I think I must disagree with half of everything Paglia says (I’m a Republican, she’s a Democrat). But when you can write like a kung fu master, you have to be read:
Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought.
Holy schnitzel, that’s what words are for. I’m still laughing and nodding my head. Can I be Camille for a while?
The fact is while Paglia is clearly liberal, she’s not a party lemming. This is one of the things that is so refreshing about her. She’s not afraid to call ’em as she sees them, even if that means roasting her own party or praising the other.
I just started watching Life, the NBC series. I’ve enjoyed the first four episodes. In fact, episode three has one of the most brilliant sequences I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the setup. Charlie Crews is a detective who was sent to jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Being a cop in prison made him a target for many many beatings. Eleven years later they found none of the DNA at the murder site was his. So they released him, and, as settlement for damages, gave him a bunch of money, and allowed him to be a cop again. He’s been partnered up with Dani Reese. Nobody really wanted him, but she’s had problems of her own and got stuck with him. Crews had a car in the first episode, geeked out about GPS and handsoff telephone (stuff his missed in prison), but the ex-con lawyer Crews has put up in his mansion ran it over with a tractor. He’s been riding the bus. In this sequence, Crews and Reese are looking for a guy named Manny Umaga who carjacked a man and his wife then shot the wife. In this sequence they go find where he is and then go get him.
Watch it and then read my comments below. It runs from minute 15:49 to 21:15.
1. Surprise. You walk into a dangerous car shop. What are you expecting? You know you’re going to meet hard characters. They’re not going to want to talk to you. There’s some danger and so a bit of suspense. So we meet some hard characters. I was still surprised by the particulars of Buscando Maldito–his neck tattoos and hat. Wonderful and new (at least to me). But before we can have a confrontation–surprise–Crews sees the car of his dreams. Then we get that wonderful exchange between him and Maldito and El Repitito. Total humor. Totally unexpected. Then Maldito suggests a posse? Not only is he willing to talk, but he suggests he goes with them? When going to get Umaga, more surprises. Flash bangs? Big honking Samoan running? Busts down the door? Takes Crews by the neck? Crews pulls his own knife? Surprise after surprise after surprise.
2. Characters. Loads of interest factors (see my post on character). Maldito and Repitito have fabulous eccentricities. Crews displays his own interesting reaction to the car. Surprising, but logical (BTW, in a later scene you see him driving the car!) Then we see his prison background coming up with the knife. Love his backstory. And did you notice how strong Reese is, taking none of Maldito’s crap?
3. Dialogue. Did you notice how the first few times Reese says anything to Maldito he doesn’t respond to her question? Total avoidance of on-the-nose dialogue, talking cross-purpose.
4. Soundtrack. The way they bridged the two scenes with that music was fabulous. And the music itself. Wow. BTW, that’s “No Nadie” by Edgard Jaude, Rafael Torres, & Andres Ayrado.
5. Conflict. Between the Maldito and Crews about the car, between Maldito and Reese, between Umaga and Crews. Then Crews and Reese (with the knife).
Yes, you say, of course. There’s environment and choice; both of these affect what we become.
But I’m not talking about being in charge at that level. I’m saying that our genes aren’t even in charge of themselves.
What?
We all know that computer hardware (processor, RAM, motherboard, etc.) is important, but that the software that runs the show. Well it appears that our genes are like the hardware. Something else runs the show.
That something else is our epigenome, our epigentic tags (“epi” meaning just above as in “epidermis” or “epicenter”). The tags are chemicals that turn particular genes on and off, telling cells what they’re supposed to be–liver, skin, brain.
Furthermore, researchers think they the tags can change through a number of means, including what we eat. For example, you can take two identical set of genes for hair and, with tags, change hair color.
Research has also shown the epigenome can be passed down to posterity. So what you eat and its effect on you can be passed down to your posterity. Likewise, what you are is what your parents and maybe grandparents ate.
Here is Abdul Hassan, 39. A Somali pirate nicknamed “the one who never sleeps.” Hassan is part of a pirate group called the Central Regional Coast Guard. It was formed three years ago, has 350 men in its ranks and about 100 speedboats.
Zing, zing, zing, zing, zing!
There are some wonderful stories waiting to be told about this. Sure, there is the terrorist angle. But what about the angle of someone of value they stumble across on the ship? What about the kid who knows these pirates and decides to make a buck turning them in? What about the guys sent in to find out who the heck is backing these guys?
What about Hassan himself? Somali is so poor. With one job he made $350,000. Here are some great articles.
Is this not delicious? I found it on istockphotos.com and couldn’t stay away. I want to be on that trail. I want to know what’s around that bend. Holy moly, the feeling of this photo is just marvelous.
I live among ranchers in northern Utah, people whose livelihood walks around on four legs. People who can lose thousands of dollars of future income if they lose one good cow or calf. People who think one of the dumbest things to happen in recent times in the West is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone. Now, I don’t agree with them, but I do think they have good cause.
