Where does this take you? No. 725b

An ape swatting at a gnat

Had to finish up some heavy wordsmith work, took all week but it was slightly important, so the blog had to wait, and, after this post, it will have to wait another week, as I continue to finish up a current project.

When I resume daily posts, in about a week, it will be time to bring you all into the "Hollywood wants you, but we don't want you" fold. It will be difficult, occasionally, to go into detail without being 'accurate', but I will endeavor to give you the inside scoop on a longterm project that I am currently working on, and which The Industry has expressed interest. To whet your collective whistle (hopefully, there are a few of you who don't give a shit about anything that has to do with Hollywood, but you'll dutifully read the posts because they show the folly of magic manufactured by lots of people with lots of money and very, very little taste), I shall herewith describe the project: I have the book rights for a story, and as I've been working on it, a call has come in from a Big Ape Hollywood agency, and I would love to call them the Big Ape Agency, but which I think they are better called the Earnest Attempt Agency. They also have an interest in this story, but they are somewhat in line behind me.

Somewhat? Ain't you either in a place or not?

Well, depends on if you believe you can manufacture reality. Hey! That's what The Industry does! So, yes indeed, the Earnest Attempt agency seems to be starting the manufacturing process with me, the principals of the story and, amazingly, my agent/manager. It's interesting (to me) already, and I'll do my best to share this journey with you as the reality of real-reality butts cosmic heads with the reality-manufacturing machinations of The Industry.

I know the above is just a wee bit nebulous and vague, but the balance I need to achieve is between sharing as much as I can with y'all, without screwing up the ongoing negotiations, since I am a little fish in the goopy sea of The Industry. It's early in the, um, "discussions", which is a misnomer, really, because I haven't actually discussed anything with Earnest Attempt Agency, and, while my agent/manager is talking to the agency, he seems increasingly aware that an opportunity also exists for him to become a player with decent legitimacy amongst all the other rising players. Seems like it's going to be a ride that will be described, from time to time, with various positive and negative modifiers.

The whole process is not starting out well, since the agency is interested in the project, regardless of my ownership of the rights. They're huge, I'm tiny, but the principals of the story love me. We'll see what happens...

I'm going to go ahead and post a couple of "Where does this take you?" picts, and I'll give you a bunch of new words in a week-ish. I'll be looking in on a daily basis, and if anything happens that's truly important, I pop in a new line between pages of this other thing that's got me occupied.

Peace: someday that word will be used in terms of something for which we used to strive; the question now is, will it be because of its worldwide prevalence, or because we will have given up on ever achieving it?

Where does this take you? No. 725a

Where you gonna go?

"Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Ted asked me that a few weeks ago. He's a tall drink of water, older, seen a lot, was a Marine quite a long time ago, qualified to be on anyone's Nicest Guy in the World List. He's married to a wonderful woman, and they both run the country's oldest Wild Horse Sanctuary. Diane founded the sanctuary, and Ted has kept it up and running, using his long experience as a power guy -- working with bigtime power, that stuff that runs along poles with transformers the size of Volkswagons, pushing enough electrons along the wire to make it hum -- to do amazing things, like take their house almost entirely off the grid. They're both christian, not the unbending, you-ain't-nothing-if-you-ain't-my-type evangelical christian, but the believing in God and reading the bible and living by the tenents and actions that go along with that kind of belief. They're just dang good people.

I always have wonderful conversations with Ted, always have a pleasant exchange of opinions or insights. For a few years there, he'd ask me about a certain ex-king of pop,had I heard this, or did I know about that, because years ago I'd worked with said fallen king. Ted wanted to talk about ex-pop king not because he had that kind of Access Hollywood need to know, but because, as much faith as he had about the innate nature of our humanity, he found it had to believe that someone could 'be' the way that the fallen king was; he liked to hear my impressions because I at least had interacted with the guy.

