A Grimm finale

"Grimm" is finally over.  know there were people who loved the conclusion, and who did not think the show kept getting worse, but they do not write this blog.

There is so much that I want to say that I will inevitably forget something. Even writing two bulleted lists (complaints specific to the finale and complaints that were more general) in my journal may not be enough to get it all down.

It is a completely valid question to ask whether this all has a point, but there are two main themes to the complaints, and they matter to me as a person and as a writer, so I am going to spend some time on this.

One of them is poor characterization, and the way this tends to happen is that things end up being more plot-driven than character-driven. My thoughts on this have been greatly influenced by Carolyn Hinsey in her "It's Only My Opinion" column in Soap Opera Digest. I haven't read it for a while, and she changed jobs a while ago, but I still remember her pointing out plot-driven fiascoes over and over again. In an effort to make cool things happen shows would frequently make characters totally betray history and values.

Soap viewers can watch their characters five days a week for years at a time. They know their character deeply and character inconsistencies can be even more glaring, but I was watching "Grimm" for the characters.

One of the worst parts for me with that is that it led to Nick becoming a worse cop. My feelings about the police may not be entirely positive, but nonetheless Nick started out as caring, professional, and smart. He kept getting worse, not because there was any reason for it, but sometimes that's how you end up with the most dramatic and striking images.

I assume that's also when it became a thing to start using so many long and complicated Germanic phrases, because they sound so funny. Let's say it three times in this scene!

I'm going to hold off on my second major complaint for now, and go over the issues with the final three episodes.

• Nick ate Blutbad. Really? Your best friend is a Blutbad.
• While I will not disallow that flashbacks can help drive points home, illustrate connections, or increase poignancy, I believe they were used ineffectively here.
• Does Renard have to carry Diana to bed every single time? That was just weird.
• Related to that, she sure got put to bed a lot in a lot of different places. All of the switching around between house, loft, spice shop, precinct, and cabin was not really practical and would not work if these were real locations (or real children).
• Diana's reactions were very inconsistent, and the problem was not the child actor in this case. It could be okay to have her switch from being scared to being happy to go with the monster to being scared again, but there should be some reason. In this case, when there was a great reason - like the monster killing her parents whom she has killed to protect - she had no reaction at all.
• What about Black Claw? Oh, they're all gone. Well good, that threat causing worldwide chaos evaporating so quickly was almost too much to hope for.

I also thought that the It's a Wonderful Life ending felt flat, but I believe that is because of other lost opportunities, where with a better thought out, character-driven show, it could have been a huge payoff.

I'm going to try and make my case for that tomorrow.

Band Review: Dom Italiano

Dom Italiano is a musician based in Melbourne, Australia, sometimes performing with the Upbeat Mafia.

There is a lot to like about his music, which generally comes across as heartfelt and sincere. There is one weakness that I think can be corrected, so I want to spend some time on that, focusing on two songs.

One is a medley that combines "My Funny Valentine", "Wicked Game", and "Baby, One More Time". None of those sound like obvious combinations, but "My Funny Valentine" and "Wicked Game" work pretty well. Left together, they could give a nice idea of how a fairly sweet sense of love can shift to one that that becomes overpowering. Leaving it there would have been memorable in a good way. Adding in "Baby, One More Time" not only jars due to being a mismatch but also feels excessive. You need to know when to quit.

(Just to clarify, "Baby, One More Time" with only one of the others would feel weird, but not excessive.)

This can be observed on another level with "There is a Light", which should be my favorite of his songs. It has a lilting melody and an earnest buildup full of emotion. However, as he creates a picture of the life of this wonderful girl, one of the details he includes is her roommate watching Letterman while an underage girl gives him head. If it was just the "head" part, it would still be pretty crude and throw off the tone, but adding in that she is underage makes it that much more terrible.

Based on the lyrics of the other tracks, I believe his writing method is very true to life, and so I suspect that is a real detail. That doesn't mean that it needs to go in the song. Included in the song, it becomes an obstacle to the enjoyment.

So I think there is room for some development here, of taste and proportion and a sense of how things should go. There are artists who emphasize the crude and uncomfortable and downright profane; that is one way to be. If your overall sound tends more toward the sweet and optimistic, that requires a different approach. It can be fine to take people out of the song to make a point, but that should be deliberate and this feels accidental.

There is a lot that can be enjoyed here, but still room for refinement.

https://www.domitaliano.com/

https://www.facebook.com/DomItalianoMusic/

https://www.youtube.com/user/DomItalianoMusic

https://twitter.com/DomItaliano

Band Review: Vaeda

By complete coincidence, the week that I finally got around to watching Between Resistance and Community: The Long Island Do It Yourself Punk Scene I had a band from Long Island, Vaeda, up for review.

Of course it is not that simple. Vaeda is more likely to be categorized as alternative rock than punk, and Long Island was only one base in a long history that also involves Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.