Contrary to what people will tell you, wolves do not kill just for food. Wolves kill because they like killing. If you don’t believe me, then believe Temple Grandin, an expert on animals, who asks the question in her Animals in Translation: “Is it fun to kill a groundhog?”
She reviews a number of studies done on animals and answers with an unequivocal yes, predators love to kill. In fact:
“Animals like having their predatory killing circuits turned on, and will turn them on themselves if you show them how. When you think about what predatory killing is all about, of course it ought to feel good, because predatory killing means dinner. Killing a mouse feels good to a cat the same way finding a luscious ripe banana feels good to a primate.” (p138)
What this means is that when wolves come to kill sheep, they don’t just kill one old and decrepit ewe. No, they do what they did on a neighbor’s land a few miles from my home. They maim and kill five or six. Not because two wolves were that hungry, but because it was fun and they could.
Sheep are like popcorn to wolves. Compare them to elk or other wild animals. The reason why wolves tend to indeed eliminate the young, weak, and old in the wild is that those poor specimens tend to run a bit slower than their brethren. In the wild, slow means dead. For the wolf, it’s hard work to run down an elk or buffalo. And if you’re a hungry son-of-a-gun, you’re not going to go chasing after another dinner while there’s fresh meat in front of you because the rest of the pack will eat it before you get back. And you ain’t going to catch one on your own anyway. But sheep aren’t elk. Cattle aren’t elk. They’re bred for meat, not sprinting. Sheep are easy meat. And the wolves can’t help themselves.
But even if the wolves exercise restraint and eat just one, that’s cash. That’s clothes for the kids. That’s a mortgage. That’s heat. And it’s a danger for children as well (adults I don’t worry about: who cares about a few devoured adults?). My girls like to hike. And while I’m sure wolves will usually stay away, a sick or starving wolf will risk humans just as sick and starving mountain lions do. You get a different mindset about predators when you live up where I do. When they’re not something you see caged up in the zoo or on PBS.
For all these reasons and others, I couldn’t wait to read Where The Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg. Folks, the book is fabulous–well-written and interesting from page one to the very end. The key point is that predators play a huge role in maintaining a healthy diversity of both plant and animal life in any given ecosystem. Stolzenburg begins with starfish and moves through otters, killer whales, jaguars, mountain lions, and wolves. Along the way he reveals just how important killing is.
Yes, killing is critical to life as we know it.
Because without it, the most dominant herbivores will end up eating all the food. And this will end up killing off most of the other herbivores. It will kill off the great variety of flora in any given system. It can turn a paradise into a hell as Stolzenburg illustrates with the islands of Lago Guri in Venezuela.
Of course, some people think the answer is to bring back all the big predators. The rewilding supporters want to populate the West not only with wolves, but also lions (African), jaguars, cheetahs. Heck, they salivate at the idea of giant Pleistocene bears that can run faster than a horse (yeah, I want one of those up where the Boy Scouts camp). I think it’s good the wolves are back in Yellowstone. But I don’t want packs of wolves eating my friend’s herds and daughters (of course, maybe a few Boy Scouts are okay). Still, I believe there has to be another alternative. What that is I don’t know. But we all need to think about it. We do. And great way to start is by reading Stolzenburg’s book.
The joy of music. Pure, unadulterated joy–this is what I recently stumbled across on YouTube.
I was watching the The Piano Guys and thought I saw something new from them. I clicked, but it wasn’t The Piano Guys. It was Simply Three doing a cover version of the popular “Wake Me Up” by Avicii.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a “cover” or “cover version” is a reworking, updating, or interpretation of an existing song. And this cover simply blew me away.
Simply Three is an electrifying trio made up of cellist Zack Clark, bassist Nicholas Villalobos, and violinist Glen McDaniel, although they have switched in other violinists, including Alex Weill and Olivia Lemmelin. But don’t let the instruments fool you–this isn’t some stuffy classical music gig. And it’s not muzak in the elevator. Not even close.
They are doing what Lindsey Stirling and The Piano Guys are doing: taking modern songs in wonderful new directions and, in the process, making these classical instruments cool again.
I went on to watch a number of their other covers, and then I had to purchase the songs because I simply had to be able to listen to their great beats and interpretations on the road.
Here’s their cover of “Wake Me Up.” The joy Zack Clark (the cellist) exhibits sells the whole thing for me.
Here is their cover of “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.
And finally their cover of “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic.
If you like them, you can get each of these on Amazon for less than a buck with these links:
Buying them not only supports the artists, but it lets them know there’s a demand for it and encourages them to make more. And I hope they make more.
***
By the way, “Counting Stars” has some interesting lyrics. Ryan Tedder, the songwriter, is a professed Christian. He grew up in a Charismatic household and graduated from Oral Roberts University.