A few weeks ago, we're hanging out on the front porch, talking about this and that, and a couple of current topics came up: intelligent design and WMD. (I'll write up the intelligent design conversation in a few days). Ted couldn't, and in all likelihood still doesn't, believe that Sadam didn't have WMD. It was his personal belief, strongly held. My wife's nephew Evan, between his second and final year of law school, was up there with us, and he was part of the conversation. Ted was "pretty sure" he'd heard that they'd found at least some WMD. All of this ocurred before the Rick Santorum hyperbolic incident about the 'discovered' pre-Gulf War, degraded nerve agent report last month.

We talked, went over some of what was found, and about what's never been found.

Let me time shift a bit here: the week after this conversation, Frontline did a solid report on the now thoroughly discredited intel about WMD that got us into the Iraq mess. I'm getting a copy for Ted. Ted found it hard to believe that Sadam didn't have something, and we discussed that while intent and money may get someone like Sadam a lot of nasty things, there are certain controls around the globe that make it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT to acquire the technology to design, assemble and use the kind of WMD that Sadam dreamed about. At the end, Ted may not have been convinced, but it remained a personal thing, and we all hold some kind of secret personal beliefs that we keep to ourselves, for all sorts of reasons. That's when he asked, ""Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Short, tough question, really. It is hard, I responded, it's hard for most people to take the time and get enough info from different sources so that you have a pretty good idea of the 'truth'. Part of my awareness of the Iraq WMD story is due to my relationship with a former WMD inspector. This person, by the way, has never said one way or the other that Sadam did or didn't have WMD, nor has this former inspector revealed any secret info, but it's clear from our conversations that the highly educated, highly trained, unbiased professionals who looked for Iraq WMD, preceeding the latest quagmire, concluded there were none to be found. But, there is enough information 'out there' that you don't have to know a WMD inspector to accept those findings. In the run-up to the war, that same kind of information -- from the mis-characterization of the tubes to the mobile chemical and gas labs -- was out there, but hard to locate without putting in some effort.

People like me, writers and such, and people who can't stop themselves, we make a conscious decision to get to information. Many who need info must, by personal leanings or by time constraints, focus on a few subjects: politics, spies, weather, college sports, dance, science, etc. Others, myself included, spend way too much time finding out what we can about everything, usually because we believe that there's enough misinformation pouring out of big pipes that it's up
to us to keep our family, friends and associates attuned to what's going on in this world, which is far different that what is PRESENTED as what's happening in the world. I once had a publisher tell me that "there is no unbiased news or information organization; everyone has an agenda." He's right, but some agendas are a damn sight more harmful, insidious and dishonest than others.

So, where do you go to get the right news? As many places as you can. Blogs are good, but, geez, I can't think of information presented with a more strident agenda than blogs! If you're only listening to Rush and Fox, and other portals with a sismilar slant, you are doing yourself wrong. The same can be said for PBS, Air America and CNN. Now personally, I find the latter group to be less strident and in my face than the former (all right, by a lot), yet caution and diversity need to be watchwords here. Information comes in many forms, and its provenance, where it comes from, is just as important as the delivery platform. A medical study financed by Bayer doesn't neccessarily make the study biased, but that backing needs to be realized and taken into account. Statistics about the insurance indsutry, presented by an insurance industry supported think tank, is another example. Studies done by chambers of commerce, or other stated pro-business organizations, on the "impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on business" is another.

My initial "it's hard" answer to Ted doesn't help him, really, in finding the 'right' news (no jokes about left or right here, please), and history proves how often good people get the right news wrong. A smaller amount of effort, or maybe a social-based reliance on friends or family who make a commitment to getting as much info as possible on certain subjects, is a way to sift through the chaf and fog of a busy world.

That being said, here's my contribution to you: for a clarification of Bob Novak's latest 'revelation' about his CIA agent outing source, and, more interesting, a very inside look on how the Taliban is establishing control in Pakistan (the July 12th post is "Dispatch from Pakistan: The Taliban Expands"...yikes), go to today's The Washington Note, a blog by Washington D.C. insider Steve Clemons.

The right news? Can't say that you can always find it in one place, but, for the love of whoever, keep trying to find it.