Probably the most complicated thing was that the band appears to have announced an indefinite hiatus in 2009, and I can find no indication of an official announcement for an end to the hiatus. Nonetheless, they have been on Twitter since 2015, and they now have a site that is not a Myspace page, even though it doesn't have a lot of info on it.

Is the band coming back? Will there be new tours and new music releases? Or are they merely trying to increase sales for what has already been released? I can't tell.

That all fits. Follow up interviews for Between all kind of talk about the scene dying, but new bands kept coming - even if where they played and who was listening changed. Bands experience a lot of ups and downs, and they find ways to adapt. Label problems have changed the trajectory of many bands.

But music stays. You can still listen to Vaeda. You can still buy their albums. With the new activity, maybe you can hope for shows.

Links are down below. There is not a lot in the way of official music videos, but there is still a lot of music up, including performance footage.

Guitars are really good. That is interesting because historically there were issues with keeping a guitarist and needing to accommodate that loss. You do not feel any absence. My personal favorites were probably "Battle Song", "All For You", and "Fake The Moment", but the rock is solid overall.

http://www.vaeda.com/

https://www.facebook.com/VaedaMusic/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT3HcLGjVyqVidsBMS4j7mA

https://twitter.com/vaeda

Being catty

My sisters got my mother a cat yoga calendar. It bugs me.

Cats do amazing stretches on a regular basis, but the calendar has really obviously altered images that aren't that cute and probably aren't that accurate to yoga. Why bother?

Well, I know why they bother: you can't get the cats to stretch on demand. They won't do it in clean shots that can bring a yoga studio to mind either - it will be draped over the couch, or your keyboard. That is the feline way, but it's also a good reason to not choose that particular calendar theme.

That reminds us that cats have some attitude where you might not think of them as your typical yoga adherents. As an outsider, I think you can make a case either way. They can be very serene, and above things.

I still think the calendar is stupid, especially the April picture (whoever did the Photo-shopping put a weird taper on one limb). There is something that bugs me more.

Cats are not supposed to drink milk. They can have bad lactose intolerance issues. They may like the taste, but it's not good for them. (We do sometimes let Cody have Cat-Sip.)

It frustrates me when the cat drinking milk idea is perpetuated so much. I see it on television, in "The Zazzy Substitution" episode of The Big Bang Theory, and the "Peter on the Couch" episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.  I see it in children's books, like Hide and Seek Kitten and Socks and Caldecott winner Kitten's First Full Moon.

I suppose responsible pet owners will find out about good nutrition through research or vets or maybe even the people at the adoption place, but we should quite perpetuating bad information.

Yes, I could take that in a more profound direction, but I am killing some time while I work out some other things to write.

Also, I like cats. Someday there may be a whole post on pet nicknames and how much synecdoche plays a factor in the things I call Ashley.

What are you asking?

I want to take a scattered trip down memory lane today. It is partly because I saw this article:

http://mashable.com/2017/03/30/movie-whitewashing-excuses/#y8zEFneTJZqk

There are things that make it more interesting to me now, as Marvel tries to talk around how attempting to embrace diversity is sinking their profits, and how Ghost in the Shell is apparently not doing well, though Hidden Figures did quite well. The really persistent memory came from seeing Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tilda-swinton-maragaret-cho-white-feminism_us_585a8eb4e4b0de3a08f3962e

It is interesting to me that both Swinton and director Scott Derrickson referred to Fu Manchu as what they didn't want to do. Fu Manchu was an evil criminal mastermind. I haven't read a lot of Dr. Strange titles, but I doubt they make the Ancient One a villain.

More to the point, it kind of seems like they think having this character be an Asian man makes him a stereotype, but having him be a white woman makes it charming and quirky. I enjoyed the movie, and the character, but I believe I could enjoyed James Hong or Clyde Komatsu or Michelle Yeoh as well. Chow Yun-Fat could have been fantastic.

And yes it is textbook white feminism, especially that part about how there isn't much that relates to her on the screen. She gets a lot of parts for not much relating to her.

I had posted an article about the Swinton-Cho situation back at the time (thought I can't swear that it was this particular article). I got a sincere question on Tilda's behalf, because it looked like she was trying to do the right thing, and she requested privacy and did not get it. How can people learn if this is how they get treated?

My response wasn't terribly critical of Swinton. There is a tendency to immediate go to people of color with race questions when a little research would generally answer those questions. To instead put the burden on someone for whom it is personal, and who is asked for that labor more than you can imagine, is inconsiderate.

I thought perhaps it was that lack of consideration that made it so easy for the original requester to get offended with the response. A little searching and reading of accounts should create a big shift in mindset without even taking that much work. Without that groundwork, questions can unconsciously be more of a request for validation. When the honest answer is not validating, I have seen people get really offended and feel persecuted.

