Riptide 14

Two new songs, "If You See Kay" and "W-I-M-Y-N". I should have cooked the first another couple weeks before unleashing it - that's relentless fast fingering/vocals. But you get the idea. I expect it to make the concert easily. I think writing a song with that title is a rite of passage for comedy songwriters. The second one? Fun. Maybe lots of fun. But very little chance it has enough juice to make the concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5I5g_V42U

Riptide 13

A new one, "FM Blues" (already re-titled), and an oldie, "Goin' Ape". I was going to do two new songs, but there were some boozy primatologists in the house who needed love. The first one will tighten up, and become a concert staple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv1pTCLdWHw

"The Twilight Zone"

-created by rod serling
1959-1964
Crap.
Okay, that's not fair.
Crappy?
Yes, that's it. "Crap" would imply that its very essence is fecal, whereas "crappy" implies that shittyness is simply one quality. There were good episodes, maybe even a few that qualify as great. I say maybe because i couldn't watch it all. I'd been saving that supposed pleasure for decades, but the shittyness of the show slaps you in the face almost instantly. I was soon reduced to cherry-picking only the most attractive-looking episodes (mostly based on cast juiciness...and by that i of course mean shatner...nah, just kidding - sort of).
I am sure there are many out there who worship at the altar of TZ as the greatest sci fi show ever. Do NOT procreate with these people! To love TZ, you have to love dipsy wipsy magical wagical mumbo jumbo. To even call it science fiction is a stretch, as it's often an insult to the very notion of science. Maybe i always intuited that, and that's the subconscious reason it took me decades to get around to watching? For a devotee of the genre though, there is much here to love. FORBIDDEN PLANET is where modern sci fi was born, but TZ took it one important step further, in humanizing its characters. FP + TZ = STAR TREK, sort of.
I didn't watch nearly enough to offer any "best of". I might get around to that someday...

failed song 2

(This one at least had the decency to die in utero, before music was written. That was part of the problem - i stared at the lyric sheet for weeks, and couldn't escape a melodic rewrite of "Makin' Whoopee/I'm Your Angel" for the main refrain. Finally, the words just struck me as too disjointed and weird. Three people in the crowd would probably love it, but most would scratch their heads. I may try to resuscitate the name-check section somewhere down the line; i had fun putting that together.)

CHEEKS & LIPS
You kissed my hand, and made me blush
You kissed my face, and made me flush
My mind is melting, i'm just a mush
So pucker up, and don't you rush

Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips
My love flows, come take some sips
We don't need chains, we don't need whips
Kiss my cheeks, and kiss my lips

Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips
Saddle up, i've got good grips
This pretty rose between my hips
Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips

Everybody loves a bawdy, lusty song
Bounce that booty, let's all sing along
But this is also an empowerment trip
A sanctification of goddess worship
I'm all for equality, with one exception of note
When it comes to abortion, no man gets a vote

Simone to sojourner, ida to gloria
Emmeline to eleanor, madonna to malala
Liz cady to susan b, the alices - walker and paul
Angela to lucy stone, margaret sanger most of all

I'm not reducing us to sexuality
I'm reclaiming body autonomy
It's hard to write a feminist song
and make everybody sing along

You kissed my hand, and made me blush
You kissed my face, and made me flush
My mind is melting, i'm just a mush
So pucker up, and don't you rush

Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips
My love flows, come take some sips
We don't need chains, we don't need whips
Kiss my cheeks, and kiss my lips

Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips
Saddle up, i've got good grips
This pretty rose between my hips
Kiss my cheeks, kiss my lips

Riptide 12

Two new songs, "Jiggle" and "The Hug Song". A bit fumbly, but almost all these Riptide performances are the first public playing ever...in that light, it's impressive that they usually go really well. Sometimes stage fright and newness get the best of you, other times first performances go much better than they should. Such a strange dynamic, getting in front of strangers and trying to entertain. If you think about it deeply, there's something counter-intuitive to it. But amazing things can happen nonetheless.
Of course, alcohol helps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMuuBxyGXBA

Riptide 11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txTyED_gRmw
Two new songs, "The Yoni Symphoni" and "Smiling Blues". The first has an alternate version in which i solve all the world's religious problems...it's a good song, and has the potential to kill the right crowd, but it's probably not good enough to make my concert. I'm at a funny point in my creation of the "perfect" 27-song concert - with over seventy songs written, it's becoming very hard for any new song to crack the list. And it can be brutal dismissing one i've nurtured for over a year.
The second song will almost certainly make the concert, and there is a curious irony in knowing that this song about death might live longer than i. It just felt so beautiful and powerful as i created it. It's about death and cruelty - the greatest horror of all, and the horrible way we all treat each other. Instead of being a perpetual comfort in the face of our own frailty, we exploit and damage each other from cradle to grave. Yet the song is sweet. You can cry, you can laugh, so let's laugh.
As a songwriter, i'm at the point where i'm striving to not create songs that sound like each other, understanding that too much sameness in lyrical structure impacts that. I'm constantly seeking different chords, which is fascinating as i don't know proper chord names, i just find string combinations that evoke a certain feeling. This approach might make me both a weaker and stronger songwriter. When i found the four chords of "Smiling Blues", my first thought was that of COURSE i would discard them for something more exotic. But the more i play it now, the more poignant and perfect it sounds. Did i almost outwit myself as a writer, by fearing simplicity? The strange thoughts that pass through one's mind...
This first-ever performance is embryonic...i fumble some words, and i've already figured out a way to re-structure the lyrics so the narrative arc is more seamless...but it's amazing that this poignant song turned a bar crowd into a pin-drop experience. That's not supposed to happen.

"V" (2009)

-created by scott peters
2009-2011
Unforgivably bad.
This badness of this remake (i refuse to call it a reimagining, as that would imply imagination) is so pernicious, this is a candidate for worst sci fi show ever. Why? Because the acting and dialogue are so competent, it's hard for the average viewer to notice how unworthy the show is of either science or fiction. The original 1983 mini-series by kenneth johnson was smart and fun. The original series, created after the studio drove off johnson, was deeply flawed but possessed of integrity and charm. This re-boot (or upchuck) has neither - it's like the suits got together and said, "Give us something fifteen year-old boys will love. No, not the smart ones." Am i expecting too much from a network show? Being on a network may be a reason for mediocrity, but it's never an excuse.
An alien invasion arrives, cloaked in the guise of friendship. Nice premise. Yet it's all too clear that the writers are liberal arts majors who don't know hard science from a dental appliance. They focus on the V's obsession with the humyn "soul", a notion that has no scientific underpinning, and ignore the legitimate concept of a war between humyns and a non-emotional species. This would be science-based, as reptiles seem to lack the biological capacity for emotion that makes mammals so fascinating (to other mammals, at least).
One of the regulars is a hunky, conflicted priest. It simply strains all credibility to have him in a terrorist/rebel cell - he serves no function other than hand-wringing. The methodology of the freedom fighters is all over the place, as is consistency of character.
I gutted out the entire two seasons because of devotion to the genre. The only thing that kept me mildly interested was the pandering use of genre stalwarts (morena baccarin, lexa doig, rekha sharma, alan tudyk, ona grauer, michael trucco, paul mcgillion). Grab those paychecks, kids. Original stars jane badler and marc singer provide juice, but it's flushed down a mindless morass.

Original series review: https://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/10/v.html

hotbed?

