country's quirks because in the end you love this place and you get emotional nourishment from being here. That's certainly how I feel.

Somehow, the left needs to get off its high horse and stop its America bashing. And it wouldn't hurt to do the little things and to put your hand over your heart and take your hat off when the Star Spangled Banner is being played. Or say the Pledge of Allegiance with some conviction. It is an unnecessary insult for the left to think it's above the symbolic acts that come with being a proud citizen of this country.

The Company You Keep

A little while back someone asked me if I was interested in writing the theme song for a movie. I like writing songs more than any other creative process. It sounded like a good opportunity. I'd make a little money. And maybe I'd find a little bit of an audience from people who saw the movie.

But then I popped the DVD in my computer and watched. The movie was a hard left documentary. It was something akin to Noam Chomsky in its views, but not nearly as thoughtful and intelligent. The movie was chock full of distortions. It was depressing, a laundry list of all that is wrong with our corporate driven culture. Did I want my name associated with such stuff? No way. I declined the offer.

I don't consider myself to be among the most sincere or principled people in the world. In the past, I've done stupid and regrettable things in the search for money, fame and sex, the three drivers that seem to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people. But I do believe that you should try your best to work with people you respect and admire.

Those on the hard left live in a world that I don't want any part of. It's a world full of corporate and government conspiracies and plots against our citizenry. Do I believe that corporate America influences this country in negative ways? Definitely. But they are not the only influence in America. Citizen views matter a great deal. And it is not the norm for corporations to poison us or make unsafe products for a few extra dollars.

When I see and read material from the hard left or hard right, I find their interpretations of the events around us to be overwhelmingly bleak and harsh. If I believed in either of those world views, I might as well just attach my lips to the tailpipe of my car and call it a life. I know that I'm both curmudgeonly and cynical. But those are attitudes not beliefs. And fundamentally, I believe that this country - its government, corporations, and people - gets quite a few things right.

No, no one is out to get me. Corporations aren't trying to poison me. Secular humanists are not trying to corrupt my children. I know I live a charmed life. I'm happy and grateful to have it. And as for the conspiracists from the hard left and hard right I have four words. Get away from me.

Music As the Canary in the Media Mine

If you spend any time in Nashville nowadays, you'll hear a lot of gloom and doom from music company executives. And Nashville's Music Row, a roughly 3 block by 6 block area chock full of record company and publisher offices, looks like a small city's downtown after Walmart has come to town. Buildings are empty and there are For Sale and For Lease signs everywhere.

Nashville was the last oasis for the music industry. Up until last year, CD sales were increasing modestly in country music, defying industry-wide trends. But then the slide began. Last I checked, CD sales were down about 30 percent last year. The party is over. Those country music fans have finally figured out how to download.

It used to be that when I went to offices in Music Row, people were confident, happy and even cocky (by Southern standards at any rate; it's a region not known for cockiness). Now, I feel like a psychoanalyst. Instead of shooting the breeze and pushing tunes, I have to hear about problems. Yuck. It's one reason why I've decided not to go to Nashville nearly as frequently as I once did. The other reason is simple: no one is buying songs anymore. With CD sales tanking, the last oasis in the music industry has dried up.

The town used to employ thousands of songwriters. There are now less than 200 songwriters making a living in Nashville, about a 90 percent drop from several years ago.

Recorded music has undergone a transformation. It is now essentially like air. People get recorded music for free. The era when the music industry made money from recorded music and songwriters earned money from recorded music sales is over. And without that money, the entire recording music industry has been transformed into an instant antique.

When things get bad, people point fingers. I hear a litany of complaints and most are focused on the record companies. The record companies were greedy bastards, they put out crappy music, they didn't embrace the digital age when they needed to, yadda, yadda. These are to my mind silly complaints. What happened is not the fault of record companies. What happened was that free mp3 downloads proved irresistible to the public.

I used to think that the same thing wouldn't happen to the movie industry. Now I think that it's inevitable that it will. There are just too many parallels.

Like the music industry, almost all of the money in movies comes from entertainment that's kid stuff. You have superheroes, animated ogres, chase scenes, car crashes and cyber-mayhem driving sales. Without 12 year olds and brain dead adults, the movie industry would have lousy revenue. It's the equivalent of all the pop in the music industry designed for teens and preteens. The movie industry does, like the music industry, make crap. They do so for a reason. Crap almost always sells much, much better than tasteful entertainment.

There is one problem, however. Like the trashy music that sells, trashy movies don't have much of a shelf life. These movies come in, make a lot of money mostly on the opening weekend and then people forget about them. Like big selling music, big selling movies are at best cotton candy. When you're selling candy like this, you can't expect any sort of respect from the consumer. You're dealing with the lowest common denominator of clientèle, the kind that just might take a TV out of a hotel room they're staying at if it isn't bolted down.

If these people can get their product for free, they'll do so. Sure there are people who like the "cinema experience," but that's not a big enough client base to drive the movie industry. There are people who like CD liner notes too and look where music has gone.

The only thing so far that has kept the movie industry from tanking is bandwidth. It takes at least a good hour or two to download a movie on a peer to peer network. For the people who watch the money making trash that's in most movie theaters, that's as good as forever. A song, in contrast, takes only a few minutes. These people just don't have the patience to wait for a movie download when they are used to the speed of a music download. And the movie formats available digitally are a bit messy for the average Joe or Jane to comprehend.

It's only a matter of time, though, before bandwidth and file compression bring downloads of movies down to the 20 minute range. TVs will be equipped to easily deal with downloadable movies if they aren't already. And then it'll be hard times for the movie industry.