That's not too surprising. Coming to recognize privilege is disconcerting at best. Even when you are sincerely trying to understand it feels gross, so if you were just looking for confirmation that you didn't really do a bad thing, well, you can imagine.

But as far as the memories go, I have done it. I remember it really clearly. There was an article about an athletic recruit getting hassled for his color at the Eugene airport. I hadn't even known there was an airport there. I was not so naive to think that there was no racism left in the world - I had heard stories from the South - but outside of that I thought racism was an anomaly that only really bad people do. Current events caused me to question my assumptions, so I went to my closest Black friend.

I did not feel like a cliché. In my defense, this happened at a time before internet research was really a thing.

I remember asking him if he had experienced prejudice, and I remember this hesitation that has stayed with me. At the time it felt like shame - not that he had anything to be ashamed about, but that this is a gross thing, and he was about to disillusion me. If it had been a pause for him to question whether it was safe and valuable to open up to me, that would have been understandable too.

As it was, he gave me really good insights into racism, and how it was experienced in our area, and he was patient with my mistakes. That year I also learned how the Gulf War could inspire stupid old white men to make stupid comments about damn Arabs to someone Latino (brown is brown, right?), and a few years later I would be in a discussion where a student of Asian descent would talk about being mostly accepted but not quite.

I was very naive in my privilege. The best thing I can say about me is that when people told me things I listened instead of saying "Are you sure that's what they meant?"

It is a valuable thing to listen to others' stories, and then to listen more when your first impulse is to contradict. The internet is full of voices, and it is also good to listen to the people around you. But don't burden them. Especially don't ask them to validate you, because if that ends up being unsatisfactory for you, it is probably your fault.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/08/stolen-labor.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/08/colbert-zepps-and-park-one-more-time.html

The swans

I wasn't sure what to write today, but then someone asked about something I'd posted last night. My overly long reply made me realize I should probably write about it.

The status update in question was "Kind of getting interested in recursion and fractals."

There are two different things that have been pulling together. One is a memory of a math textbook cover. I'm not sure it was even my book, but I remember that there were swans interlaced and there was something about the pattern that was special. I kept thinking it was fractal, but that was not exactly right.

The problem was that any time I noticed a pattern that seemed fractal, I would remember the swans again and wonder what the deal with them was.

This may be a good time to review my math history. I was great at arithmetic, did pretty well with algebra and geometry when I applied myself, and then made it through Algebra-Trig and Pre-Calculus, but they didn't really stick in my brain. I have plans to go back and review them eventually, but math is not my strongest area.

Recently there have been some things going on where I am thinking about different kinds of bias and privilege and bigotry (I am not ready to get into those) and the way some aspects mirror other aspects, or repeat over time, or at different degrees at different levels. That reminded me of fractals again.

I suspect that is not the best way of thinking about it. Mathematics are supposed to be very exact, and psychology and social sciences aren't. I had been thinking about that recently because of "The Big Bang Theory".

One of our favorite episodes is "The Zazzy Substitution", where Sheldon and Amy end their relationship (in its early stages, before they consider themselves to be boyfriend and girlfriend). Sheldon denies that any hole has been left in his life, but nonetheless tries filling it with cats.

I like it for the cats, but also the dialogue, much of which I needed to look up. Previously it had caused me to search on Babinski (Joseph, neurologist, 1857 - 1932), Clerk Maxwell (James, scientist of mathematical physics, 1831 - 1879), and Dirac (Paul, theoretical physicist, 1902 - 1894), but on a recent viewing I realized that I was not familiar with the "rankest psychologism" that "was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s".

(No, I didn't spell any of them right the first time.)

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1925) was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician, but his philosophy was very analytic. That can mean trying to remove all of the non-logical elements from math, and thinking about the logic of expression and language, but yes, he also wrote about psychologism, the mistake of identifying non-psychological with psychological entities.

All of this was swirling around in my head, and how logical fractals can be in their natural occurrences, and what the heck were those swans, and then I remembered that they might have been an Escher drawing.

http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/recognition-success/swans/

I don't know if what I found was actually the book cover, but there were Escher swans, and there was a mention of how recursion figured in the drawing, and what was that? And it's like that picture in The Mouse and his Child, where it just keeps repeating smaller and smaller. Apparently some fractals are recursive, and there is a lot to know about it that I don't, but it's interesting, especially in that both concepts can touch on the infinite.

That can be very mathematical, but it probably doesn't neatly correlate to how bigotry will infest a mind and a relationship and a society, which would be very non-mathematical, I assume.

But last week Sheldon and Amy decided to collaborate as a physicist and a neurologist to try and locate the beginning of consciousness. Maybe the psychological and non-psychological can be good neighbors, as long as you don't get them mixed up.

I have no real conclusions here, though I suspect some things will make sense at some point in the future. (More reading, more thinking, always.)