The home of my youth was a hotbed of emotional repression.
So was everyone else's - i know.
Okay, how about this? The home of my youth was a hotbed of sexism, homophobia, and...racism?
Hmmm. Well, i've got MY attention.
The first two conditions are something i rebelled against...though perhaps not as assertively as i ought. Self-image is a tricky thing - we can fool most of the people most of the time, and no one more than ourselves. My self-image as a humyn rights hero might be at odds with the image others have had of me.
And perhaps some were...right?
Let's travel back to a place called 870 Weber. A nice home in the northeast suburbs, with a pool in the yard...a magnet for teenage friends and good times. Among the five kids, there was a choral all-star/academic achiever, an instrumental all-star, three theatrical all-stars, and one guitarist with a basement band. No sports stars, but hardcore play and spectator devotion.
When mom left, the signs had been on the wall and it seemed the only sane choice. I saw it through feminist eyes - mom needed the freedom she'd been denied under both father and husband.
I was eighteen. The split hit my brothers harder, perhaps affecting their ability to form adult relationships. Big sis was already nearly through college, and gone. Thus, 870 became testosterone central - for the next decade, a place of food and funny films, barbs and bros, nicknames and games. I lived there on and off for five years after college, partly to be there for my brothers. Joyous it was...with no dark side, to us. No physical violence. The drug use (alcohol, pot, eventually psychedelics) was the domain of my brothers, and always seemed under control. As for the sexist or homophobic energy, i always assumed it was simply the reality of every suburban home.
Recently though, one of my brothers opined that we had a toxicity conspicuously absent in most of the homes of our peers.
He might be right.
For without a doubt, 870 was a place of aggressive, chauvinist heteronormativity.
Like all boys in a greed-based patriarchy, we'd been taught (inside the home and out) to banish any weakness or differentness. These things were pounced upon. We called it "rikking" - verbal slams crafted with humor and flair...and in retrospect, without mercy. One brother was a bit out of shape, and perhaps overly fond of electronic entertainment. I dubbed him "chair", a name that stuck. Is an apology long overdue?
Being the oldest brother and verbally-inclined, i helped found the rik movement. To me, it was good-natured fun. An expression of love. I'm sure it was, on some level...
But the emotional repression was more pervasive than any of us knew. Males didn't share feelings, they used sports talk to sublimate and impersonalize such things.
And woe unto anyone who strayed from the norm. I tried to craft my riks in a feminist way, but such control was conspicuously absent in everyone else. Much of that stemmed from our father, in the degradation of anything feminine. Equating womynhood with weakness.
"GINA BOY!!" "PUSSY BOY!!" And yes, "GAYBOY!!"
Is it possible i used either of those first two terms (or something similar) in my early teens, before i realized their malevolent underpinnings? One brother assures me i didn't, but i'm not sure beyond a shadow of a doubt. In any event, by the time of the great testosteronization, i was the only one not using any of them. Did my protest extend beyond silence? I'm pretty sure at some point i directed a calm diatribe at father and brothers. Did it have any effect? Maybe. Could i have done more? It's never been my way to correct or control. People do and think what they want. Plus, advice-giving has a pernicious side - we're all constantly trying to re-shape the world in our own image. So i've always tried to maintain a dignified silence, in a world full of people overeager to tell each other what to do. We're all great idiots. I try to shut the hell up.
There is much strength in this approach, yet also perhaps a weakness, in a world so damaged. It's only in recent years that i've allowed myself to be more vocal in expressing what's right or wrong. I still mostly restrict that to impersonal writings, though.
Did mother or sister perceive the female-trashing? How could they not?? Well, no gloria steinems, they.
The homophobia took longer for me to perceive and reject. As a pubescent, i found homosexuality so objectionable i thought i might have a violent reaction the first time i met someone gay.
A violent reaction.
Me.
Avowed pacifist by sixteen. Content to go to jail rather than war. Never struck another humyn in my life (except a bullying older sister when i was nine).
A violent reaction.
Behold the power of cultural taboo, that even as gentle a child as myself, imagined doing violence.
I was seventeen when i finally "met" a gay person. In a community theater production, i found out one of my companions was gay. I had worked joyously with him for many weeks, and the revelation was the least disturbing thing imaginable. Not that i'd suspected, but...he was so wonderful, it was a perfect non-issue.
But Weber would not have been welcoming, i fear. In our circle of friends, there was one who had less-than-macho energy. He was teased. I thought he was great, and would have defended him had anyone earnestly disrespected him...yet nothing seemed amiss to me. Even as a fledgling humyn rights advocate, i couldn't perceive that the ribbing might have been hurtful. Ribbing is how we expressed love. Perhaps he ultimately avoided our house. I don't know.
As for the chauvinism, it's not like there were never any female friends around. There were. Were they disturbed by, or aware of, the sexism? If so, it didn't show.
Rampant homophobic sexism. To me, it wasn't virulent, just annoying.
But...racism?
Our home??
There are some things sitting on the tip of our nose, that we never see.
In my heart, i recall being anti-racist as early as i was anti-feminist. As an adolescent, MLK was one of my heroes. Gandhi, too. By my mid-teens, i daydreamed about an asian womyn being the love of my life.
I'm a white boy from the suburbs - what do you want?
In my twenties, we learned that one of our neighborhood parents had belonged to a white supremacist group. We were all shocked.
There was one black family in our neighborhood, with a son near my age. I might have befriended him, but he seemed way too cool for me.
As a child, i remember being viscerally turned off by my grandfather's racist jokes. I recall a more benign, yet still quite racist joke appearing in our midst years later, perpetuated by my father, or maybe even my mother (Years later, i discovered my seemingly-progressive mom drew the line at interracial babies. Just too problematic for her.).
My youngest brother recently pointed out some of the more unsavory, racist WASP-normativity that went unchecked. One of our friends was from Guatemala. Our father called him "guatemala al". No one else called him that, but we accepted it. We understood that dad was abrasive, but we loved him as best we could, and he could be great fun. Al didn't seem to mind, yet in retrospect, did he ever want to say, "Yes, i'm not from Iowa. We can SEE that. Does it NEED to be pointed out?"
And...
Something i'd forgotten entirely. One of my brothers, for a while, had a set response if someone asked him to do some work. He'd fix a playful eye on you, and say...
"What color am i?"
I cringed, but accepted it. I assumed he was being ironic. He always seemed the gentlest among us.
Can you imagine a bigger "benefit of the doubt"?
We were sheltered kids in a changing world, trying to make sense of everything our culture was throwing at us, in the first full bloom of the mass media age. We knew our grandparent's generation was fundamentally, horribly wrong. We were suspicious of our parents.
And yet...870 was a place spilling with warmth and welcome. Had one of us brought home a non-white lover, they would have been embraced (son/daughter double standard notwithstanding). Had one of us brought home a gay lover...they would have been accepted. Probably. Had one of us brought home a trans lover...brains would have short-circuited.
All this begs the question - was 870 a place of genuine racism, or just clueless, careless language? More the latter. I don't think you'd have found malevolence in our hearts. Ignorance (plus double standards and entitlement, in most of us)...but not malevolence.
Small comfort for those we might have hurt. Nor can i swear that all of us were ultimately able to equally overcome our bad socialization...