For most of the public, copyright is an abstract concept. They could care less. They don't view copying movies or music as theft. They just want to watch or listen. And when the movie industry eventually tanks you'll hear the same litany you're currently hearing about record companies. The studios were greedy bastards, they made crappy moves, they didn't understand the digital era, yada, yada. It's all silly finger pointing. The bottom line is that the public wants their entertainment for free. If they don't have to pay, they won't. If they could copy a car for nothing, they'd want their cars for free too.

The one saving grace for the music industry is that musicians can still make money from playing live. People will still pay for the live music experience. And they pay a lot, on the order of 50 to 200 dollars a ticket to see their favorite performers. There is no equivalent to this when it comes to movies, except for perhaps theater. And I don't see people going to theater in the numbers they go to live concerts.

There are two saving graces for the movie industry. One is that legal downloads won't be dominated by cherry picking of snippets of movies like legal downloads are dominated by cherry picking of hit songs from albums. When it comes to movies, people want the whole thing. Two, rentals of movies are already cheap and you only have to see a movie once. It may not be worth someone's time to download when they can rent the movie at Safeway for a buck or two.

That said, the future for the movie industry is bleak. Movie budgets are going to have to shrink. Sales and attendance will drop. And my guess is that you're going to see a lot of empty buildings in LA. If you want to know the future of the movie industry, all you have to do is look at what has happened to music over the last ten years. It's the canary in the media mine.

Reading The Other Side

I've spent the last couple of days in a Nashville hotel that gives you a free copy of the Wall Street Journal. So instead of reading the NY Times, I've been reading the news from the angle of the right wing businessman. It's funny. You'd think I was living in a completely different country. Reading the news from the other side's perspective really brings home the fact that "the news" isn't about facts. It's about interpretations of facts and data that reflect the author's or paper's world view.

The world view of the WSJ, however, is so distorted that it bears very little relation to reality. In the WSJ, Bush is doing just fine thank you very much. You'd think that if Bush was able to run for a third term, he'd win handily. What's most interesting is their take on the current financial crisis. Yes, we have a credit crunch. But in the view of the WSJ, it's largely business as usual. Things go up and down every day in our "free market" economy. And somehow the invisible hand rights things in the end. If there is a sense of panic in the business community about the collapse of the credit markets, you'd hardly know about it from reading the WSJ.

There is one word that is forbidden in the WSJ's writings of all the government's machinations concerning the credit crunch, bailout. According to the WSJ, no bailout has taken place. The dramatic drop in the Fed's interest rate to increase the profit margins of our nation's teetering investment houses and banks (they aren't dropping their interest rates for lending in case you haven't noticed) so they don't go belly up isn't a bailout. No sirree. It's just an effort to stimulate the economy.

On the editorial page of the WSJ the other day, the editors insisted that the Fed's rescue of Bear Stearns from bankruptcy by taking on billions of dollars of Bears and Stearns' stinky mortgage backed securities wasn't a bailout either. It was instead a federally assisted sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan.

The WSJ would like everyone to believe that our nation's economy runs best when the government plays no role. And in their imaginary world, the business community can and does solve its own problems. The free market rules.

Except that it doesn't. My interpretation of the facts is of course different than that of the WSJ. And in my interpretation, we don't have free markets at all. We never have in my lifetime. We have lightly regulated markets that benefit from the heavy hand of Uncle Sam which provides the cash to keep our overheated economy going.

Periodic panic and economic collapse are inevitable in our economy. In an economic system that is forever in search of growth and increased profits, I don't see how this could not be the case. We have money flowing into a finite marketplace under the expectation that this money will produce more money. There is no reason at face value that it should. What drives much of our growth is the expectation that growth should take place. It's built on faith rather than facts. And it's inevitable that there will be periodic loss of faith. That's what's happening now.

The goal of both the federal government and the business community right now is to try and restore the nation's faith in its credit markets. I hope that they are successful. Like many other people, I've lost a lot of money in our current financial crisis. Faith is a very fickle thing. And if the WSJ thinks that they can help things along by pretending within the confines of its pages that there is no panic, I suppose it deserves credit for its efforts. But for me, all it proves is that the WSJ is the equivalent of Pravda for the business community. It writes business booster fiction every day under the guise of being a newspaper.

It's Always Better With a Band

The practice of someone sitting in front of a hearth telling stories set to music goes back to Homer and beyond. It's a simple thing to do, but to do it well you need stage presence, a captivating voice, and a great story to tell. I've been doing solo performances off and on for over 30 years now. My stories aren't as good as Homer's, but then again neither are anyone else's. My stage presence is adequate as is my voice. But I don't have the kind of solo talent that grabs an audience by the throat and screams "listen to me!" Without that kind of talent, playing solo is a particularly hard row to hoe.

I don't know what Homer called his reciting sessions. We call them gigs. If you are a solo performer telling some thoughtful stories, most gigs are depressing as hell. It doesn't matter if you're young or old. No one or hardly anyone is usually listening. That's even true most days for most people who can grab an audience by the throat. There's only so much one person can do.

There are perhaps 1000 or so people in America with talent, reputation and an inclination to go before an audience as a solo performer who can expect to be listened to at a gig. I'm not one of them. But there are a handful of venues where I can play and the venue alone brings an audience of people interested in listening. One of those places is located in Nashville, Tennessee. It's called the Bluebird Cafe. I decided that that place would be as good as any to end my solo performing career. And that's what I did the other day.

The Bluebird runs performers through 15 minutes at a time every Sunday night. It's a hard gig to get. But the place is usually packed. Last Sunday, it was overflowing.