It does give me a chance to restate how interesting the world is. A recent Twitter thread showed me that the basics of Lao cooking that I wrote about in Asian food come from ideas of balance in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Combine that with another recent thread about various peoples naturally combining foods that helped with nutrient absorption and keeping glycemic levels steady and there's just a lot out there.

So I say again that the world is fascinating, and I'm glad of it, but it is definitely an "again".

Nothing new to see here. Move along.

Band Review: Gladwell

The first thing that I should say is that it could have been better to call this a review of okay(K), but it was Gladwell who followed me on Twitter, and that is how I have been thinking of the musician in question. I have included links for both.

In tracks he calls himself a rapper from Chicago. It therefore makes sense to say the music is rap, but the DJ side is a lot funkier and more melodic than many of the rappers that cross my radar.

I still can't deny the power of the hook in "Love Six", which brings you swaying into the beat, but it does it in a pretty mellow manner. There is still some pretty fast rapping on it.

The other thing I appreciate is that while there is a lot of content about trying to approach women, it is done with a shy awkwardness that feels less objectifying than is common.

All of those factors together would be enough to make Gladwell stand out, but it may be more to the point that listening is also fun.

Despite two Soundcloud and two Twitter links, there is not a lot of information. It does not appear that he is doing a lot of self-promotion at this time.

https://soundcloud.com/altsoul

https://twitter.com/gladwellmusic

https://soundcloud.com/soundvandaag

https://twitter.com/heyokayk

Band Review: Message to the Masses

Message to the Masses is a metal band from Tucson.

Their sound demonstrates a post-hardcore influence; I can imagine Touché Amoré fans enjoying Message to the Masses. Vocally there is a lot of growling, and at times there is an almost industrial feel to the instruments.

They generally do well at keeping that from becoming monotonous, taking breaks for softer vocals or delicate musical accents. "Open Your Eyes" may be the best example, but I was most drawn to "Time to Dance", and the intro to "A New Beginning" is really beautiful.

There are two Youtube links given. One is the band's own channel, but it looks like their video for "Blood and Bones" is only available via the channel for Artery, their label.

Although this is not my favorite genre, I enjoyed listening.

https://www.facebook.com/Messagetothemasses/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYt3-jgeH4MxQnOXPy7hmhw

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7XDs60YgKNyWq2S7rUtmg

https://twitter.com/MessageTTMasses

Getting it write

I feel like I am not accomplishing anything lately. My procrastination via Spider Solitaire is back and often when I am trying to be productive I am thwarted in the most unexpected ways.

Despite that, I feel like I must be getting somewhere, because I am being flooded with creative ideas again. That tends to happen when I have gotten some mental obstacles out of the way. I still have a small stack of paperwork clamoring for my attention, but I think I can get them done tonight and tomorrow, and then think about how I want to schedule my writing.

This therefore seems like a good time to reference Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, one of the books from the Long Reading List.

It ended up on the list because a few of the girls I was watching over really related to it. Lia has an eating disorder, similar to her friend Cassie, recently killed by hers. It was not as popular as John Green's books - there were many more people devoted to The Fault in Our Stars, and Looking for Alaska a bit as well  - but Wintergirls had its fans.

I liked that it ended with a ray of hope; Lia was learning to thaw. I didn't love the writing style. There was a lot of stream of consciousness and kind of text-speak -  like this best replicates the mind of a teenage girl who is always connected. The choices make sense, but I am an old fogey who tries to think in complete sentences.

It reminds me that I don't know that I have a potential audience. I was surprised at one point by how many downloads Cara got, but overall the writing I have done so far has not been profitable, at least not financially.

I do know that some people were helped by some books, and I think there is more potential for that. I still think that ultimately it will be the screenplays that become a means of support, and the books will be not widely read but emotionally significant for those who read them. If the first part comes through, then the second part is not terrible.

(For the second part, based on what is currently available I recommend Family Ghosts for grief and Morgan for poor self-esteem. There will be some anger and body issues coming up in Lainie and a not-yet-titled book, and more guilt and family dynamics in the Family series.)

There is a lot of work to be done that will be rather tedious. I need to start sending query letters to agents and publishing houses. The fun part about that is that in addition to being fairly tedious that also tends to involve a great deal of rejection. Looking forward to it!

In addition, I know that there are still a lot of people who prefer hard copies to electronic versions, and I myself fall into that camp. I need to get the print-on-demand option set up. That not only widens the available audience, but allows the possibility of signed copies and giveaways. If I am going to do it, I should do some cleanup and editing at the same time. That possibly can help and definitely will be time-consuming.

Improving my time management in general plus balancing the creative side with the business side will be quite the feat, but my overall feeling is still excitement. My mind keeps taking me to back to Spruce Cove, or up to Jamie and Joanna's hovel of an apartment, or Tubman college.

And sometimes my mind travels to the dystopian future that we are creating every day. Perhaps it is not always optimistic, but I am still invigorated.