Space tape

400 bajillion dollars, highly trained, courageous men and women, and yet the whole program can't get by without duct tape.

On the road we called it (and it's still called) gaffer's tape. None of us should be surprised that gaffer's was used to hold together an assemblage of parts that probably cost NASA ten million bucks. Hell, Gaffer's has been at work for years, holding fenders together for NASCAR, and gosh only knows what else, and, all kidding aside, there would not, COULD NOT be a single concert anywhere in the world if there were suddenly no gaffer's to be found.

Bands large and small, known by one or known by all, couldn't take the stage without it. In typical fashion, the magic of any performance is a culmination of many smaller, homely, unseen cogs in the wheel known as the show, and much of that is held down/secured/hidden/marked by the strong, reliable yet underappreciated treasure known as gaffer's. I'm not even sure that the possessive apostrophe is right, but, damn, I'm going with it. Cables, cords, stage marks, boxes of T-shirts, so much of live entertainment rides upon the sticky shoulders of gaffer's. Back in the day (isn't this where the kids can't keep their eyes open as granpa spins anouther road yarn?), roadies working for smaller bands with miniscule record label support would guard their primo gaffer's with their lives. Primo gaffer's was THE stuff: flat black, textile-based (not that glossy black plastic shit), with good tear and stickiness.

And gaffer's has its uses in many situations that might not occur to the uninitiated. For example, we once used gaffer's and cardboard to seal the tour bus bunk space of a rather portly roadie who had a neglectful attitude towards personal hygene, with the portly, smelly roadie inside. There are many other road stories, mostly true, of gaffer's used in the most original fashion. But, the true worth of gaffer's is its reliability to adhere to just about anything and hold just about anything together, as NASA and its astronauts have finally discovered.
Gaffer's in space. It's an amazing world.

And speaking of amazing, the other bright news story of the day is that researchers have discoverd that psilocybin mushrooms actually do exapnd your mind and make you contemplate, well, whatever you happen to be looking at after you've eaten psilocybin mushrooms.

I'm not sure where to go with this, other than to ask, what did they think was happening to people when they ingested thsoe mushrooms? My other questions are, where can one sign up for the studies, will they be doing more, and was there an overwhelming response when they asked for volunteers?

They did mention that a handful of people in the study had 'bad trips', which is a phrase I haven't heard in, well, a while, and that does indicate that the mushroom state of mind may not be for everyone.

It's nice to have a day where we can have two stories from two different places, where one is about one of the simplest inventions on Earth used in space, and the other is about one of the spaciest things on Earth used to get into space...or something like that...

Enough. Gotta get ready for liftoff; please use your roll of gaffer's to secure yourself to the seat.

Where does this take you?

The continuing series:

No.876. Where does this take you?

A man with a plan

This man is at the top of his game, on top of the world, just plain on top.

I watched the PBS Great Performances broadcast of The Seeger Sessions last night. Heckuva performance, heckuva show, heckuva band.

Springsteen obviously had a good time, and he's almost certainly still having a good time, not just because of everything he's already accomplished, but because of what that enables him to do in the future, to wit: just about any damn thing he pleases. It's not just a money thing, it's much deeper than that. Lots of people have more than enough money to do whatever they want to do (within the laws of our land, and there are plenty of rich dopes out there who attempt to do ANYTHING they wish; there's a higher power that deals with them, as the nation found out earlier this week). Choosing to do things, however, that make you feel good about yourself AND contibute to the betterment of society in general, man, that's the way to go.

In an interview last month, Sringsteen talked about having the ability to do whatever he wanted musically. There's no conglomerate to walk arm-in-arm with, no contractual obligation, no responsibility to sell out mega-shows, no real 'music business' to deal with, and those details only exists for a handful of artists. Even the biggest names in entertainment are beholden -- even if it is more than an amicable relationship -- to someone, be it a movie studio, music label, cable or broadcast network. When we read, see or hear reports about multi-jillion dollar box office, signing bonuses or contract signings, it is a gobsmack amount of cash, but it comes from somewhere, and it all has golden strings attached. The bigger the name, the more weight the name can throw around during negotiations, but even the biggies recognize that big dough comes with big expectations, and the financing entity needs to get that dough back from sales, sales, sales.