It's a privilege to have a listening audience. You shouldn't abuse that privilege. You should practice and have your music down cold. You should play songs suitable for the audience. In the case of The Bluebird, you're in middle America. The audience is unpretentious. They want to hear funny songs and songs from the heart. And mostly they want to hear potential hit songs suitable for country radio.

Last time I was at The Bluebird, I kept it right down the pike. I sang some country songs. I brought a sideman who plays great guitar. The audience loved me for it. There were lots of high fives after.

But this time, I didn't want to that. I don't really like singing country songs even though I've written a bucket full of them. I don't even like country music. I have to force myself to listen to ninety eight percent of it. So I decided to sing some songs I actually like and just play them by myself. I had an audience of about 130 people and I was going to end my solo performing career on my terms.

It went OK. I've played much better, but I was relaxed in front of the crowd. My voice was a little tight, but got the job done. I walked off the stage, got some modest kudos, and called it an end. It was a good way to say good bye.

Why am I ending these solo performances? I'm just playing for fun. I don't have any career aspirations as a performer. I'm way too old to start now. And to put it mildly, I'm not having fun doing it. To go out there and play through a ton of chatter and clinking glasses for one or two people in a club leaves me drained. You put your heart out there and you get nothing back.

I'll still go out and play with a band when the money is right and we know the crowd will be there. It's Homer with a bass, drums, guitar, piano and horns. When you make a lot of noise, people listen. And they dance. It's a fun gig. But no more solo gigs for me, please. I'll leave that to the young troubadours aspiring to be stars. And most of them, truth be known, want to play with bands, too. It's always better with a band. Homer probably felt the same way.

Probably A Great Guy

We used to play baseball about once a month in the spring, summer and fall. I would pitch. Our cast of characters consisted of almost all geology and geophysics graduate students. On first base, usually we'd have a professor, the one guy who was truly a genius in the school. He was big and not particularly coordinated with no social graces whatsoever. But when he caught the ball in his first baseman's mitt to score an out, he'd always have this amazing grin on his face, an expression as close to absolute joy as anything I'd seen from anyone over five years old. I think I used to organize those games just to see that grin.

Lots of times we'd play against the students in civil engineering. They were on the obnoxious side, very competitive, but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to finding a team to play against. One game, a faculty member from civil engineering came to watch. He was lean and athletic with a graying beard, about 40. In the middle of the game, he said he wanted to play, so he came up to bat.

He was wearing decent clothes. He rolled up his trousers to his shins and stopped to take off his winged tipped shoes. Barefoot boy. I smiled. I pitched to him like I pitched to anyone I didn't know, outside. Lots of people try to pull the ball regardless, and it ends up being an easy ground out to the shortstop. He looked at one pitch. Then he took the next one, a little higher than I wanted it to be, to right field. He didn't try to pull the ball. He had that sweet level swing and bat speed that you see from someone who knows how to play the game. It was an easy single. He rounded first base a bit in his bare feet and then settled in next to our genius first baseman. I turned to him and said, "Nice hitting." What else can you say when you run into a real ball player?

The professor's name was Wayne Clough. Students loved him. This was going to be his last year at Stanford. He'd already accepted an offer at Virginia Tech. People were perplexed about the move. But the story was that he was a Southern boy and the big city life of the West Coast, the 1500 square foot house on a 1/8th acre lot, just wasn't his style. He was a likable, low key, down home guy.

Professor Clough spent I don't know how many years at Virginia Tech. But eventually, he took a big administrative position at the University of Washington, dean of engineering I believe. Then he went back to his alma mater, Georgia Tech, and served as president for about 10 years. He was as well liked there as he was at Stanford. Just a couple of days ago, he took a 300,000 dollar pay cut to become the head of the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian has been a troubled institution for at least a decade, probably two or three. The last head was a complete disaster, corrupt and overbearing. I'm guessing that Dr. Clough will be a breath of fresh air. From what little I've seen of him, I'm guessing he's probably a great guy. Even tempered. Intelligent. Good people skills. Expect better days ahead for the Smithsonian.

The Perfect Primary

Florida elections are frequently maligned and for good reason. When it comes to voting, Floridians usually can't seem to do anything right. And it would seem that the contested recent Democratic Primary followed the pattern to a T. The Democratic Party told Florida not to hold its primary early. It did so anyway. Now, Florida is at risk of losing its delegates. Having a re-vote to conform to party rules doesn't seem likely.

But there's another way to look at this. By breaking the Democratic Party's rules, Florida actually was able to hold the perfect primary. Florida didn't have to be besieged with boring and monetarily wasteful advertising on the part of candidates. They didn't have to be subject to lies and pandering up close and personal like the other states. Nary a dime was spent by Democratic political candidates in Florida.

In the absence of the hoopla and glare of television cameras, Florida could do what no other state has been able to do so far: allow its citizens to make an informed, sane decision free of media manipulation. And that's exactly what they did. They even went out in record numbers to do it.

This is the first time in my recollection that Florida has developed a model for other states to follow. Screw the Democratic Party and vote when you want. Make your election such a pariah that no candidate will spend any time and money there. You can vote in peace and quiet as a result.

And what about the other states? Over 400 million dollars have been spent on this presidential campaign so far when you look at Democrats and Republicans combined. Much of it is coming from ordinary citizens in terms of small cash donations through the internet. I don't know why people are making these donations; they are simply being enablers to candidates' predilections for pandering, distortions, and lies. They don't need your money folks, honest. They have way too much already.*

All the media buys, all of the stump speeches, all of the hoopla have not particularly helped to inform the citizenry. If anything, they have served to misinform. Everywhere but in Florida, the media-based campaign of misinformation has been overwhelming.