politically incorrectal self-exam

It appears i have three viewpoints that qualify as politically incorrect.
In no particular order...
1
If you were to assemble the hundred least-racist americans, would they have anything in common? As you looked over that enlightened assemblage, would any subtle unifying factors jump out?
You betcha.
They'd be white.
Every single one. How do i know?
Because white people grow up with the luxury of not knowing they're white, and indeed not knowing they're any color at all. Though all this is swiftly (in the big picture) changing, being white in America is normative. Therefore, white people are free to form their points of view from a cocoon of relative objectivity. Non-white folk on the other hand, whether subtly or grossly, have their skin color smacked into their faces virtually every day of their lives.
To wonder whether someone is racist is ridiculous. The answer is YES. Everyone is, in varying degrees.
Including, and especially, people of color.
White people are free to see racism impersonally, and hopefully become intellectually mortified. People of color carry around a blanket of anger/confusion/shame. Their anti-racism is a cry of pain, but visceral rage and objectivity are almost diametrically opposed.
2
Homosexuality/transsexuality are not as simple and inevitable as political correctness dictates. Preference and identity are genetic? Yes, i believe that's true...but in a limited way. Our personalities are profoundly shaped by the constant avalanche of social conditioning we receive from the moment we're born. We live in a culture of sexual repression, and one way this manifests is in how we provide adolescents zero sexual outlet (and often zero input as well). What happens to a humyn denied any expression of so powerful a drive as sex?
Nothing good.
Enter the word "maladaption", used so aptly by desmond morris. We often take our general adolescent sexual embargo and amplify it by keeping males and females apart in non-sexual contexts too. Different locker rooms/bathrooms, gym classes, sports/activities, camps, even schools. As any behavioral anthropologist will tell you, we bond with whatever's available. We imprint with whomever's around. Put anyone in a single-gender environment, and there's gonna be a whole lot of maladaptin' going on.
Baby, we were born that way?
Yes. And no.
3
There's an open mic i attend, with a host i love. One of his recurring intros is "Y'know what we need now? Some feminine energy. So let's bring up..."
I can't imagine ever sexually stereotyping a performer like that.
And yet...
Men and wimyn be different.
I've struggled with this one. Early on, i took the position that gender personality differences were purely cultural. And though that's largely true in the big picture, because all differences overlap...differences are real. And inborn. Wimyn are more verbal and social, men more thing-oriented. There are many fascinating differences, small and large. When are these differences a straitjacket to rebel against, and when are they something to accept, even celebrate? It's going to be decades before there's a comfortable answer to that question, because so much of our society is still enmeshed in patriarchal oppression and repression.
I'm not betraying the PC agenda. I was railing against gender-specific personal pronouns decades before it became popular...and still do.
Yet men and wimyn be different. Having seen maleness from the inside, i prefer the company of wimyn. Yet i know wimyn who prefer the company of men, and that's perhaps a valid response too.
I get the non-binary agenda. I celebrate it. Yet to a certain extent, this is a binary world and always will be, until we evolve past our current reproductive reality.
I often make an effort, in my art, to manifest non-binary language and attitudes. Other times, i go deeply binary, in my quest to make people see or laugh.
So...am i a PC hero? Anti-hero? Both? Who can tell...

Riptide 10

Two new songs, "Sexy Bitch" and "This Song Sucks". On this night, the kerrigan wake descended on the Riptide. Thirty or so semi-inebriated irish folk, making things relentlessly loud. I almost bailed on my originals in favor of crowd-pleasing, mindless covers, but decided to plow ahead. Inside a waterfall of crowd noise, i feared a trainwreck, but viewing it now it came out pretty okay. Still, a lesson learned in keeping your head...i should have placed the readers in a consecutive line, and made sure they understood how to find their mic...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSiBHE32pW0

"Red Dwarf"

-created by grant naylor
1988-
Well...
Entertaining comedy sci fi. Fun...and never, ever brilliant, which might be a cause for unending frustration, as you might feel this show DESERVES to be brilliant. It certainly had enough chances, with twelve series spread out over four decades. And the novel that inspired it, by rob grant and doug naylor, was smart and funny enough to beget brilliance.
What might Star Trek be if it refused to take itself seriously? The premise is dandy - a deep-space mining vessel suffers a cataclysm, and three million years later the sole remaining crew member, a happy-go-lucky ne'er-do-well, awakens from quantum suspension in the brig, and points the ship homeward. His companions are a senile ship's computer, a holo-projection of the arrogant coward responsible for the radiation disaster, a humyn/cat hybrid, and a service mechanoid he teaches to have a real personality (in other words, lie).
If you catch one of the show's better episodes, you might be charmed. And beneath the humor, they do have occasional legitimate sci fi premises. It's just neither smart nor consistently funny enough to be top-tier. If you commit to watching the whole thing, you may deal with unending finger-pointing over why it's not great. The acting of star craig charles is atrocious the first couple seasons. The cat is a poorly-conceived regular - how many ways can you have him say "I'm vain and dumb"? The writers really failed the actor there. Ultimately, your biggest finger-point might be embarrassment over a franchise created by two men starring four men. Gosh, what a surprise!
Still in all, not awful. If you're hospitalized and recovering from seventy-three broken bones, this might get you through a week or two.

"Heavens on Earth"

(The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia)
-by michael shermer
2018
How can a skeptic have anything to say about the afterlife, that most discrete leap of faith? Our species, so irrepressibly clever, devises ever-more-preposterous ways to measure smallness, largeness, and beyond...we extrapolate, deduce, and "prove" realities unseen...yet no telescope, microscope, or algorithm offers one shred of evidence for an afterlife.
The short answer? He can't. But he'll provide statistical, anthropological, and psychological insight into the whys and wherefores of afterlifeism, before delving into those other topics. He'll explore altered states of consciousness, and debunk psychic charlatans and near-death experiences. He'll explore cryonics, anti-aging theories, computer mind uploading, and the evolutionary psychology of those who think civilization is in decline despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He'll show why utopian experiments have always led to dystopian nightmares. From the letters of executed prisoners, he'll show what we focus on when death is near (hint: it ain't esoteric speculation). In a burst of hope for those unfortunate souls living in Iran or Texas, he'll show that as many as half of all humyns don't believe in an afterlife.
And he'll save the best for last. His most delightful and resonant prose comes in the final chapter, where he talks about meaning in a "meaningless" world, and how the awe that comes with even partial understanding of the wonders of the universe can lead to a life immensely more motivated and creative and caring than a worldview based upon scriptures from the recesses and backwaters of our intellectually and morally stunted past.
Nicely done, michael.

can you say "muffin"?

Bikers are often treated to fascinating slices of life that go whizzing by. Today i passed an adult leaning down to a child, saying "Would you get your fingers out of your mouth? Can you say 'muffin'?" His tone was...not loveless, but peremptory. The two sentences rolled into one another. They were the words of someone who has spoken such messages too many times, and hasn't slept enough this decade.
I'm sympathetic. Parenting, as our culture constructs it, is a life-sucking exercise at best. Unless you're rich, or a man who knows how to make a womyn do most of the work, parenting is a sucker's bet, and it's only profound socialization that allows anyone to think otherwise.
Not that i'm assuming most parents choose their path. I love the internet, for the avalanches of obscure statistics. Wanna know whether left-handed people have a lower sex drive? Me too! They must, else why would there be so few of them?? Yet the one stat that eludes me is how many people become parents through choice, as opposed to "oops"?
I've been alive for decades, and have uttered millions of words...yet have never said anything vaguely close to "Would you get your fingers out of your mouth? Can you say 'muffin'?" Everyone here turn to the person closest to you, and say those words. Say them like you mean it, and i dare you to not laugh. As i biked on, all i could do was keep repeating those words, amidst giggles and chuckles. It kept me entertained for a mile or two. But it made me think about parenthood, and how on some level it's akin to saying "I really have no idea what to do with my life, but i know i have to do something, and if i keep putting off doing something, people are going to start looking at me funny, so...i don't know, YES, let's make a baby! Oh god, that was a dumb idea..."
The child was a girl, and i felt great sympathy for her. Why can't our culture provide parents less worn-down? Subconsciously, she has to know when a parent is phoning it in. I so, so much wanted for her to respond "I got a muffin for ya, daddy-o. Blow it out your ear." The fact that she was a year or two away from any such language construct only made it funnier. I longed for her to BE that child, and even dreamed of who THAT child might be grown up...the kind of fearless, non-conformist, chop-busting womyn i've always dreamed would be a perfect complement for me.
Which brings me to astrology, for i know what THAT womyn would think of astrology, and i wonder whether there isn't a parallel between parenthood and astrology.
I have no shortage of disregard for tarot and the like...though perhaps not for the reason you assume. Yes, the brazenly unabashed endorsement of superstitious thinking ought make any evolved person cringe, but on a deeper level, our fascination with star signs or readings reveals a profound narcissism at work - it's all about me, tell me about Me, what about MEEEEEEE??? Y'know what, wentworth, maybe it's not all about you. Maybe just maybe you should pull your head out of your ass long enough to take in all the apocalyptic suffering of humyns and other animals on this rock so that you can figure out how you might help, rather than wonder about the dark-haired stranger who will soon make your life bearable.
I'm not unsympathetic. In this culture of greed and fear, we DO all live lives of varying unbearability. Sticking your head up your ass (or inside a bottle) is a perfectly sane response.
But to me, the desire for horoscopes/readings is akin to rolling belly-up and saying "I have no idea what to do about any of this...kill me now, or let magic take me awayyyy..." You might as well curl up on the couch with reality TV, Cosmo, and a heroin needle. The world needs you, but you've checked out with no forwarding address. The copernican revolution was five centuries ago, but most of us still haven't caught up to the notion that our planet (and by extension, ourselves) are NOT the center of the universe.
Can you say "muffin"?