Along the way, the good, smart artists, plan ahead, for the time they can 'do what they want'. Springsteen's doing what he wants, and we're better off for it.

I must confess that, aside from knowing Pete Seeger's history, seeing him in documentaries and knowing his songs, I wouldn't have neccessarily called myself a fan. I appreciate his talent, his deserved iconic status and his contributions to the communal sense of knowing that government is (always supposed to be) of, for and about the people. Springsteen realizes this about Seeger -- safe to say Springsteen channels the Seeger energy -- and also realizes that this is a time when we need to hear Seeger's work, and understand what that work says about us.

So Springsteen decides to do Seeger, whilst putting his own Bruce stylings on the songs, and he puts a band together and goes on the road. From a musician's point of view, it's really obivous that, at least on the night(s) they taped, Springsteen enjoyed himself immensely. There are certain looks and interactions that musicians can pick up on that convey very specific things. There are the glances among bandmembers that convey a missed change, a cue to end the song, or a cue to extend a jam, or the signals to the guitar roadie or the house mixer. And then there are these other, more personal looks, and among those looks are the special smile or expression that only comes from someone who is part of a very special swirl of sound, a creation of energy that is one of the few times a human can create and be the creation at the same time.

Every musician loves being part of a really good band, but there is nothing like being in a great band, at a great time, in a great place. The Seeger Sessions is a great show.

Twenty-two years ago I worked a Springsteen tour, and while setting up my camera on the floor of a huuuuuggge venue, the boss was walking around the building, listening to the band as it did the soundcheck. As he walked up the center aisle to get back on stage, he made a slight detour to stop by and 'introduce' himself to me, and said, "Just wanted to say thanks for your work."

Helluva a guy, huh?

We're lucky to have Springsteen around, and really lucky that he's going down the road, doing what he's doing. He could choose to do anything he wants, he's chosen to do something obviously important to him and, maybe, more of us will understand why what he's doing is, and should remain, important to us.

Soon after my previous post...

Happened last Wednesday night:

Three people -- including two members of the Tongan royal family on a community outreach mission -- died Wednesday night in Menlo Park after a teenager racing in a Mustang hit their sport utility vehicle on Highway 101, causing it to roll multiple times, authorities said.

Enough.

You know it's true.

If you're a parent of a male or female teenager and you've given them a new car, something really nice and sporty, like a Mustang, Mitubishi or any other number of quick, fast, hot cars, you need to admit to yourself that at some point, or at any point that you can't see your son or daughter, they drive too fast.

You know they do. If you want to plant your feet and deny that they do, then you're a fool.

No slight on your parenting skills is intended, there's no personal attack here, and, yes, I am making a sweeping, broad brush statement. I don't care. I've had more than enough young women (notice I'm putting them first) and young men trying to pass me by inserting themselves and their car into my exhaust pipe with the intention of moving through me, as opposed to around me. This isn't really new, nor are my own hands clean; I, like almost all my teenage friends, occasionally drove too fast, too often, and probably came too close to going to the hospital instead of going home. And we all lost friends or family because of things done with fast cars and the results of stupid, immature intentions.

The recent phenomena seems to be the plethora of new, fast cars owned by teens; the number of those cars 'given' to teens by their parents; and the rising number of young women who drive as recklessly as young men. I'm not going to listen to any rationalizing, I really don't give a damn as to why you think your son or daughter should have, and can handle, a new, fast car. I also realize that a 4-banger Hyundai can be as deadly as a missile while under the piss-poor control of a teenager. I also realize that there may be teens out there who, god love them, actually drive their new car in a safe and sane manner, but this whole teen driving cluture is interconnected; somewhere along the line, the influence of another teen will come into play, whether your good-driving teen is a passenger in someone else's fast car, or that other fast car and your good-driving teen's car meet in some way that doesn't have to be described here.