So rather than contest the seats of the Florida delegates, I think it would be far more rational to contest everyone else's seats. Florida did it right. They didn't even have hanging chads this time. The other states were subject to the corruption of all those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lies and deceit. How could the citizens of all those other states possibly make a rational decision?

All hail Florida. I propose that the Democratic Convention be moved to Miami to honor their pluck. And any state that was subject to more than five million dollars in television advertising related to this election should have its delegates removed. After all, democracy should be free of media-based tampering, shouldn't it? Finally, Florida has led the way in showing us how democracy should work. It's license plate motto has been truth in advertising; this election cycle, Florida has been a ray of sunshine.

*I should probably disclose that I did donate $100 to Hillary Clinton's campaign to see her give a stump speech up close and personal. I know, I know. Practice what you preach.

What Passes for Journalism

Yesterday, I mentioned Samantha Power and her delusional statements about Hillary Clinton. By chance, I happened to attend a lecture by Ms. Power about two weeks ago. It was incoherent. After saying she was going to talk for about 20 minutes, she rambled for more than an hour. It was easily the worst lecture I've seen in the last half dozen years.

After I saw Ms. Power's "monster" statement, I put my two pieces of data together and thought, well maybe she just isn't doing all that well emotionally in her life as of late. She's a "Professor of the Practice" at Harvard, a slot usually given to people who are good teachers. And I'm told that she's well loved by students at Harvard. Right now, she's not lecturing well and she's giving some strange interviews. I'm guessing that she's done better in the past.

At any rate, yesterday a column by Kevin Cullen from the Boston Globe was syndicated in my local rag, the Palo Alto Daily News. You can find it here. It talked a bit about Ms. Powers. Mr. Cullen obviously has a thing for her. But then it went on about Hillary Clinton and her claims that she helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. As much as Mr. Cullen loves Ms. Powers, he hates Ms. Clinton.

It's a funny piece. Mr. Cullen is a respected journalist who has spent many years in Ireland. He praises the Clinton administration for helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. But he chafes at the idea that Ms. Clinton had anything to do with it:

"To suggest Clinton was a major player in ending what the Irish in their penchant for understatement called the Troubles is like saying Eleanor Roosevelt played a big role in ending World War II."

He goes on to trash Ms. Clinton for claiming to be a "major player." The only problem with this is that Ms. Clinton has made no such claims. Here is what she has said:

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

Mr. Cullen has put words in Ms. Clinton's mouth. Then he castigates her for his own invention of bold claims. This isn't journalism. It's character assassination. And it's ridiculous in its construction.

In fact, Ms. Clinton did help bring peace to Northern Ireland. She visited Northern Ireland many times during her time as First Lady. She has been praised for her efforts by many people including George Mitchell. No, she was not a major player. But she has never claimed to be.

Mr. Cullen's column has been syndicated in I don't know how many papers. It's what passes for journalism I guess. Be that as it may, it's pure junk.

Losing It

The battle between Obama and Clinton has had more twists than any political fiction I've read. Maybe because the campaign has been so topsy turvy, and maybe because it has gone on for too long, people are starting to lose it. Prominent supporters of both Obama and Clinton seem to need some mental help.

I'm not talking about nut job NY Times columnists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. They've always been crazy and as far as I can tell, they're paid to be crazy. Apparently it generates interest to have a nut job write inflammatory prose for your newspaper.

No, I'm talking about people who are sane, but who have been driven to craziness by this campaign. First it was Obama's foreign policy advisor Samantha Power calling Clinton a "monster" and spewing forth paranoid delusions. Then it was former vice presidential candidate and Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferarro coming up with the outlandish claim that Obama would not be where his is as a candidate if he wasn't black. And yesterday it was Harvard professor Orlando Patterson's turn to pen a 1000 word op-ed in the NY Times on a delusional interpretation of a Clinton ad. Samantha Power, too, is from Harvard. Maybe there's something in the Cambridge water supply.

At any rate, the claims of these people are all ridiculous. No, Clinton is not a monster. And by any historical measure her campaign hasn't been particularly dirty.

No, Obama is not doing well simply because he is black. In virtually every election for the last several decades, the intellectual, latte drinking wing of the Democratic Party comes up with a candidate like Obama. The candidate is usually on the softer, bookish side. These candidates tend to have a good run, but usually lose in the end because, like Obama in this election cycle, they do not play well to the working class segment of the party.

However, that wing of the Party hasn't had as charismatic candidate as Obama since Kennedy, long before lattes became fashionable (back then these people were drinking martinis, a better drink if you ask me). It's true that blacks are coming out in big numbers to support Obama, the first time the latte drinkers' candidate has garnered minority support. But there also people who aren't voting for Obama because he's black. Do the lockstep black voters more than cancel out the black haters? Probably, but elections can't be predicted on the basis of simple additions and subtractions of interest groups. Obama would have had a good run in this race just like Kerry, Bradley and Hart did in the recent past. He's the latte drinkers' guy.

No, Professor Patterson, Hillary Clinton is not race bating in her television advertising. She's fear mongering, something which has been a time honored if low road political tool. Race has nothing to do with it. It's all about being ready for some horrible bomb or terrorist attack. No, Clinton is not today's version of DW Griffith. Sheesh. Patterson needs to get out more often.

This race has just gone on for too long. And basically, Power, Ferarro and Patterson are just nutty sore losers. Power and Patterson are mad as hornets because Obama didn't win in Ohio and Texas, wins that would have knocked Clinton out of the campaign. Ferarro has lost it because Obama is ahead in delegates.