"Star Trek: Phase II/Continues"

STAR TREK: NEW VOYAGES/PHASE II
-created by james cawley and jack marshall
2004-2016
STAR TREK CONTINUES
-developed by vic mignona
2013-2017
These twenty-one episodes, which continue the voyages of the classic TREK, are the only fan films to merit consideration. The production values are startlingly good (particularly STC, which almost looks like a perfected version of the original), the acting competent, and the writing tantalizingly close to good. They take on issues of social relevance, even arguably outdoing DS9, VOY, and ENT (the STC episode on immigrant hatred stands out). The shows are peppered with cameos by TREK/genre actors (marina sirtis, john de lancie, michael dorn, denise crosby, grace lee whitney, william windom, malachi throne, anne lockhart, rekha sharma, gigi edgley, jamie bamber, colin baker, michael forest, john winston, and erin gray...plus christopher doohan as scottie in STC, and creative contributions by dorothy fontana and david gerrold). The stories return to the galactic barrier, the mirror universe, the Defiant, Orion slavers, and introduce a ship's counselor. STC culminates the five-year mission with kirk accepting promotion. Both productions are clearly missing the writing touch of a visionary, to say nothing of lapses in plot structure and plausibility. One wishes they might have strayed further from the "big three", and devoted episodes to uhura or scotty (chekov and sulu get a turn in the sun, with koenig and takei onboard). STP2 particularly suffers from revolving-actor syndrome in the leads, and their scotty is unfortunately reminiscent of dan aykroyd's rendering. But the dialogue is generally competent, and the devotion to the original almost breathtakingly expressed (with a charming mix of state-of-the-art graphics and intentionally clumsy alien costumes). One STC episode starring lou ferrigno as an orion captain, even cracked my franchise-wide marathons. Not brilliant, but brilliantish.

Riptide 9

Two new songs, "The Ballad of Violet and Tsutomu", and "Happy Holy"...who is that brilliant guy with the belly laugh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie80eSeBiMo

ultimate sci fi TVthon

Get the cashews, salsa, and tofutti! Running-around-the-house-breaks recommended.
morning
-The City on the Edge of Forever, STAR TREK
-War Games, SPACE: 1999
-Survival, UFO
-The Trap, PLANET OF THE APES
-The Secret of Bigfoot, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
afternoon
-Doomsday is Tomorrow, THE BIONIC WOMAN
-The Living Legend, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
-Pegasus, GALACTICA '04
-Similitude, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE
-Unchained Woman, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY
evening
-Yesterday's Enterprise, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
-Far Beyond the Stars, STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
-Scorpion, STAR TREK: VOYAGER
-200, STARGATE: SG1
-The Last Man, STARGATE: ATLANTIS
-Faith, STARGATE: UNIVERSE
-Objects in Space, FIREFLY
-Spaced Out, WONDER WOMAN

ken hartman, 1968-2019

My oldest friend died this week.
Or less ambiguously, my longest-running friendship...the past thirty-six years or so. Ken was born two days before me, and we probably met in 8th grade. My oldest friend in the other sense, michael, died earlier this year. After a life remarkably shielded from death, it's been a year of loss - though i've still been shielded, in one sense. When ken and michael and irene and my grandparents died, i was far away.
Ken was the only person i've known well, whom i never saw do or say anything unkind. I don't want to make too huge a deal of that, for it's easy to be loving during good times. I'm sure he had less gentle moments. But still, in this self-absorbed, needy world, kindness like his is...remarkable.
Not that he was a peace-eyed flower child...he was an occasional crankypuss. But lash out? Never.
We became friends in the M.P.C. Youth Club, which i resisted joining because it was churchy and the domain of my "perfect" older sister. My parents forced me, though i refused to be in the yearly play. Did i want to drop out, and was told i could quit after one more year? Maybe. That second year changed my life, though...after being stunned by the acting of an older student, i begged my way into the cast, and was a performer ever after.
By then, ken and i were chummy. I suppose he was like me socially...gratefully (for me, at least) occupying that safe ground between the cool kids and the outcasts. There were a group of us...ken and i, robb wilson, cathy o'brien...the only real friends of my adolescence. We were emotionally stunted of course, being uptight, alienated kids from the suburbs. We never knew how to be emotionally deep, not even in the half-pretentious way common to college dorms. But we shared the kind of friendship that keeps people sane. We spent time at each other's homes, and for me, none moreso than ken's. I was their housesitter when he and his parents went away (with a diabetic cat i had to give injections...imagine!). He was a regular at the pool plunges and volleyball games in my backyard, and we formed a school intramural team, the Fish 2. Many were the evenings spent in his basement, listening to music (he loved King Crimson and Rush, which i didn't get, but we bonded over sting's jazzy stuff, and it was perhaps in that basement i first heard "Kind of Blue"). And movies...do you remember where you were the first time you saw "This Is Spinal Tap"?
The yearly play was our social touchstone. Ken's acting climb was slower...when i got my first lead, he and robb were hairy ishmaelites #2 and 3...witnessing my exuberance, he eventually groused that life wasn't so damned glamorous in the hairy world. Our senior year, he snagged a supporting lead in Bye Bye Birdie and acquitted himself well, though he never should have been asked to sing...somewhere out there, there's a dog still twitching. And his forced extemporization when an actor missed an entrance is the stuff of, um, legend.
In high school, i was in a two-actor short. When a festival beckoned and my partner wasn't available, mr. roche told me to pick an actor and direct it myself. I switched roles, giving my old part to ken. He was agreeably competent, and we had a dandy time.
Our collaboration blossomed after our first year at different colleges. He said we should produce a summer play in the M.P.C. Fellowship Hall - he would direct and produce, and i would star. We did three summers of some of the most wonderful theater of my life. The Odd Couple, The Real Inspector Hound, The Star-Spangled Girl...is it rose-colored vision to say those productions were more brilliant than anyone ought have expected? When i later did professional theater and realized that some amateur shows are better, it was those three i recalled most. The energy, the joy...no actor should want anything more. For our supporting casts, ken was a minimalist director - he picked actors who knew what they were doing, and let them do it (a method that resonated when i became a director). Our sets were delightful, and his publicity spot-on - we played to crowds of 50-150.
Most of all, the process was as wonderful as the product. High-spirited rehearsals, with raids on the kitchen for frozen Cool Whip, and fits of rehearsal giggles that count as the best laughter of my life, while ken drummed his fingers and contemplated throwing water at us...
We parted ways theatrically after that. I went on to roles on many stages. He did Rider College theater and a couple local productions, then his life found its center in marriage and employment, as an education retirement specialist. He once ran a seminar at a school where my mom taught.
For the next twenty-five years, i lived 90 miles away, then 1500, then 3000. He never saw the plays i produced. It would have been fun having him there...so many things i learned, that he had learned first. We'd talk maybe once a year, and i'd see him every two or three. When his multiple sclerosis arrived, he said that The West Wing did NOT get it right.
It's easy to second-guess how you could or should have been a better friend to someone going through dire times. Did i call enough? No. A couple years ago, i mailed him a cd of my songs that i'd recorded with another Youth Club friend. Ken would have adored it, but in his depression, he never listened. When i learned that death was near, i tried to call him everyday for his last week and half, to sing another song i'd written.
Charlie chaplin said that life begins at fifty. Perhaps he meant that that's when you're mostly free of the immaturities, obligations, bad education, and hormones of youth. That resonates with me...at fifty, i feel like my best times creatively and personally are ahead.
Yet now i must try to do what can't be done...come to grips with my same-age friend hitting that black wall.
When i got the call, my heart gripped. I'd held on to a hope that he might bounce back.
There is an emptiness now that will ever remain.
But ken hartman made my life more than it would have been. Those joys and resonances will always inform who i am. In my heart until i die...i love you, ken.

