Unfashionable Discourse

    Most days of the week, I work until about 11pm.  I work at a TV station.  At the best of times, I’m very proud of my work, but working on a deadline in an unpredictable live news environment makes perfectionism a fatal flaw.  An undertanding of clock economics is crucial because I know exactly when mine is up.
    Every day I work, I know that judgement time will come.  And I know when - "Fox 17 News at Ten" -  it’s on my shirt.
    And I know that in the morning I am reborn, reincarnated. 
    In the morning, I walk into work fresh to begin again and unaware of where my path will lead, but also carrying the karma that is the memory, the imprint, mine and everyone else’s, of the day before.
    The beginning of everyday is nothing but potential.  We analyze our surroundings and make commitments.   I will do this, I will do that.  Then things change.  Things pop up and we respond to the best of our ability.  As the day progesses, we are more and more committed to a path.  If we’re lucky we have a few laughs.  We do our best with the hand we’re dealt and prepare, steeling ourselves for the inevitable moment of truth.
    Preparedness at 10pm feels good.  The alternative is many sizes and shapes of panic.

    It’s like life will a few key assurances thrown in.   
    
      

    As a 13 year old suburban kid carpooled to a prep school on Detroit’s west side in 1990, I was a YO! MTV raps watching, Starter jacket wearing white kid enamored with black culture.  On one school-sanctioned Cedar Point trip I heard beats blaring from a classmate’s headphones.  I didn’t know him, but I asked to check out his tape anyway.  He looked at his friends and laughed, and handed me the tape.  This was my introduction to Paris.
    Over the next hour I listened intently to the kind of rap that I didn’t hear on the "urban" radio stations or see on Fab 5 Freddy’s weekend show.  At the time this was raw shit.  What struck me first was the production.  In between the standard, though well crafted, sample-based trax were cuts composed of hard beats over dark synth lines, with some rock guitars thrown in underneath on occasion.  Paris’ cool clear confidence as a rapper as he dropped Black Panther/Nation of Islam politics made it easy to understand at first listen what he was talking about.  It didn’t take long to understand why those kids got a laugh out of me asking to listen to this extremely pro-black music.  Initially a bit embarrassed in my skin, I was soon feeling gratious for the opportunity to get something a little deeper than the NWA that some of the other white kids were hip to.
    I listenened to the album from beginning to end, occasionally rewinding my walkman for a second listen to the backward drum loop and evil funk bassline of "The Devil Made Me Do It,"  the smoothed out Sade sample based "Mellow Madness," and the DJ vanity track "I Call Him Mad."  Inspired, I returned the tape and bought my own copy the next day. 
    In following listens over the following months, I got a firmer grip of the politics of the record.  As an introduction to the philosophy of black militance, it gave me a new framework for interpreting the things I saw as a 13 year old whose time was divided beween the black city and the white suburbs. 
    Two years later I started my first real job.  I remember the first day at work at that regional big box/grocery store which was soon to hold its grand opening.  Two faces stood out among the group of us in our orientation.  The first was a beautiful brunette who I immediately had adolescent designs on.  The other was the guy whom I percieved to be my main competion in this pursuit.  Shortly we were all friends.
    Jason was a product of an interracial marriage and the only guy at work who I could talk music with.  In one such discussion, the Paris record came up, and I loaned him my copy.  A few days later Jason showed up to work with bad news.  His Dad, who was black, had seen my CD in Jason’s room and succeeded in short order in crushing it with the heel of his shoe.  Being married to a white woman, I suppose I could understand his objection.  After all, Paris’ attitude towards whites is, shall we say, unforgiving, and I’m pretty sure that the Nation of Islam’s stance on interracial unions isn’t all that different than the KKK’s.  But the strength of Jason’s Dad’s display of disapproval was shocking and taught me something about race and the way people think about it in this country.  The wounds of racism are still being inflicted and I suppose seeing some Black Panther propaganda in his son’s room was a stinging salt for a Dad who couldn’t forget it. 
    This was 13 years ago now, and Jason and I have lost touch. (though I’m still friends with the brunette), but I finally repurchased the album (gotta go to amazon, you won’t easily find this in stores these days) I’m struck by how much it influenced my political development.  At 13 and just learning to see the world through my own eyes, this stuff went straight to my head, and today I’m as progressive a guy as you’re likely to meet in a given day, and I feel all the better for it.  But what’s really amazing to me as I look back is that it was the sound (which still stands up today, by the way) that drew me in, and eventually opened my mind to some radical new ideas that may have a lot to do with the way I think about the world today.

BEATS OPEN MINDS.                        

"Talkin’ that extra hard junk, you’re probably a punk"

Going through the iTunes library, and Main Source emerges as a classic hip hop selection, and I think of two things.