Thoughts on Rogue One

There is a lot more to say on the things I have been writing about for the past few days, but it feels like too much. That is at least partially due to new examples arising every time you turn around - like racist reactions to Maxine Waters, for example.

So I am going to take a break and write a little about popular culture. Rogue One is almost out on DVD, so it should be okay to talk about it now.

There were some things I really liked about the movie. Seeing more diverse casting was great, and I thought it struck a good balance. From The Force Awakens we know that post-clone army the Empire will start becoming less white and male, but here they still are. That makes sense, and yet we see enough people outside of the Imperial Forces where the diversity is less surprising. It's not that they couldn't do better, but it looks like they are at least thinking about what has been done, and trying to improve it while still maintaining continuity. It does seem like there could have been some more women volunteering for Rogue One, but these thought patterns are deeply entrenched and I know it.

I did not love Felicity Jones, and I would have liked too. Ben Mendelsohn was great - it's just not a good performance, but Krennic's character was such a believable mix of traits. That's not saying that I like Krennic as a person, or would like working with him - I just recognize him. I would totally hire Ben Mendelsohn.

I think it would have been fine to just recast Tarkin.

One of my favorite things was Donnie Yen's performance. Technically I guess you did have martial arts sequences in Star Wars already with Ray Park, but I try to forget those movies. Mainly, the idea of someone devoted to Jedi ideals, but without the opportunity to train, I can see that happening, and reasonably coming out like Chirrut Imwe. The way the Jedi were spoken about, it makes sense that someone would be trying.

The most annoying thing to me was when Jyn Erso dashed into the battle to grab a child. I know, that sounds like a good thing, but there was a parent immediately there, and then one assumes the child and parent and everyone else there will perish when the city is destroyed, making it a manipulative attempt to show us that Jyn cares without doing anything else to advance the story. It's just like that kid in Titanic. Storytelling time is precious, and you need to use it wisely.

Forest Whitaker is becoming one of my favorite actors, and I liked Diego Luna and Riz Ahmed very much. This gets us into what was hard for me about the movie, though that doesn't mean that the movie didn't work.

"Rebellions are built on hope." It's hard not to think of that as relating today. And let's make it clear, what we need to be rebelling against is hatred and oppression; it needs to be a rebellion of good. We need to be able to oppose in a way where we don't become as nasty as them.

That made it a little horrifying to see the toll that rebellion took on Saw Gerrera. His humanity has become hidden in a way very similar to Darth Vader's - it's impossible to miss. The worst thing is his torture of Bodhi Rook, which is cruel and unnecessary. The message from Galen Erso should be enough. Maybe if there were information missing, then there could be concerns about Bodhi's trustworthiness, but that is a non-factor. And it's stupid, because Rook's ability to recover his mental faculties ends up being very important for everyone and that was in peril.

You can justify that, because showing that torture is cruel, stupid, and unnecessary is something that needs to be said more (especially with a "24" revival), and Gerrera is no longer part of the Rebel Alliance because of his more extreme tactics, only the main rebel alliance is pretty dirty too.

One of the first things we see Cassian Andor do is ruthlessly murder an ally who is about to be a liability, and he is getting orders from his superiors to kill Galen with no one showing any concerns about lying to Jyn or murdering someone who could be trying to help. The volunteers at the end, including Andor, are volunteering to justify the terrible things they have done and to make it worth something. They are more noble than the Dirty Dozen, but it's not everything I was hoping for.

I wanted a reminder that goodness will triumph; that you do not have to play dirty to win. That may have been naive.

Instead, it was a reminder that people who have done rotten things can still find their humanity and sacrifice for the greater good. That could also be naive, but it can also be important. There are good reasons to not give up on people who seem horrible and obtuse.

Rogue One wasn't the movie I wanted, but it may have been the one we deserve.

Anyway, I already wrote the story I wanted. Maybe I need to go back to that.

Why

Some time ago, someone on Facebook asked me why racism was such a hot button issue for me.

I was posting about it a lot at the time. Actually, I had been worried that the question would come, and that it would be kind of an accusation like I was having some Rachel Dolezal-type issues. When the question did come it was respectful, and so it wouldn't have been appropriate to ask "Why isn't it important to you?", but that left me having to answer honestly that I didn't know.

I believed I had become more sensitive to the issue as I was seeing more examples and gaining greater familiarity with root causes, and I did say that, but I also admitted that I didn't know. I have always been bothered by the unjust and the unfair, and I have an overly developed sense of responsibility to take care of everyone and fix things based on my own feelings of unworthiness and insufficiency - those things could play factors. I also watched a lot of "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" which showed me some diversity and equality in their own idealistic public broadcasting way, but other people watched those shows too, and may not have taken away the same things.

I have a better answer now (though it still leaves some questions about me personally): I care about racism because we will not fix any other problems until we fix it.