death is raining

Poke a living person, what happens? Something.
Poke a dying person, what happens? Something.
Poke a dead person, what happens? Nothing.
Nothing.
There is no nothing more terrifying.
Death is insanity.
In this world of artificial insanities, death reigns over all pretenders. No other beauty or horror, no mutual orgasm or murderous vengeance, no childbirth or maiming, is more essential and primal. We humyns create staggeringly intricate psychological and physical structures whose core purpose is to deny the power, nay the very EXISTENCE, of death. Heaven, reincarnation, cathedrals, art/literature, offspring, cosmetic surgery...
We even attempt to erase the word itself. Pass away, lost, transition...how many deathbeds/deaths/funerals are enacted without a single participant ever uttering the word "die"? If you never say it, maybe it doesn't exist...
Don't trust the conceit that humyns alone know the existential horror of mortality. Other animals grasp, and are unhinged by, death-awareness.
Death is insanity. To be around it for an abnormal amount of time, to dance with that nothingness for days, months, or years and stay sane, requires staggering amounts of mental discipline. Or pervasive, punitive socialization. Or self-medication.
To be a soldier (or civilian) living in a war...
To care for a loved one dying in slow agony...
It's clear how many fail to endure such reality. Those who flee, those who crack, those who survive but are forever scarred...no creature is designed to stay sane in the presence of unrelenting death.
There are other insanities, natural and artificial. Rejection, failure, loneliness, disaster...waterboarding, date rape, religion, reality TV...
But death reigns.
Knowing all that, the most incomprehensible and damning cultural reality is suicide. To willfully enact the most primal humyn terror...to erase this frailest of sparks, that everyone else is obsessively protecting...
How dysfunctional must any society be, in which self-annihilation exists...or thrives?
I'm a fan of statistics, but i think a single generality might be more germane. Is there anyone who knows no one who has taken their own life?
If you're one of those few, stay inside your bubble as long as you can.
Or burst it, to grow wise in the ways of this broken world...
And help us become humyn again.

ultimate sci fi moviethon

Get the popcorn, PB pretzels, and soy jerky! Colostomy bag optional.
morning
-Forbidden Planet
-Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-Planet of the Apes
afternoon
-Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
-Blade Runner
-The Terminator
evening
-Aliens
-The Matrix
-Star Trek: First Contact

Riptide 8

Two new numbers, "Hotel Biglebowski" and "The Poop Song"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49nvZaH_HL0

"The Better Angels of Our Nature"

(Why Violence Has Declined)
2011
-by steven pinker
A towering work. Pinker describes us as a species more moral than at any time in recorded history, due to civilizing trends that over recent centuries (and especially recent decades) have made us far less violent...a claim that flies in the face of headlines and common cynicism, but steven offers enough statistical evidence to silence a herd of cats in heat. That doesn't mean he's always right, but he maintains appropriate scientific humility. He analyzes the history of war, interpersonal violence, slavery, superstitious/ideological violence, and genocide, all of which are trending down (or disappearing entirely), and trounces the notion that the 20th century was the most warlike. He deconstructs how the rights revolutions have decreased government violence against its own citizens, with individual rights slowly superseding the good of the state. In almost excruciating detail, he explores the psychology and physiology of violence. He hangs all this pacifying on the rise of hobbesian leviathan states which replaced feudal systems. He describes civilizing as a downward process by which the poor mimic the genteel rich (i know that might not sit well with some, but pinker makes it plausible). He cites literacy as a linchpin of ever-expanding empathy, commerce as an antidote to tribal violence, and global feminism as a further pacifying factor. Pinker avoids political correctness, and even exposes its flaws. He doesn't shy from unsettling points, like the effect that our post-Three Mile Island nuclear abandonment has had on the fossil fuel apocalypse. He points out that the traffic fatalities of people who refused to fly in 2002 contributed six times the number of 9/11 deaths. He explains America's hyper-violence by showing that we're several countries, not one - the east and midwest have comparable violence rates to any advanced democracy, but the south and west have rates that reflect their origins as a culture of honor. It's tempting to compare this book to michael shermer's "The Moral Arc", which attributes all this to the ever-expanding ripples of the age of enlightenment and reason...an explanation which my humynism finds more appealing, but these two books might be complementary, not competitive (indeed, pinker is complimentary of shermer). Making sense of history's trends is one of the more challenging tasks any thinker can undertake. Wrong or right, pinker does humynity proud.

Riptide 7

Two new songs, "Monkey Butt Dance" and "Teach Me"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP-RFjhwcTU

"Babylon 5"

(Yes, i endured the entire five seasons, plus five telemovies. Mostly, it became a quest to be amused by which guest actors and genre stalwarts signed on. Dwight schulz, melissa gilbert, harlan ellison, john schuck, vaughn armstrong, bernie casey, gerrit graham, june lockhart, marjorie monaghan, david mccallum, david warner, brad dourif, erick avari, majel barrett, robert englund, tony todd, michael york, michael ansara, jeffrey combs, robin curtis, judson scott, paul williams, paul winfield, bryan cranston, adrienne barbeau, eric pierpoint, theodore bikel, bruce mcgill, danica mckellar, carel struycken, ian abercrombie, richard moll, and the winners - penn and teller! Plus a surreal nod to West Wing fans, who must see the entrance that comes at the 40-45 minute mark of "River of Souls")
1994-1998
-created by j. michael straczynski
A critique of late-era STAR TREK is that it got away from the social relevance of the classic, to become average, copycat sci fi fare. If you'd like to know how unfair that is, sit through B5, which is the living, breathing actualization of that critique. Zero inventiveness. No edge. Dialogue often unrecognizable as humyn speech (partial blame goes to straczynski's non-improvisation manifesto...one aspect of actor improvisation is making speech more naturalistic, a touch that was sorely needed here). B5 shows you all these alien cultures, and instead of diving into a meaty exploration of cultural relativity and moral ambiguity, those are glossed over in the service of some "heroic humyn" tale, full of pedestrian conceits and dime-store romanticizations. Is that a bit unfair? Maybe. Who knows...had three of their leads been more compelling/natural/relateable, the whole affair might have been watchable. Even with its flaws, i confess that i started to feel sentimental when the last few episodes arrived. The actors, for the most part, gave it their best. So i dedicate the rest of this review to them - you showed up, poured out your hearts...and occasionally did quality work on better sci fi shows.
ACTOR - # of episodes
mira furlan (CYCLOPS, LOST) - 110
She played humyn/alien hybrid delenn with sensitivity and class. She should give workshops on how to do bad dialogue convincingly.
peter jurasik (TRON, HILL STREET BLUES) - 110
With perhaps the greatest acting challenge of the show, making londo sympathetic, he acquitted himself well.
andreas katsulas (THE FUGITIVE, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION) - 110
NEXT GEN's irrepressible tomalak rendered unflinching service under eight pounds of prosthetic, and as g'kar always hit the right acting values.
richard biggs (ANY DAY NOW, STRONG MEDICINE) - 110
The affable dr. franklin came off flat...did the lines fail him (yes), or did he fail the lines (maybe)?
bill mumy (LOST IN SPACE, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE) - 110
Ah, poor bill mumy! He never failed to make leneer believable. For a taste of what he could do with real dialogue, see DS9's "The Siege of AR-558".
stephen furst (ANIMAL HOUSE, ST. ELSEWHERE) - 110
Go stephen, go! Playing the "young" vir while over forty! He was placed in more unactable moments than anyone else, but daniel day lewis couldn't have done better. Well, maybe a little.
jerry doyle (CAPTAIN SIMIAN & SPACE MONKEYS, B5: THE GATHERING) - 110
A good actor makes bad dialogue better. Garibaldi might have made his worse.
claudia christian (A GNOME NAMED GNORM, STARHYKE) - 89
As ivanova, she became one of the few characters you kind of cared about. Her departure, sad.
bruce boxleitner (TRON, SCARECROW AND MRS. KING) - 88
And here he is, our hero sheridan! Or perhaps just a cardboard cutout, i can never tell.
jeff conaway (GREASE, TAXI) - 74
Ahh, poor jeff. Not even security chief...just assistant?! At this point in his career, didn't he rate a shot at a captain's chair? He couldn't have done worse than what they had. Am i being overly sentimental?
patricia tallman (ARMY OF DARKNESS, BABYLON 5: THIRDSPACE) - 47
As lyta, she rose (or descended) to the level of her dialogue.
jason carter (GEORGIA, BEVERLY HILLS 90210) - 45
As ranger marcus, he injected as much panache as you could ask.
andrea thompson (NYPD BLUE, 24) - 44
Before she left, telepath talia was the one character you'd started to care about. Doyle, this show ain't big enough for the both of us! Boy, did the fans get the fuzzy end of that lollipop.
michael o'hare (C.H.U.D., BABYLON 5: THE GATHERING) - 25
What seemed like a soulless studio decision to replace the first-season commander with someone "sexier", turned out to be a heartbreaking tale of mental illness.
tracy scoggins (LOIS & CLARK, HIGHLANDER) - 21
She did yeomanlike work as captain lochley, a final-season replacement for ivanova.
walter koenig (STAR TREK, STAR TREK I-VII) -13
As megalomaniacal telepath bester, he was okay. He even had a genuinely good episode in his last appearance.