Firstly and most importantly, an article which appeared in today’s NYTimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?hp&ex=1110776400&en=c0b6bad84e5bf46a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Bush administration is combating The Daily Show with it’s own brand of fake news. The difference is that this fake news isn’t so clear that it’s fake.  It’s administration propaganda that may be showing up on your local news.   News pieces produced on your tax dollar designed to sell and praise administration policies, and subsequently slid incognito into your local news, often without the knowledge of even those who choose to air them.  Fascinating article.  Write your local TV news station and demand as much locally produced content as possible.  Your voice will be heard.  While you’re at it, enlighten yourself to the unfair and unbalanced practices of Sinclair Broadcasting at

http://sinclairaction.com/

Secondly, an article in Slate.com dated March 10.

http://www.slate.com/id/2114375/

The latest hottest rap act, The Game, has spent weeks at #1 on the RnB charts.  Former crack dealer.  Those crack dealers are so wise.  Drop science Pusherman!  The article highlights Dr. Dre as a competent producer and savvy businessman, and I’m not gonna argue with Dre, because a businessman is exactly what he is, and a good one.   You can thank Dre for Eminem, 50 cent, and now, The Game.  Did you hear about the The Game vs. 50 rivalry that ended up in someone getting shot outside of the NYC radio station?  It’s all fake.  I mean, it happened, someone did get shot.  But it’s all in the name of selling records.  MF Doom said: "Only in America could you find a way to earn a healthy buck and still keep your attitude on self destruct"  Thug life sells, and so thugs get contracts, and then become fake thugs.  Trying to be thugs.  Showbusiness is not necessarily art, but I suppose we want stimulation, not art.  AGHGHGHG!!!

Stop Fakin the Funk.   

Did you see Paul Krugman on the Daily Show?  He’s hawking his book, "The Great Unraveling" now out in paperback.  Paully, where’s the beef?
As a regular reader of the economist’s. . .how to put this delicately. . ."Bush-skewering" editorials, I was eager to see the man in the flesh on Thurs. night’s show, but from the second he walked out, I knew something was up. 
I’ll forgive his obvious case of nerves (I swear I saw the man quivering, but I would have been too), but his mousy, nerdy, know it all, straight from a playground beatdown demeanor was, erm, a bit demoralizing. 
This is a guy who, in his NYTimes headshot, looks like the guy beating up the guy giving the beatdowns.   
You read a columnist regularly, and you start to get an idea of their persona in your head.  But like the radio host who never looks like you imagined,  Krugman was the opposite of the no-bullshit toughguy (go get’em Paul!!) that he comes off as in print.  More Pee Wee Herman than Cool Hand Luke.   
Oh well.  I love ya anyway Paul.  And I’m sorry.  I feel dirty now.  Forgive me?
Speaking of love (and dirty, for that matter), about that Maureen Dowd . . .

    Hey America, gas prices just hit a record high!  Oil companies are laughing all the way to the bank, and our dependency on Middle Eastern oil reserves blinds us to injustices committed by the hands of illegitimate governments, instead propping them up and undercutting our efforts to use non-violent methods of "regime change."  But you still just can’t get enough of your SUVs and 45 minute commutes back and forth between the office and the new house in the peaceful, sprawling burbs. 
    So while you keep wasting time and money in your vehicles, I’ll be driving my economy car 5 minutes to work, filling up twice a month, and vacationing in the tropics, the whole time doing more to aid the situation in the Middle East than all your Calvin pissing on Osama and "These Colors Don’t Run" stickers combined.  Suckers.

    I came home tonight to find the new Atlantic waiting for me on the kitchen table.  This is usually among my favorite days of the month.  Every time I open a new issue, it’s like running down the stairs on Christmas morning.  Today was even better, however, because the cover boasts an article by the beloved David Foster Wallace, author of the notoriously huge and incredibly footnoted (and don’t skip ‘em, that’s where the funniest bits be) "Infinite Jest."  The topic?  To quote the cover "Deep DEEP DEEP into the mercenary world of take-no-prisoners political talk radio."  Holy Crap.  Sweet. 
    I opened the issue to find a dizzying collection of sideboxes and 26 pages of (mostly) uninterrupted (by ads, that is) paragraphs.  The scattery layout is something I’ve never seen in the Atlantic, and it figures. Foster Wallace is among the most exciting and innovative of the modern writers I’ve read, and he don’t seem afraid to fuck with your paradigms.
     Pardon me now while I read.  Go buy your Atlantic and see me next week, or better yet, buy "Infinite Jest" and see me next year.

Melis and Chris

Funny how a day of snowboarding will make one question grad school. 

A rare Saturday off is spent at the hill with friends, and I could only wish for more time, and more snow, and free airline tickets.  So I empathize with those who choose to put off the rat race for more time at the mountain, or the lake. or jumping out of planes.  The sheer adrenaline and natural beauty is enough to get one through the day.

No news, no work, no nothing but the serenity of the snow and the thrill of speed, the natural way. 

Sorry I didn’t make the drive to Ann Arbor Melis.  Happy Birthday anyway.

Greetings Friendsters,

This is a test run of the first post on this blog.  I imagine that in time a number of things may happen on this blog, including, but not limited to:

I will rant about politics
I will lament our consumer culture
I will wax poetic or otherwise about music, film, and books
I will submit links for your perusal
I will embarrass myself
You will be embarrassed for me as well
I will misspell words
Or maybe not much of anything

In this first post, I’d like to refer you to an audio feature in the online version of to today’s NYTimes. Here you can listen to three magazine editors talking about the state of American liberalism.  I found it be a refreshing reminder of what it’s really about: justice. 
Because it opens up in a seperate window, I don’t know how to post a weblink, but it is currently located under the "books" heading on the right side of the front page.

Peace,

Joe