Y'know, this message is so old, and always relevant, but I can hardly believe that at the age of 52 (I got no problem with being numerically old) I am now someone who feels the importance of repeating this message. Now, here's a kicker for y'all: I don't have kids. I love em', but don't have any. Now there might be more than a few of you that would insist that I shut my yammer portal right now, since I don't belong to the Parents Club, but I would tell you that I have a better idea of what your kids did when you weren't around, for those of you whose kids are now parents themselves, than you ever did. The reason that I was privvy to this behavior?

I worked in rock and roll. I saw you, and I saw your kids, and I saw you and/or them doing the most amazing things.

I know things change, though, and I'm not in rock and roll to the same degree as, as, well, a while ago, but the point remains valid: to some degree, teens do things that could get them in all sorts of trouble, and those that don't can get in trouble because of those others.

Steve Coursey is a columnist for a New York Times-owned newspaper in Northern California, and last week he wrote a column about Ford, teens and death, and dang if he didn't get the right response from the car company. You may have seen a particular commercial for the Ford Mustang in which, to summarize, a young man drives a Mustang like an idiot around a desserted parking lot kind of place, and his dad is in the passenger seat, and, oh so cleverly, looks as if he's going to admonish his offspring, BUT NO, he giggles and says something to the effect of, "Again!", whereupon they go off like two assholes in a Mustang.

Welp, in a Northern California county they had this problem of a bunch of teenagers who had all died in several different accidents, all involving brandspankingnew Mustangs that their parents bought for them. Mind you, this is not the place to go on about this, and we all feel the grief of any lost soul, especially young souls. So, when this goofy, and not really well done anyway commercial aired in this part of the country, one of the county supervisers essentially said, if I may paraphrase, "this is bullshit". He called Coursey, Coursey called Ford, and dang, Ford pulled the commercial...from Northern Califronia rotation.

Qucik aside here: not all national commercials air nationally during the same time period, for various reasons. If you haven't seen the commerical, you may yet still see it.

I wish there was a way to make this message fresh, although maybe if I'm pissing you off because you feel I'm besmirching your parenting skills, some of that will manifest itself in some additional dialog with your kids (I'm sure that right now most of you parents are shaking your head at my apparent naivete, but let's move on). Hey, you got the ability to give your kids something like a car, that's great, and I'm really happy for all of you. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of really nice, shiny cars, that can go fast enough on the highway without launching into orbit. It's been shown through studies that kids' brains ain't quite finished, and that unfinished part is one of the reasons that kids don't always make the 'best' choices, so there'a always going to be some issue to deal with.

I'm just trying to get one or two of you to really think about how truly, truly sad that polite but insistent knocking on your front door could be at two o'clock in the morning.

Don't look & 13 seconds

I like a good, creative list of this and that, but when it comes to something as personal and universal as driving, I think it best that I, instead, share my 'observations'. Although I could then slip right into a long 'list' of observations, I'm also going to avoid that approach and see if I can hone today's part two of the driving theme to just two, maybe three important tips for safer, better driving that can be adopted with little or no fanfare at all. Yes, you can choose to see the validity of these tidbits, make them your own, and you'll never have to admit you didn't think of them yourself. Do pass along the info somehow, though, because these are good, and they can really, really make a difference.

Don't look at me.
I'm a passenger in your car. I could be friend, family, DMV inspector, what-or whoever, and I'm in your passenger seat for a few minutes or a few hours, ippso facto, I ain't going nowhere until you get us wherever we're going. What's important in this situation? Well, you need to get us to our destination in one piece, you need to watch the road, react, curse the idiot who just did any one of a thousand moves that are dangerous, so...don't look at me.

We've all done it, and we see it by glancing at the multiple boxed stage shows manuevering all around us on the road: animated conversations between two people, energetic nods of comprehension, wide open eyes and motoring mouths, and the driver's head moving with peppy regularity from eyes-ahead, to full face turn to the right, linger, a quick glance ahead, head whip to the right for much longer than necessary. Stop it. Get in the habit of not looking at your passenger. The passenger is not going anywhere that you're not going. The passenger is the uber captured audience. If you really need to interpret how your pasenger feels about what you just said, listen to the tone of the response, or the silence of the non-response, stay attuned just as if you were talking on the phone (different post, the whole phone and driving thing), but keep your eyes on the road.