Racism is used as a way to trick people into voting against their own interests. Racism is used as a way to keep people on the economic bottom from feeling like they are on the bottom, because at least they are still a few rungs up racially. Being able to treat some people worse creates enough of a buffer that environmental problems are allowed to spread to a point where we are not going to be able to easily fix them once they start hitting a larger group. It is a poison infecting our society. All of that feels pretty important.

At one point I thought I was going to do a post about how slavery was America's original sin, but that would be an oversimplification. There is also the treatment of the Native Americans, which predates slavery. You can fold them both into racism, but it starts with colonialism and greed. Almost a century of indentured servants taught the colonizers how to do slavery - how to make their economy more efficient and profitable and secure. Racism became the tool that made it work, even better than religious discrimination.

If greed is really America's original sin, that makes sense, with love of money being the root of all evil. It could lead one to think that attacking greed would be the most useful fight. It sounds logical, and a lot of people are going that way, and they are being horrible about it because they can't let go of the racism and misogyny that have become so intertwined with their identity.

That actually makes a lot of sense too. The greed was never for everyone. Sure, people have dreams of financial security, or the ability to have a little more, and for some that becomes a dream of having more than others and moving up to elite status, but the way it really works is that very few people get the fantastic wealth.

There can be times when comfort is common, but then the fantastically wealthy always want more, which eventually leads to less people being comfortable. Consolidation of wealth leads to greater and greater want, and the whole system falls apart unless there is something that people want even more than financial comfort.  For far too many people - and with far too little awareness of it - that greater desire is white supremacy. There was never any reason to think that Trump was going to make a better economy, or to think he was more honest and ethical than Hillary Clinton. but he sure was good at slandering brown people.

I care deeply about racism because of the pain and suffering it causes. I care deeply about racism because of the healing and goodness it prevents. I care about racism because I am a human being and I care about other human beings. I care because I can imagine better things and our deepest stumbling blocks that get in the way are things that need to be rooted out.

I may not understand why I instinctively felt it before I could intellectually understand it, but hey, I have good instincts.

It doesn't matter. There is reason enough.

Concert Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers

March 15th I was at Moda Center watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their Getaway Tour.

In some ways the show was a testament to the band's longevity. Performing about two songs per album - so performing many favorites but leaving many favorites unheard - reminded us that this is a band with eleven studio albums covering 34 years. That's time to build a lot of fans, and even up in the cheap seats the arena was packed.

Despite that level of history, nothing felt old or nostalgic about the show. The band was vibrant, the crowd was energetic, and the venue was alive.

The funny thing about me being there is that I have never been a fan. I haven't been against them either; I think it was mainly an issue of timing and exposure. However, my friend Karen is a lifelong fan who had never seen them before. (This is also how I ended up at Gogol Bordello.) I had become fond of bass player Flea since seeing The Other F-Word, but otherwise I knew two songs and not much else. (And no points for guessing those two were "Give It Away" and "Under the Bridge".)

So speaking as someone who did not have much familiarity but was sitting next to someone who really needed to be there, the show worked on multiple levels. For me, they served up good rock. Having been exposed, I like them.

(And not that kind of exposure. Singer Anthony Kiedis did remove his shirt at one point, but everyone was pretty clothed.)

For a long-time fan, it was much more. Yes, there were some songs missing that she would have liked to hear, but there were also really important points touched. She did not know how much she needed to hear "Scar Tissue" until she heard it played. I know that feeling.

There are two other things I want to mention. One was the sense of camaraderie. Yes, Kiedis and Flea have been together for decades, and drummer Chad Smith came not long after, but there have been many line-up changes.

Even those show loyalty. Chris Warren has only been touring keyboardist since 2007, but he has been a drum technician for them since the '90s. Guitarist Josh Klinghoffer toured with them in 2007, then became part of the band in 2009. Watching Kiedis introduce all of them, and others, it was easy to believe that the band takes good care of their crew and is well cared for in return. There was an easy affection going around. The sweetest moment of that may have been when Flea and Klinghoffer walked toward each other and Klinghoffer briefly rested his head on Flea's shoulder, but there seemed to be general good feelings all around.

(I can't explain why, but Klinghoffer's playing style really appealed to me.)

I also need to mention the show design. In addition to good use of video and live footage, there was an amazing light set-up, described as "history's largest touring kinetic light structure" at http://livedesignonline.com/concerts/picture-perfect-shots-chili-peppers-getaway-tour.

In arena shows it is hard to maintain intimacy. Leif Dixon's video meant that the audience could get close-ups while still balancing with visual material chosen to enhance specific songs. That was important, but I was fascinated with Scott Holthaus' light structure.

With the lights being able to change their color and intensity, as well as being able to go up and down, there was incredible versatility. The lights could create a frame for the stage and floor seating, defining the space. The could create an arching roof like an awning you might see at an outdoor show. They could represent undulating waves or rotating geometric patterns, and they did all of those things and more. I can only imagine some of the technical difficulties of setup and take-down and transportation, but it feels like it's worth it.