However, you might look at some of the lyrics and think he’s given all that faith up.
I feel something so right
Doing the wrong thing
I feel something so wrong
Doing the right thing
I could lie, could lie, could lie
Everything that kills me makes me feel alive
But you need to look at the lyrics in context of the rest of the song and the artist’s statements about the song to see he’s singing about something totally different.
Some poets, and songwriters are poets (song is where poetry lives these days), think being obscure is cool. Tedder follows that more obscure approach in this song, which is unlike the immediate clarity he put into the lyrics of the fantastic “Halo,” performed by Beyonce, or his own OneRepublic’s “Apologize.”
Sometimes the artist writing gnomic lyrics doesn’t want to pin down a message for the listener—they think it’s cool for each person to make up their own message (I prefer clarity). Other times they do have a message, but they want the listener to work for it, and so they try to be subtle. Or sometimes they simply goof and don’t realize their lyrics are being so vague.
I have no idea which path Tedder was trying to take with these lyrics, but I do know that he’s made statements about the song. And these statements give us a guide.
In an interview with 5280, the Denver magazine (Denver is where Tedder lives) we get the first glimpse.
At 15, he began writing his own songs. “I obsessed over music and just loved it,” Tedder says. “But I never considered it as a career. Where I grew up you go to high school, you go to college, you find a wife in college, you get married, you have 2.3 kids, and if that hasn’t all happened by the time you’re 24, some people think there’s something wrong with you—or the assumption is that maybe you’re not into the opposite sex.”
But he couldn’t keep away.
Back in Oklahoma, at Oral Roberts University, the largest charismatic Christian university in the world, Tedder majored in public relations and advertising. At least that’s what his diploma says. Based on the time he put into sneaking into the Timko-Barton Performance Hall’s piano rooms, he probably could have been a double major. He spent hours on the piano and the guitar deconstructing his favorite albums—like Eric Clapton and B.B. King’s Riding with the King—figuring out the chords and then trying to write new songs using those same chords. He was skipping classes—even meals—to write songs.
No one knew. Not friends. Not his roommate. He sang in secret. He was in the school choir, but his friends always thought it was odd that a person who didn’t seem overly musically inclined would be taking a singing class. When he was in one of the piano rooms he would tape a piece of notebook paper over the small window in the door so that no one could see him.
Tedder says there were two reasons he hid his passion. The first was that he believed there were so many bad singers and bad songs in the world that he didn’t want to add to the noise. He wanted to be certain he would be successful before he revealed himself. The second reason was more deep-seated: Being raised in a religious home, Tedder had been taught that there was a purpose for his life, and that because God had ordained that purpose, he should live the life expected of him—one that was pious and humble. “Deciding you want to go into the music business is about the most narcissistic thing in the world,” Tedder says. “I had this constant battle—and to some degree I still do.”
So Tedder felt “wrong” about songwriting. But he eventually began to see it as his gift to share.
Billboard: Given “Counting Stars”‘ uplifting, faith-based message, it must be gratifying to be connecting with such a meaningful song.
Tedder: I think it’s our responsibility as a band, and what separates us from everyone else. I took that from being a fan of U2 for two decades now, since “Achtung Baby.” To this day, they might be the only band on that level who sings about things other than just boy-girl troubles or the kind of selfish, “I’m a badass” stuff. I’ve spoken with Bono about this when we toured with him, and he said the same thing. I felt a responsibility to actually write and sing about things that have a level of human gravity to them. If everybody else sings about sex and love and lust and money, then somebody’s gotta be singing about life and faith and hope and things of that nature.
So if “Counting Stars” isn’t about sex, lust, and money, what’s it about?
In another interview with Radio.com, he indicated that the whole counting stars bit was for anyone who loses sleep wondering how they’re going to be able to afford their rent or provide for their family. When he was first starting out, things were rough.
“A lot of time I just lay in bed awake, stressing out,” Tedder said. “Everybody does it. And I just thought, I can’t wait until I’m counting stars and not counting dollars anymore. Things will be so much better.”
To me, it’s clear that Tedder is singing about his story. And he’s singing for people like him who have a passion, but society says it’s not the practical thing to follow or dedicate your life to. Songwriting is what makes him feel alive. Furthermore, he had flashing signs indicating that if he sought, he would find—in other words, it was the thing God wanted him to do. And he just had to have hope, a four-letter word for those who are practical- and money-minded, and follow that passion.
We can argue the merits of that follow-your-passion message, but I think we’re all happy Tedder followed his.
***
And while we’re talking about the joy of music, how about this baritone saxophone and drum.
I think I must disagree with half of everything Paglia says (I’m a Republican, she’s a Democrat). But when you can write like a kung fu master, you have to be read:
Our genes aren’t in charge.