Expect more prominent people to lose it before this campaign is over. It reminds me of my first pop music concert as a kid. My aunt took me to see Jackie Wilson. It was pandemonium. The place was stuffed with people. It was hot. Women were screaming every time Jackie Wilson opened his mouth. And people were dropping like flies from the heat and excitement.

Who knows? I may lose it too. I probably have already.

The Clean Politician

I have never understood how or why the press and the public anoint certain politicians with labels that suggest they are somehow morally and ethically superior. They are clean. They have integrity. Perhaps such politicians exist in this universe. I've just never have seen them. Everyone I've seen and observed has been very human and flawed, just like your average Joe and Jane.

For example, you can look at the narrative being sold by the press this year in the race between Obama and Clinton. Supposedly, Obama is a man of honor and character. On the other hand, Clinton supposedly will stoop to any level to win. This narrative is pure baloney. Yes, Obama has in comparison run a cleaner campaign to date than Clinton. But not by much. Obama has pandered out the wazoo. He's distorted Clinton's record and platform. He's denigrated her time in the White House as "having tea with dignitaries." He has been in every way shape and form an ordinary, ethically compromised politician. I don't understand at all why the press and public seem to want to put him on a pedestal for his integrity.

I think it all comes down to the fact that we want to believe that there must be someone out there who is special. It makes us feel good. So we invent clean politicians to look up to and purposely ignore their faults. It's a kind of coping mechanism I guess. Otherwise we'd have to admit that politics is a sewer for everyone. We do the same thing with college athletics as well, by the way, but that's another story. Back to politics and the anointed.

So it was with Elliot Spitzer up until yesterday. He was supposedly a squeaky clean reformer, someone with high ethics and a good family man to boot. He was supposedly like Obama, but without the charisma. However this narrative just didn't jibe with his actions.

I know Elliot Spitzer principally from his efforts to "attack" payola. If you believe the narrative of the press, Spitzer as New York's Attorney General singlehandedly took on the record and radio industries and removed the scourge of payola from the music business. The fact is that the press was too lazy to do its homework about this issue. Understanding the nature of payola and describing it were beyond the ken of journalists; they had their feel good story and stuck with it, facts and details be damned. In truth, Spitzer's efforts vis a vis payola were completely ineffectual.

What Spitzer did was simply grandstand and collect slap across the wrist small settlements from record companies for their efforts to bribe radio companies to play their music. It was a great public relations coup for Spitzer. The press lauded these settlements. You would have thought Spitzer brought record companies to their knees. Then the press walked away to cover other news stories.

A few months after Spitzer and the press were gone, payola came back to the music business. The same record promoters were at work doing the same things they did before. It was as if no settlement had taken place. It's true that promoters are no longer quite as powerful as they once were, but that's only because the record industry was and is tanking. The simple truth is that if you want to have a hit record or even a modest amount of air play, there is no way it's going to happen without hiring a promoter who will bribe radio stations to play your music. That was true before Spitzer "attacked" payola. It's still true now.

From my perspective, Spitzer efforts as a reformer were completely hollow. He was simply a publicity hound. He found industries that he could attack that made him look good. He bamboozled the press into thinking he had done something substantive.

Yesterday, the press knocked Spitzer off his pedestal for having sex with a prostitute. The public lost one of its exceptions in the political world. But he never was an exception to begin with. He was and is just an ordinary, flawed politician.

I don't know if Spitzer will have to resign. I don't understand why he should. Yes having sex with a prostitute is illegal. But so is DUI. Illegal acts related to both sex and alcohol are so common in terms of human failings that it's hardly anything to get excited about.

But I wish people and the press were not driven to believe that certain politicians are knights in shining armor. It's like believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Clean politicians may exist. But they don't have the last names of Obama or Spitzer. If you go into politics it's almost impossible not to get your hands dirty. It's just the nature of the beast.

When Pandering Kills

Pandering is an integral part of political campaigns. Obama and Clinton's recent empty thrashing of NAFTA in Ohio is a good example. Such efforts are simply theater. After the campaign is over, these efforts are essentially forgotten and policy is implemented as if none of that pandering took place.

But pandering isn't always empty. Occasionally it has significantly negative effects that last well beyond a campaign cycle. And when it does, the person doing the pandering is being blatantly irresponsible. He or she should be publicly rebuked.

Such was the case with John McCain the other week when he was broached about the subject of autism. He said, “The question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.” No, Senator McCain, we don't go "back and forth." No, Senator McCain, there is no "strong evidence." In fact, there is no evidence, none, that there is a causal link between preservatives in vaccines and autism.

I sympathize with those who have autism or have children with autism. I can understand just why they would want to identify a cause. Somehow, a certain group has seized on the idea that autism is due to mercury contained in older vaccines. And even now that the mercury has been removed, the idea that vaccines cause autism lingers. It has no scientific basis.

Would vaccination be an individual responsibility, the insistence on this small community of individuals - mostly political conservatives in affiliation, which is why McCain was pandering to them - not to vaccinate their children would simply be an individual, albeit misinformed and irrational, choice. But vaccination is a community responsibility. It requires full compliance to be effective.

Polio kills. Measles kills. Over 160,000 lives have been saved over the last 50 years as a result of community wide use of polio vaccines in the US. When a presidential political candidate states that vaccines cause autism, he is giving tacit approval for people to reject vaccination. He is preying upon their fears. He is opening the door to more deaths caused by communicable diseases, deaths that could easily avoidable through vaccination.