Riptide 6

Two new songs, "Sunrise" and "Jefferson Blues". The second one's not a bar song, nor likely to make my concert, but gets singular love at poetry events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I21a57vj5SY

dear ma

Dear ma,

Oh yes, your point about some people ending up on the street no matter what, MIGHT be true...but still, that seems like saying that because some people will always engage in life-threatening activities (extreme sports, drugs), it should be legal to murder.
Poor jaym, having to defend a religion that becomes more ridiculous with each passing generation...as we keep evolving morally and scientifically, revealed religion just gets more and more preposterous. I feel for her, i truly do. A lot of this isn't her fault...science is discovering genetic predispositions to liberalism and conservatism.
I was tempted to put you on the spot, on whether you thought jesus was a communist. I think jaymie has convinced herself that jesus wasn't political (Using the narrowest definition possible - did he run for office? No? Then he wasn't political! Never mind that the non-mythological jesus was a claimant to the throne.). But if jaym can convince herself he wasn't political, she can avoid the staggering contradictions between christianity and capitalism. She's painted herself into this horrible corner. I mean, the sermon on the mount, not political?? Jesus (or his mythological version) was the original wide-eyed commie hippie.
You continue to wonder (as do we all) how much of our behavior is humyn nature. Here are two books i'm about to read, "The Blank Slate", by steven pinker, and "Evil", by roy baumeister. The upshoot seems to be that selfishness is humyn nature, but so is a sense of justice. Evil isn't "evil", it's just a social coping mechanism that can get wayyyy out of hand in inflated, impersonal societies.
Oh yes, i think many of the founding fathers were aware of (and conflicted by) the slavery issue. I think they even tried to deal with it, but gave up and passed the buck to future generations.
Sure, work ethic is important...but we've long passed the point where anyone needs to work a forty-hour week. Our technology and agriculture are so advanced, that no humyn NEEDS to work more than a fifteen-hour week. We're just stuck in this rut of unbounded greed and economic exploitation. To live as i live, seeing the halls of the uber-rich, then walking among the homeless...it's just staggering the amounts of denial and absolute lack of compassion still in us. And the saddest part is that most rich people aren't patent assholes...in fact, many of them are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But that only underscores the incredible amounts of rationalization going on.
love,

wrob

Star Trek Discovery, season 1

(As a placeholder for the series-spanning writeup, i hereby accept STD into the canon...but barely, ever so barely. Its almost unforgivable flaw is that it fetishizes violence like no TREK ever [except the non-canonical abrams]. And it doesn't move the original vision forward, only sideways like DS9 and VOY - here, we have a gay regular plus a female regular who would never be found on a catwalk, which are both great...but the other core flaw is the absence of allegorical social relevance. A couple episodes touch upon TREK themes, but that's it. As of now, no STD qualifies for this writer's franchise-wide best-of marathons.)
FOUR-STAR EPISODES: 0
AVERAGE EPISODE RATING: 2.07
-The Vulcan Hello **
A century after ENTERPRISE (and ten years before the classic), during which time there has been no klingon contact, the U.S.S. Shenzhou is lured into a standoff with a prophet of kahless trying to reunite all the houses for a war against the Federation. The humyn first officer, raised on Vulcan by sarek and convinced that war can be avoided by striking first, attempts a mutiny. There are no flashes of chemistry, only adequate acting. Nothing about the writing makes it recognizable as TREK. With tension but little else, an inauspicious debut.
-Battle at the Binary Stars **
First officer burnham is tossed into the brig...while all Stovokor breaks loose as the klingons (now with twenty-four houses present) attack the Federation fleet. Mass destruction and death ensue, followed by an audacious raid designed by burnam. They cripple the klingon flagship and kill their leader, but their own captain (michelle yeoh - SUNSHINE, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA) is killed. Burnam is sentenced to life imprisonment for mutiny.
-Context is for Kings **
Burnam's prison shuttle is intercepted by the USS Discovery, and she's conscripted by captain gabriel lorca. An experimental propulsion system could, if successful, win the klingon war. A sister ship working on the same technology suffers total disaster. Shipmates new and old treat her with mistrust, except for her nervous, insecure roommate. The captain has secrets...
-The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry **
An admiral questions whether lorca's tactics are too rash. Discovery discovers that a possibly-sentient, spore-friendly being is needed as a conduit to make the experimental drive work, and they use it to save a colony, but at risk to the creature's life. A TREK theme resurrected! Plus klingon intrigue and betrayal...then they capture lorca.
-Choose Your Pain **
Lorca is in a brutal klingon brig, with an unknown junior officer and...harry mudd (rainn wilson - THE OFFICE, SUPER)! Treachery and collaboration culminate in an escape, in which mudd is left behind. Needing the spore drive to rescue lorca, physicist lt. paul stamets hooks himself to it. He survives...but at what cost?
-Lethe ***
Discovery follows a burnham mind link to sarek, who is dying alone on a ship that's been sabotaged by vulcan extremists. Sarek tries to push michael's link away. An admiral visits, determined to discover the truth behind lorca's recklessness. She and lorca have sex...
-Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad **
I SO wanted to give this three stars, but the narrative gets wonky and unfocused at the end. The first TREK appearance of the real, non-android stella mudd should have been one of the funnier moments ever, but...otherwise, you have crewmembers partying (techno versions of Bee Gees, al green, and "Jump Around"...YES!), while harry mudd transports aboard and keeps initiating thirty-minute time loops, until he figures out how to commandeer the ship, to sell to the klingons. It's not as playful as a mudd episode ought be, and the choice to make him homicidal is probably irreconcilable with his established character, but it's brisk and fun.
-Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum **
Burnham, saru, and ash have an away mission on a planet with ethereal sound beings who might help them see through klingon cloak technology, but the beings have another agenda. Well, it ain't bad...though i guess i already said that in the rating.
-Into the Forest I Go **
Discovery must make 133 consecutive short jumps to unlock the secrets of the klingon cloak, which fries stamets' brain. Burnham and ash rescue the admiral on the klingon ship of the dead. With one final jump, they end up in an unknown universe.
-Despite Yourself ***
They're in the classic mirror universe! Discovery must transform itself to a reality where lorca is a treasonous fugitive, burnham is a captain presumed dead, and sylvia is the blood-soaked Discovery captain. Ash begins manifesting a klingon personality, and a deep scan reveals he was surgically transformed...and he kills the doctor to keep it secret. This high rating is unusual, given that there's minimal mirror interaction, but sylvia's fumbling transformation into "captain killey" is a delight.
-The Wolf Inside **
Tilly works to heal stamets' brain with spore therapy, so Discovery might return home. Burnham is aboard her own mirror universe ship, enduring the strain of passing as its brutal captain, with the renegade lorca to be given to the empress. She disobeys orders to destroy a klingon-led, inter-specieal rebel base. Mirror sarek is among them, and mind-melds with burnham. The empress is revealed as the mirror of captain georgiou, whom burnham betrayed.
-Vaulting Ambition **
Stamets meets his mirror self inside the mycelial network. Tyler's klingon ego, genetically grafted into him, emerges...a conceit that strains credibility to the breaking point.
-What's Past is Prologue **
Sentenced to death for disobeying orders, burnham reveals to the empress her true nature...and figures out that lorca has been the mirror lorca all along, manipulating Discovery to get back to his universe and overthrow georgiou. His followers amassed, battle breaks out aboard the flagship, on which the abuse of spore power will lead to the destruction of all universes (the battle scenes are too glamorous/gratuitous for TREK). Discovery undertakes a suicidal mission to save all life. In good shakespearean (or bad TREK) fashion, the baddies all die and the goodies all live, floating home on mycelial shockwaves. Burnham brings the empress, rather than leave her to die.
-The War Without, the War Within **
This one feels a bit more familiar as TREK. Discovery returns to its own universe, but nine months later. The klingon war is nearly over, and not in a good way. Joined by the admiral and sarek (james frain - TRUE BLOOD, GOTHAM), a plan is hatched to take the war to Q'onoS, using georgiou's knowledge of the klingons.
-Will You Take My Hand? **
Georgiou is given command of the mission to end the war...though she doesn't reveal her plan to destroy Q'onoS altogether. An away team must navigate an orion embassy village, while facing hard moral choices. One star lost for a too-easy ending, plus a back-patting denouement that's not quite earned. Nice things happen here, though - i started to care about these characters (after only fifteen episodes, hmm). Plus, the depiction of scantily-clad females (and males) is less gratuitous than in TREK's past. It would have been more morally responsible to do without the gratuitous violence, but progress must be acknowledged. Plus, the first veteran TREK actor appearance - clint howard (GENTLE BEN, APOLLO 13), as a seedy orion!