It's a little thing, it takes just a tiny bit of practice, but it will make such a huge difference in how you drive, and how much more in control you'll feel. Your passenger will not mind, they may notice but it will probably not register with them to a great degree, and if they do notice -- "You never look at me when I talk to you..." -- your response can be whatever you want, but can then include something about "...avoiding eye contact to avoid (insert word here, i.e., death, dismemberment, human missle launch, looking at the weird thing growing on your lip, etc.) I'll avoid the whole accelerated mass equation thing here and go right to this: at 60 mph the distance covered in the span of a quick glance is considerable, and fraught with danger, and things would be just so much nicer for all of us if we'll all stop looking at our passenger (those with kids in the back, this is another universe; we'll visit your situation in the future).

The 13 second rule.
Dude cuts you off; young hot chick comes up your ass at warp speed and stays so close you can see just how much eye makeup she has wasted on herself; car ahead slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a butterfly; as you try to pass a slower car, the other driver finds the gas pedal...over, and over, and over...

And the rage begins. It comes after maybe a microsecond or two of disbelief -- "I can't believe what that asshole just did!" -- and, dedending on your personal 'What the fuck else can happen to me today?' sacle, you might attempt to find to send your own personal message to the other driver who turned you into a raving lunatic. Perhaps you want to convey something via sign language.

Perhaps you want to convey something at an amplified volume, using lung capacity that you reserve for such times as this. Your focus is now on defending your...um, what? Well, you're not going to let that asshole besmirch your...what? Pride? Vanity? Your professional driving prowess?

Please. Let's just put this in perspective for, oh, the rest of our lives, okay? Yeah, well, do it anyway, to wit: give yourself 13 seconds, tops, to be angry, swear, out loud or in your head, share a few expletives with whoever happens to be in earshot, outside and inside the car, and then, 13 seconds later, done.

Be done because your life, the energy of your existence, your focus, it's all too important to be dilluted by the energy of someone that you will not see again, or, if it's like a commute thing where you might see them at least once or twice a week, you still won't know them, you don't want to know them, you'll never really have any interaction with them and, shit, you have so much other stuff to deal with that this boob/twit/sonofabitch should not register on your life radar for more than 13 seconds.

For those with an interest in Eastern/Asian subjects, you might have gleened the Buddhist underpinnings here, but regardless, this is a very practical perspective on 'those other drivers'. Think you can't let that anger go, let your astonishment, that sense of being trespassed upon (it is your lane right now, afterall) blow away like the unimportant dust that it is? Bullshit. 13 seconds go by, get your mind back on what your were thinging just before Mr. Rude did his thing (notice the absence of "did his thing TO YOU"). Do not give a complete stranger an entitlement to your life. 13 seconds go by, then think about your kids; your horse; your dog; your job (man, are you that desperate? get a hobby); your hobby; the stock market; the babe you met last night; the meal you'll have tonight.

I'm not saying you shouldn't GET angry, maybe lecture your kids, your teens; about just how stupid that other driver is and why, not that I'm saying you'll can manage to do this every time, because I sure can't, but the more you try, the easier it becomes, and the more sense it will begin to make. Recognize it, let the expletive explode from you, then get back to your own life. 13 seconds is still way too long to put yourself in a funky state because of another dope, but it's better than keeping that psychic bile bottled up inside, where it might explode at some other, unfortunate time.

Last: every state in this big 'ol Union has a far left lane for passing and faster cars, and the lanes to its right are for the not so fast. This polite, understated observation is presented without embellishment in the hopes that the underlying message (it's correct, good and safe to move over to let others pass) will be accepted and implemented by, oh, everyone.

Be safe; don't look at me; your 13 seconds are up, so please resume being yourself.

The Sunday Post

Where does this take you?

#725