There is no excuse for such pandering. Absolutely none. If McCain is unaware of the science on this issue, then he is a painfully uninformed candidate. If he is aware of the science, then he has no conscience. A candidate this uninformed or willing to stoop this low has no business being president. At the very least, he should publicly apologize and retract the statement he has made, which he certainly knows by now was incorrect and damaging to this nation's public health.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

One of the downsides of the continuing battle between Obama and Clinton is that there will no doubt be future televised debates between the two. These have so far been very dreary affairs. There's a good reason for this. Clinton and Obama really have nothing of substance to debate about.

They essentially agree on everything. They are in essence the same candidate. The only way they substantively differ is on style.

For me, it would be best if both candidates gave up the pretense that they have significant differences on the issues. Obama could simply say, yes, we agree we need to get out of Iraq and who knows how I would have voted on this issue had I been in the Senate at the start of the war. Clinton could simply say, yes, we agree with need to have better health care coverage and both of our plans are very similar and will be a significant improvement over what we have now.

It they did that, then the debates wouldn't get hung up on arcane differences in their proposals, differences that will be washed away should either of them actually try to move these proposals into law.

The debate that's perhaps is more important is which candidate would be more successful at moving Congress and the public in the direction of the Democratic centrism that both candidates espouse. Obama pushes the idea that an arms open conciliatory style will work best. Clinton pushes that a more combative style will work best. Yet these distinctions are also artificial in my mind. It will take a mixture of cajoling and stiff-arming to get things done. And while the narrative of the press has been to simplify the contest to a battle between hope and hard nosed realism, each candidate has elements of skepticism and optimism.

But if we keep with the simplistic narrative of the press, the public has its choice. It could choose the good cop in Obama. It could choose the bad cop in Clinton. To drive this metaphor to death, they both work the same beat and approaches of both have their merits. I actually don't think it's necessary to have any more debates. We've had far too many already. And the more I think about these candidates - and yes, I've thought about them too much I know - the more I think that they would work best as a team.

It's true that I prefer the bad cop. She knows how to get things done and knows the rules and regulations better than the good cop. But that preference mostly reflects my own personal style. I certainly prefer being the bad cop to the good one in my own life. Truth be told, having the good cop would probably work almost or just as well. No more debates please. We don't even need more campaigning. It's a waste of money and breath.

Obama or Clinton? Instead of more debates or more voting or more discussion and cajoling of superdelegates, let's simply have the following television broadcast. We'll shoot it from the steps of the Statue of Liberty. There will be three people present, Obama, Clinton and Democratic Chairman Howard Dean.

There will be one Kennedy half dollar in Howard Dean's hand. Someone will call heads or tails. Dean will launch the coin into the air and unless it miraculously lands on its ridged side, a final decision will have been made. No more mess. No more fuss. And either way, the Democrats win.

I Don't Mind If It Isn't True

A few weeks ago, I was reading at a bookstore from a book I'm working on about an impossible family. It's written in the first person. After I was done, a couple of people came up to me after to ask if it was a true story. I said no. It was made up. They looked crestfallen with the news. "But it sounds like it could be true," one of them said. "Well, that's the point," I said. "It should sound believable. But I'm making the whole thing up, honest." They continued to be disappointed with the news that no my real mother was not a mathematical genius and no my real uncle was not a mob connected liquor distributor.

Actually, I lied about making it all up. About 20 percent of what I read that night really did happen to me or to my family. But the other 80 percent is pure b.s. We have a fancy name for b.s. when we write it down and publish it: fiction. We have another name for b.s. when we write it down and call it fact: fraud.

Yesterday, a hot new book, supposedly a memoir about a white girl growing up in a foster home in the LA ghetto, was outed as a fraud by the author's sister. No, the author isn't a foster home ghetto girl. She actually grew up in lily white, affluent Sherman Oaks. Hard to please book critic Michiko Kakutani from the NY Times gave the book a glowing review. Before I knew it was a fraud, I had read the first chapter online. Ho hum. The writing was just serviceable prose. I guess it must have been the story that made it special.

For me, I don't care if a story is true or not. I just care if it's well written, interesting and believable. Apparently, this book now being pulled from the shelves, Love and Consequences, was very interesting and believable. Unfortunately for the author and the publisher, it wasn't true.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the memoir craze started with a book from about 20 years ago, Angela's Ashes. Now that book, which sold millions of copies, was wonderfully written. But it too was fiction. There is absolutely no way that the author, Frank McCourt, could have remembered his childhood world with such precision. Somehow, the public didn't seem to mind. And ever since then, the public has been crazy for memoirs and not too concerned about whether the details are true.

Complete fabrication, however, as has happened with the new book Love and Consequences, is another story. Then the public becomes outraged. They've been lied to! They've been taken advantage of! Oh the horror of it all!

Personally, I don't get it. It's the story and the writing that matter. If it's captivating, like Angela's Ashes was for me, that's all that counts. Whether it's 5 percent or 100 percent fiction is of no consequence. And there are lies and b.s. in every story. It's not possible for someone to write their life story without somehow twisting facts otherwise the narrative would suffer and no one would want to read the material. Believe me, you don't want to read anyone's true life story. It would bore you to tears. It would bore the author to write it as well.

Right now I'm reading The Mascot, a "true story" about a Jew who as a child served as the mascot of a Nazi troop. The writing isn't particularly good, but it's certainly a step up over James Frey, someone who is not only a liar but a crummy writer. In contrast, the writing in The Mascot is passable, and the story is amazing, can't put the book down kind of stuff. If a few months down the road I read an article that says the author made up large parts of this story I won't be outraged in the least. It's still a page turner regardless of its truth.