I do not doubt in any way that just the four members in a small venue would still have that energy and fun, but all of these elements combined makes a team effort that I can really appreciate.

Congratulations all around!

http://redhotchilipeppers.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ChiliPeppers/

https://www.youtube.com/user/RHCPtv

https://twitter.com/ChiliPeppers

Concert Review: Trombone Shorty

Trombone Shorty is the stage name of Troy Andrews, one that makes sense when you see pictures of him as a four-year old playing the trombone.

With that early start, he has had a long career already at 31, with a lot of backing and session work. I recently got to see him as himself, opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The show was a party, perhaps reflecting his New Orleans jazz roots. The backing band had two saxophones, including one baritone - something that I haven't seen for a while - and they all worked together well. Little details added to the sense of fun, like a pair of red sneakers working their way across the stage (not on Andrews himself) or the laughs between the band members. When they are having a good time, it spreads to the audience.

Speaking of the audience, I was pleased to see that they seemed to recognize and respond to many of the numbers; not all opening bands get that.

A new album, Parking Lot Symphony, will be available on April 28th, but for now a look at Trombone Shorty's own discography will show team-ups with Ledisi, Jeff Beck, and Lenny Kravitz, among others. If you look for him appearing on other people's albums, you will be finding new names for a while.

But as much as he is helpful to other musicians, and able to build a career solely on that, Trombone Shorty is great at center stage. Watch him funk it up if you get a chance.

http://www.tromboneshorty.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TromboneShorty/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1DegAgTezNs-ySbH4Xr8Rw

https://twitter.com/tromboneshorty

Feeling low

One of the things that I am not getting to is keeping track of all of Trump's orders and writing out both the worst-case scenario and the ideal. The purpose of that would be to have a grasp of what is going on, but also to not lose sight of good possibilities.

I had been thinking about that since shortly after the inauguration. Then, at Disneyland, I was reminded that Tomorrowland was initially set thirty years in the future, which we have now passed by about thirty years again. It occurred to me that looking at how the future developed over those two three-decade periods could lead to some interesting forecasting for now.

Those were both ideas that seemed valuable, and I am just too tired. I'm too tired for a lot of things right now.

That is not all the fault of the current political situation, but it is hard to keep up with that. It's not just all of the terrible Trump appointments and pronouncements and executive orders, but also things that are happening in Congress and in state legislatures that directly relate, and it is tiring.

I think I remember someone saying that the initial travel ban and things were part of a blitz that was done specifically to overwhelm, but because of that it was done sloppily, where the initial travel ban was easily overturned. That was therefore an opportunity to fight.

As the new travel ban was still similarly sloppy, I can't help but wonder if some of that is deliberate. Maybe you can keep everyone so outraged for the first few months that they eventually get tired of rushing out to protest and make phone calls, and then you can push through the carefully crafted legislation.

That needs two clarifications. One is that I do not doubt the sincerity of Trump's irritation when things get overturned. He is a petty man, and he will not be the one carefully crafting anything.

Two is that even the small victories are not preventing damage from happening, and it is happening to marginalized people first. Some of it is legally sanctioned, like deportations, but some of it is not officially endorsed, like men getting more aggressive with women since the election, or more attacks on mosques and synagogues. Some of it is not obvious, like the hiring freeze preventing the hire of new daycare workers, so members of the military can't get childcare when they need it. The rush that comes with each victory can be deceptive.

Not all of the exhaustion will come from outrage either. I see people boosting their fundraising efforts for Meals On Wheels, trying to keep it going despite a government who literally called cutting it "compassionate". That's great, but if we keep trying to make up for government evil via personal funds and efforts, we are all going to be tapped out pretty quickly. I am convinced that is just the way the Trump administration likes it.

That doesn't even seem to be my issue. My greater tiredness lately has more to do with taking care of my mother, and yet it does matter. If her cognitive disorder was treated the same as a physical disability, and I could be compensated for caring her, that would relieve a lot of worry. There are a lot of ways there could be better support for aging and health and humans.

That contains another conflict that tires me. There is no one else who is in the same position to take care of Mom now, so that should be my primary responsibility, but some of the things happening now are really important, affecting a lot of people. Perhaps they would be more important, but even that assumes that I could do something.

Those are the kind of things that weigh me down, but if there is any solution, it is going to come from us banding together. We need to be working together and loving each other, and there is something really specific that continues to be an obstacle.

I'll try and get to that Monday.

Sidetracked by books again

I can point to two different posts where I had specific goals that I was going to get to, and I am still behind.

I was going to start writing about my issues with fat, and then I saw a reference to a book, The Obesity Myth (by Paul Campos), which felt like it would be very relevant. I was supposed to be working on my facist/authoritarian reading and my Black History month reading, but okay, one book won't make much difference to either of those schedules. Then I started reading it.