Riptide 5

A couple brand new songs, "Crazy Shit" and "The Dong Song"...the great surprise was that the audience loved the second one. I thought maybe it was "too far" in entertainment terms, but do you know how stunning it is to look out and see a stranger singing the last few words of a song with you, when that song has never been heard publicly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKWB--f7gyA

swimming the stormy PCs

A comedian takes the stage, and looks out.
"It took bill cosby and michael jackson to make me realize that r. kelly...not so bad. I mean, come on, who among us has never peed on a teenager? Tell the truth. TELL THE TRUTH."
The audience laughs. Well, maybe.
That thought popped into my brain recently. Making oneself laugh is surely one of the keys to sanity in an insane world. I considered doing the bit at an open mic, but then i realized that by lumping these people together, i had possibly, unintentionally defined them by their skin color. So i thought of substituting woody allen. But that didn't feel as funny - i have a harder time being outraged by woody.
Just now, should i have said "woody and soon yi", to avoid denying her an active role in her own life? If i just say "woody", am i contributing to the message that something bad happened, and the accountability lies with him? Would that be victimizing a womyn who rejects her "victimization"?
The comedy sprang from some poetry that had been gestating in me, something like "eldridge cleaver is raping white wimyn, and flipper committed suicide" (flipper, or kathy, possibly killed herself due to captivity-induced depression).
But the comedy doesn't feel right, because of the accidental racial overtones. One shies away from expressing outrage over any actions of people of color, because one feels one should only be outraged at white folk...and also because you might be accused of having a racist agenda. Racial concerns have a tendency to impose themselves. Which, we must remind ourselves, is mostly a good thing. All political correctness stems from a place of good and necessary intent. Awareness grows, and change follows. But it can be so hard to speak openly without risking being misunderstood, and not just over race. Feminism, ethnic sensitivity, gay & binary awareness, speciesism, fighting an obesity epidemic without looking like a body-shamer...as tina fey said (approximately),"Just opening your mouth these days is playing landmine hopscotch".
It's strange to realize that i myself am capable of saying the wrong thing, or something that appears wrong. I know i'm much closer to being gender- and color-blind than most (let's assume that's a good thing). As one example, i just started watching "A Handmaid's Tale", and a housemate railed against it as feminist claptrap. I got his point, but it had never occurred to me that anyone might perceive the show as feminist, because i didn't perceive the hero as female. I just saw her as a person.
Another example, one in which i was suddenly on the wrong side of the moral argument even though i think i was on the CORRECT side (or more correct, perhaps...there can be layered, even contrary, levels of correctness). I recently heard a poem, in which the author excoriated her ex for not wanting to be identified by his skin color. She was outraged that he would deny his racial heritage. The PC crowd clapped their affirmations.
But...wait! Not defining yourself by skin/ethnicity/gender...isn't that a GOOD thing? Great, even?
Going back to my standup, the original words in my head were "Who among us has never peed on a teenage girl?" Those who appreciate the perverse dysfunction of our society, may have an initial laugh response to those words, though it probably takes only a couple seconds to cringe. But when you're creating comedy or art, you have to be able to go all the way to the edge...that's the only way you'll discover what's too far. Fifty years ago, maybe one artist in a hundred was capable of going to the edge. These days...one in a thousand? Just a thought.

"Batman"