My own solution to this "problem" of invention of material out of thin air is to eliminate the category of memoir altogether. It doesn't matter if the book is "based on a true story" or not. It's fiction. These books always have fictional elements. Dump the word "memoir" altogether. Just lump all the personal stories about growing up or being a movie mogul or whatever with every other first person narrative. They're all novels. What is the difference between Catcher in the Rye and Angela's Ashes anyhow? I don't see it. I really don't.

That said, this solution is, I know, not practical. People have for forty years, ever since we lost faith in our institutions with the lies of Vietnam, craved "authenticity" at the individual level. We want our authors, musicians and politicians to be authentic and genuine or at least fake their authenticity well enough to be believable. We prefer the "real" or something "based on a true story." While I actually prefer the writings of someone who can invent something out of nothing over someone who simply dresses up their life story with some fibs - the former takes a lot more talent in my opinion - I know I'm in the minority. As a result, the memoir is here to stay.

That said, true crime used to sell like crazy, too. Now that genre is tucked away in the far corners of bookstores. Every genre has its day. Eventually, the memoir will lose its current fashionable status and fall by the wayside. But until it does, we'll likely see a major fraud or two a year exposed in the book world. The demand for "true stories" is so great that it's too tempting to not try to pass off complete fabrications as the real deal.

Maybe that's what I should do, too. Next time I read my stuff and people ask me if it's real, I swear I'm going to say yes, absolutely, every little detail is true and based on my life story. It might work. I hardly have any relatives left alive to contradict me. Most live in Israel anyhow, and will never likely hear about my writings. Now if only my sweetie and my daughter will back me up...

I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch
Oh the bitch is back
Stone cold sober as a matter of fact
I can bitch, I can bitch
`Cause I'm better than you
It's the way that I move
The things that I do

The Bitch is Back
Bernie Taupin and Elton John

The Bitch is Back

Well either it was going to be Ding Dong The Witch is Dead or The Bitch is Back for Clinton after tonight. It turns out it's the latter. Clinton picked a lousy theme song for her campaign several months ago sung by Celine Dion. But the song above is better in a lot of ways and she should think about dumping Celine for this Elton John tune. It reflects who she is (or at least who the public thinks she is) and she just might pick up a few more gay votes if she switched songs. Elton John has a house in Atlanta. Who knows maybe he could help with the Georgia vote? I'm only three quarters joking here. In this election anything is possible.

For most of this campaign Clinton has tried being nice. It hasn't worked very well. Even if she is nice in the quiet of her own home, her public persona is the queen of mean. She has been playing against type and it hasn't been convincing. But ever since that first Saturday Night Live parody was aired, Clinton seems to have discovered her inner bitch for public display. It suits her much more. I like it a lot more too. Maybe she should take it one step further and find herself a dominatrix costume to wear instead of that funny brown suit. Her new slogan can be, "I'm going to whip this economy into shape!"

OK, let's scratch that idea. Obviously, I'm not on the Clinton payroll.

Getting serious a bit, the narrative in the Clinton campaign has gone from "I'm really nice at heart, give me a chance" to "I'm a bitch, deal." In an odd way, I think this new narrative has more public appeal. It shows strength. It shows resolve. And maybe we can finally have someone in the White House who isn't defined principally by how nice they are. It's been decades since this has happened. We could use someone with an edge for a change.

Will Clinton be able to beat Obama in the end? I have no idea. In the past, Obama said that he has to knock Clinton out; he can't beat her on points. I think he's right. And since he hasn't knocked her out yet, things are looking somewhat iffy for Obama. He's going to try to win on points anyway. I don't know if he'll succeed. The Clinton machine just might be too much for him to handle.

I do believe that Obama's trajectory has peaked. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has heard his "yes we can" message. Obama has saturated the marketplace with it. You either buy that message or think it's hope-a-dope nonsense. Finding new converts is going to be tough for him. He has lost a bit of the hip and cool factor that helped define his surge in the polls because the message has lost its newness.

Who will win the remaining states? All I know is that every state seems to produce its own mysteries. It has come down to a battle of the king of hope versus the queen of mean. I have no idea who will win in the end. What a race!

The Power of Satire

What will likely be the final primary elections of consequence of this wonderfully exciting Democratic presidential primary will take place today. For a couple of weeks now, I've said that the queen of mean, my girl Hillary, is cooked. I still believe that, but I'm going to hedge a bit.

Politics twist on the strangest of things. A few tears in New Hampshire catapulted Clinton to victory. A few finger wagging incidents in South Carolina by her husband (you'd think he'd have given up finger wagging for life after that press conference when he said, "I did not have sex with that woman") caused Clinton to lose significant votes both in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday.

And now things have become even stranger. Especially this weekend, but also the previous weekend, the comedy show Saturday Night Live put Hillary Clinton in as sympathetic light as anyone could possibly do. Americans are big on niceness it's true as I noted in the last post. But they are also big on fairness.

Just as SNL helped legitimize the idea that Obama was authentic and a man of integrity in a little Halloween skit several months ago, it has now helped legitimize the idea that the press has treated Clinton unfairly. If a candidate says they are being dumped on by the press, the response is usually that the candidate is a whiner. But when a national program does so, even a comedy show (maybe because it's a comedy show it's even more effective), then the candidate's complaint carries a lot of weight. Clinton has no doubt picked up a few votes because of those broadcasts. How many, I have no idea.

One thing is certain. The polls have been so consistently wrong this election season that whatever projections they have made for Texas and Ohio are meaningless.

SNL did more for Clinton than anything her campaign has done and it didn't cost her a cent. I doubt she picked up enough votes to win Ohio and Texas as a result of SNL, but who knows? Tens of millions of people have now watched or heard of those SNL Clinton segments on TV and on Youtube. As a result of SNL, I'd say the chances of her winning today have gone from 1 in 100 to 20 in 100. Is this a great country or what? Obviously, what she needs to be able to do is get back the female vote and bring out the Hispanic vote.