The Obesity Myth is an excellent book, and it definitely fit in with the reading, but there were also things about how people will ignore facts, and where a fear of contamination goes along with certain issues. It seemed to relate to another book that I always intended to get to, The Panic Virus (by Seth Mnookin).

That is about how autism and vaccinations became associated in people's minds. I knew that there was a flawed study by a person with a financial stake, but I had not known about pre-existing vaccine fears, or some of the parental input. Most of my previous reading on immunizations had focused around flu shots.

Those books do relate to each other, at least in a sociological/psychological sense, but they also relate to some thoughts that I have had politically. And I almost don't want to write this today, because at a later point I believe I am going to go through and point out the flaws with every political label including independent voters, so I could be getting ahead of myself here.

It does go with one of the gardening books. Let me back up.

Some time ago - when vaccination was in the news - I remember someone talking about this mindset of purity. Some people have faith that they will eat the best foods and live the healthiest lifestyle, and that will protect them. They don't need vaccines.

Except that they do. One part of Panic Virus relates how a doctor who supports anti-vax parents tells them not to tell their friends, because we could drop below the necessary herd immunity levels if everyone did it.

If your secret to health or financial success or happiness is something that relies on other people not being able to have it, there are problems. First of all, you may be selfish and evil, which is worth thinking about. In addition, are you sure you can make it work?

At the start of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, Solomon spends a lot of time on how the nutritional value of food has decreased due to soil depletion. The extent to which it has dropped is less in organically grown food, but it's still a problem; how are you going to fix that?

You can worry about mercury in vaccines (though thimerasol was never in the MMR shot and has since been removed from other shots) but you are getting larger amounts in the air and quite possibly in your food. How are you going to fix that?

Speaking of things we have good science on, but that some people still refuse to believe, how are you going to fix global warming? Or bees dying off? Trying to keep your food uncontaminated and nutritious still assumes that the weather and pollinators are cooperating. That is not guaranteed.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this now, because I am running late and I am tired (there will be more on that tomorrow) and I know I will be circling back to it, but I will say this.

The next logical step to thinking "I am better than you" is thinking "I don't need to care about you".

It is always wrong.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-reading-lists-collide.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/02/so-not-finished.html

Recovering from emo

Here I am still writing about emo, but I ended up adding an eighth day to James Dewees week, so there is still some symmetry.

I already said my interest in emo first came from 2012 when I was new on Twitter and falling headlong for My Chemical Romance. Part of that time was also connecting with a lot of younger people - mainly girls - who were also big MCR fans, or fans of some other band that was everything to them. The word "emo" was flying around a lot back then, even if not always by them.

Five years later, things are very different. I don't know that anyone's musical taste changed, but there are other things on their minds. Kids who obsessed over bands in junior high and high school are now in college, or applying to colleges, or working or engaged. They are accomplishing things. They still love music, but it's different, and it's better. I still worry about the world that is out there for them, and the difficulty of making it out there, but it is better for them to have more in their lives.

In that way it is easy to view emo as a phase that you outgrow. And if it is defined by its self-absorption and moodiness, then it becomes very easy to say that not only are some bands not emo anymore, but it is also remarkably clear that some never were. Genre labels always have some weaknesses; we just keep using them because they're convenient.

I know there are also new kids going through that possessive, obsessive phase. I saw it just today with some people jumping all over just a little thing Frank Iero said, where you could totally understand if he never tweeted anything again. I'm not attracting new young music fans anymore, so it's easy to forget about it, but it's still out there. I suppose it's the circle of life.

The other thing that is important to know, though, is that while it is common to mature out of this phase, it is possible not too.

I suspect at some point I am going to want to do some writing about toxic masculinity and emo aspects of that, and then I may regret that I've already used the title "Terrible emo boys". For now, I want to focus on Chris Carraba.

That's not saying that he's terrible, but if reading about him the first time around was sad, this time around it was really disturbing. I guess that makes it more disturbing that Greenwald is so enamored of Carraba, because people who love his dysfunction are less likely to get him help.

I believe in the role of art in helping to heal, and that you do need to process grief, but at some point it begins to sound like a Dashboard Confessional concert is just wallowing. Is that cathartic? Catharsis implies that you get somewhere. And I know that even though picking at a scab is not the best way to heal a wound, the wound will usually still heal anyway, so there may not be any need for concern, but it looks unhealthy.

(I know that Nothing Feels Good is 14 years old now, so Carraba could be fine. I hope he is.)

It may be a natural part of youth to glamorize misery, but at some point you realize that Romeo and Juliet is less love, more stupidity, and that realization is good for your future. Maybe one album about girls never noticing you can be great, but ideally you will then move on. Then there can be albums about the pain of long distance relationships, or bitter breakups, or the euphoria of it working out, or starting to seriously consider your mortality (especially once you have kids).

It is a big world out there, and it is terrible and beautiful and frightening and amazing.

You're a much more interesting person (and musician) once you see that.