Wouldn't it be strange if a presidential candidate was eventually selected due to a comeback caused by a television comedy skit? Now that would have to be a first. If it happened, many would take it as a sign of just how trivial and insubstantial the election process is. But for me, it would also serve as an example that comedy and satire can be a powerful tool.

People often underestimate just what satire can do. In the right hands, it can give voice to issues that people are uncomfortable discussing out in the open. In the wrong hands - Kerry and his botched joke of a couple of years ago come to mind - it can kill a political campaign.

If miracles do happen and Clinton wins today, I think it's also a sign that Obama has made a tactical error by spending so much money on Texas and Ohio. This probably seems counterintuitive, but because this race is one based on style not substance, a candidate has to be very careful not to overexpose himself or herself. Ads are good, but saturating the airwaves with them isn't. People get bored seeing the same thing over and over.

Instead of saying, "Wow, Obama is cool" it's now "Ho hum, another dumb Obama ad." Obama has had so much media exposure that he is now a brand. But branding is a tricky business and the world is full of brands that have lost their luster. My guess is that by spending less in Texas and Ohio and protecting his brand name from oversaturation, he would have been better off.

Add in Obama's phony posturing about jobs in Ohio and NAFTA (no, NAFTA isn't responsible for significant job loss there; Obama is simply pandering) and being found out as a phony on this issue through a Canadian government official's memo and it really does look to me that the Obama campaign has been mismanaging the Obama brand as of late. A heretofore brilliant campaign is starting to make significant mistakes. As a Democrat who wants Obama to win in November if he is the nominee, I'm more than a bit concerned that he is peaking too soon.

But of course, this is all wild speculation. We'll all know tonight. It's been wonderful entertainment.

On Being Nice

I've always been at best conflicted about the virtue of being nice. My view is simple. If you are hugely talented and being a mean s.o.b. or diva is part of what drives you, then by all means throw away any attempt at being kind and considerate. But if you aren't hugely talented, then put a friggen smile on your face and take some care with the people around you.

For example, take me. I have world class talent in a couple of minor things. But being mean doesn't drive me, and the aspects of my life where I'm one of a handful of talents are in areas of such little consequence that I really do have to keep my meanness in check. I have a mean streak believe me. I have to work at being nice. It doesn't come naturally. When I'm in public or when I'm teaching, I'm often exhausted at the end of the day because I have to bite my lip all of the time and force myself to smile instead of saying, "Dummy, why don't you friggen get a brain and learn how to use it." Sad I know. But true.

One of the reasons I couldn't stand being in a university was the fact that I was partly surrounded by mean, childish, divas who simply didn't have the talent to back up their jerky behavior. So what if you're the world's foremost authority on 18th century silver use in China. Maybe 100 people read your books, which collect dust in libraries throughout the world. Ditto, if you know more about glacier dynamics than anyone under the sun. Get real now. You're a miniature artist, not a world class anything of importance. Paste on a smile and get with the program.

But no, many of these people believed their own hype. They were hell to be around. It's the principal reason why faculty meetings tend to be such nightmares. Imagine being in a room filled with people who are arrogant and self important, but who have no significant achievements. And you wonder why academia is so full of hot air? Ugh. After 15 years of that I couldn't wait to get out.

But ah, if you have real talent and accomplishments! Then in my book all is forgiven. And the truth is that I've always been attracted to people with talent. I could care less if they are mean, selfish, egotistical, you name it. And most very talented, accomplished people I've run into are in fact, mean s.o.b.s.

My sweetie is always amazed by my ability to get along with talented s.o.b.s and enjoy talented s.o.b.s' company. I've heard her say many times, "How on earth can you stand to be around someone like that?" The answer is that they are interesting people. They are driven and get things done. They have talent at what they do. I could care less that they don't have a smile on their face and are divas. It's what they produce that I'm interested in, not how they do it.

Most of the people I've run into like this are in the art and science world. But I imagine I'd feel the same about people in business as well if I cared about money. Two of the most prominent people in business in my neck of the woods, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, are well known jerks. Why should anyone care? They get things done. They are outstanding at what they do. If people under them cower in fear, well maybe they should cower. Maybe that's what it takes for their companies to be successful. Then again, I don't work for them, do I?

One aspect of this country that I've never quite understood is its obsession with niceness especially in the political realm. We want those that govern to be avuncular statespeople. If we see a hint of arrogance or meanness in a candidate we're turned off. I don't understand it, especially at the presidential level.

We've had over my lifetime, one nice guy after another in office except for maybe two people, Johnson and Nixon. And in my book, Johnson and Nixon were two pretty good presidents except for the achilles heels of Vietnam and Watergate, respectively. You could argue that if they were less arrogant, they wouldn't have made those mistakes. I don't think so.

Our current president is a very nice, likable guy. So was Carter. Those two were the worst presidents of my lifetime by far. Carter was and is pathologically naive. Bush was and is intellectually lacking. Who cares if they are nice? Neither should have ever occupied the White House.

In other countries with which I'm familiar, the public at large could care less if the candidate is a nice person. They want a leader. They want someone strong who can make sound decisions. Being able to kiss a strange baby in a crowd and smile while doing it doesn't enter into the election picture.

Why does this country care about niceness and likeability so much? I have no idea. All I know is that when our president goes to Russia and meets the steely eyes of Putin or whomever is in charge, I want a steely eyed look in return. Being nice is overrated.