1966-1968
-created by lorenzo semple jr and william dozier
Quick! Name a late 60s TV classic that ran for three seasons, spawned a TV/movie franchise that thrives to this day, and had two stars who became three?
No, not Star Trek. Batman!
A pop paragon and camp classic that became the hippest TV happening of the 60s, for kids and adults alike. Who can forget those cliffhangers, batrope-climbs...and tights! Plus gorshin, meredith, romero...and a sexual tension between adam west and julie newmar that was more palpable (and poignant) than you remember. Batman himself was generally progressive (no one is evil at heart), but sometimes fascist too (damned parole system!). Don't trash eartha kitt - without the no-win comparison to newmar, she'd have been purr-fect. As for season 3, you'll never see another show get so simultaneously better (batgirl) and worse (more infantile writing). The series' chauvinist caucasianism make it a no-go for impressionable youth today, but if you're looking for a giggle ride down memory lane, you won't do better.
BATMAN'S BEST
-Not Yet, He Ain't (1)
The extended country chase with dynamic duo on batbike pursuing penguin and goons in the stolen batmobile is beyond priceless.
-BATMAN: THE MOVIE
The big screen release that came out after season 1. An evil alliance of the "big four" (and in retrospect, the producers couldn't have known riddler/joker/penguin/catwoman were the big four, this early on) aboard a submarine...here come the batboat, batcopter, and the United Nations, all wrapped in sly, ironic humor. Even with a bland lee meriwether as catwoman, this one's a rollicking ride. Plus the greatest shark attack in the history of cinema. Dive!
-The Dead Ringers (2)
This middling episode is elevated by liberace in a dual performance as a world-famous maestro and his ne'er-do-well brother...and also by some of the most ridiculous BATMAN writing ever. How they escape player-piano death and meditate their way to detectively deduction, simply must be seen to be believed. And burt ward's attempt to follow batman's musical instruction is beyond hilarious. He may have been a martial arts/speed-reading boy wonder in real life, but he was clearly also bona fide tone-deaf.
-The Penguin Declines (2)
Burgess meredith stretches his chops, playing a suave seducer...whose chief henchperson is a baby-faced rob reiner (ALL IN THE FAMILY, THIS IS SPINAL TAP)!
-Scat! Darn Catwoman (2)
Batman falls under a love spell. Adam west's groovy acting would do austin powers proud.
-Pop Goes the Joker/Flop Goes the Joker (2)
The greatest turn for Gotham's greatest villain. This spoof of high art (and high artists) is pop culture classic. In a madcap climax, the joker (cesar romero - THE GAY CABALLERO, JULIA) is loose in Wayne Manor, and accidentally discovers the batpoles. Alfred outfences him, then traps him on a pole going up and down. Also fun for seeing adam take on goons by robin's side, as bruce.
-Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin (3)
The biggest laugh-out-loud chuckler of the series features the debut of batgirl (yvonne craig - GIDGET, IN LIKE FLINT) and a looser touch in the writing and directing. No more impending-doom cliffhangers alas, but this one's non-stop fun. Having alfred be the only who knows barbara gordon's secret? A lovely touch.
-Surf's Up! Joker's Under! (3)
This one has it all - humor, gnarly action, a show tune, and yvonne in a mesh swimsuit. Joker steals the talent of the beach's best surfer, and batman is the only one to challenge him for supremacy of the waves. More bat anti-shark repellent? You betcha, daddy-o. Also the high comedy point for gordon and o'hara, as undercover beach bums buzzy and duke.
-The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra (3)
The show's penultimate episode should have been its climax, for what more glorious way to go out than having the terrific trio face off against all arch-villains at once? Never mind that the camera shots are a soundstage away, to conceal the fact that none of the correct actors are here...it's still too silly to resist. All of this is arranged by an alchemistic villain and her hep hangdog husband, who hold up their end, entertainment-wise.
NOTABLE
-Batman's Anniversary (2)
A riddler episode minus frank gorshin. Fascinating but flaccid, as john astin (THE ADDAMS FAMILY, OPERATION PETTICOAT) is a pale shadow of gorshin's manic glee. Plus the series' greatest fight scene, amidst fake underwater madness.
-A Piece of the Action/Batman's Satisfaction (2)
A titillating hodgepodge, with crossover appearances by the cast of THE GREEN HORNET, including bruce lee, who shows stunning moves while fighting pal burt ward. STAR TREK fans get a two-fer, with roger c. carmel (BREEZY, THAT'S LIFE) and angelique pettyjohn (REPO MAN, STALAG 69). Plus seymour cassel (DICK TRACY, RUSHMORE) and alex rocco (THE GODFATHER, THE GEORGE CARLIN SHOW) as goons.
-Batman's Waterloo (2)
WOW...wha' hoppen?? Until now we've been watching a banal kid's show, then suddenly...a burst of raw sexual politics. Bruce is romancing an heiress (lee meriwether - BATMAN: THE MOVIE, THE TIME TUNNEL), until he finds out that her father doesn't consider him a catch (her FATHER, mind you). Then he tells her he's not looking for marriage, so she shouldn't invite him up to her place. She offers non-marital sex. With a smarmy look at the camera, he tells the viewer...well, who wouldn't? Her character actually comes off well in terms of empowerment, but bruce is just cringeingly crass and petulant. Plus grace lee whitney (STAR TREK, IRMA LA DOUCE)!
-The Joker's Provokers (2)
The best actor on the show? I'll place my marker on silent film star alan napier. His appearances wearing the bat costume are too cool for school, and here he's at his multi-faceted best, playing alfred and his blue-collar cousin egbert. Brilliant!
APPALLATHON
-An Egg Grows in Gotham (2)
In this otherwise delightful entry starring vincent price, the chief plot patsy is chief screaming chicken. Do i have to actually say more? Perhaps the most stunningly offensive portrayal of a native ever (and that's a distinction with no shortage of contenders...although i haven't seen the very same actor as an F TROOP character named roaring chicken). Why not just go all the way and make him a foster brooks drunk? You'll never fully understand the extent to which america made normative the most racist, demeaning attitudes toward peoples we blithely genocided, without seeing a program or two like this. OF COURSE they're semi-humyns who deserved what they got!
-Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club (3)
The spark that triggered the 70s feminist movement? Sadly, nothing so glamorous...just some appalling 60s business-as-usual. A wimyn's rights activist gets herself underhandedly installed as commissioner, replaces the entire police force with wimyn, and the city falls apart. Every derogatory female stereotype is puked up onto the screen. Batgirl, who might know about being a womyn in a man's world, reacts instead as the obedient eye candy the writer (stanford sherman) wanted her to be. The vitriolic nature of this attack passing itself off as good fun, is almost too much to be believed. Grownups actually wrote this, and children actually watched. For an addendum, see "The Great Escape/The Great Train Robbery", for an object lesson in the value we placed on old/ugly and young/pretty wimyn. Notice how i optimistically used the past tense there?
-The Joke's On Catwoman (3)
Speaking of feminism (and racism, for that matter)...this one's a corker, both blatantly and subtly. Blatantly, let's observe a Gotham jury of your peers (that is, if you happen to be pink-skinned with an X chromosome). More subtly (and amusingly), catwoman and joker team up, yet in this partnership she provides the goons, hideout, and wheels. He just coasts along like an entitled ponce, probably not even contributing gas money to the kittymobile. I'm sure there are no wimyn out there who can relate...

Riptide 4

What do you do when you've come to an open mic to do some thoughtful originals, but the local sports club just won a championship game on the bar's big screen, and the boozy crowd won't settle down? You do this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc6ygjGSsPE

mj epilogue

I just finished listening to "Unity: The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson".
It's brimming with joy!
A bit much with the percussion to my western ear, but...
So joyous. Michael touched that in us...tapping the need we have to lose our minds in communal celebration...infectious marriages of rhythm and melody and lyric in songs of joy or longing...did anyone ever do that better?
Of course, in retrospect (and fullish possession of the truth), it's easy to see his life as driven by demons almost none of us might comprehend. A child abuse survivor, revisiting his horrors on other innocents. How early in his life must he have been aware that one day there might be a reckoning...and how relentlessly did that knowledge drive him to keep creating music of hope and love...insinuating himself into all our lives, trying to buffer himself against the hatred that might one day be his only reward?
"Beware the overachievers". If that isn't a truism, it should be.
But oh how we wanted that joy, michael! You delivered. You gave, we took, then turned it back out into the world in so many ways...the bursting enthusiasm of the performers on the album i just heard...convicts doing the Thriller dance in a prison yard, and...
Once, i was on a moving crew, waiting for an abominably slow elevator. One of us, probably me, started singing the bass line to "I Want You Back". Someone picked up the guitar line, then someone the vocal, until all five of us were singing and smiling. Our little group was black, and brown, and white...and none of that mattered, because that moment belonged to us all.
There is an inevitable amount of back-turning, of course. This past year, i taught myself a ukulele version of "The Way You Make Me Feel". I improved the lyrics. It was perfectly silly and joyous. And now, i can't imagine i'll ever play it again. At what point does the bad someone did, erase all the good?
Do i forgive him?
Gulp.
Bloody underwear.
Yes.
I must, for he is one of us. He is all of us.
I don't imagine that he's resting in peace. I don't imagine he's anything but dead.
We failed him. And he failed others in turn.
Even though my mj cds are gone, i don't think i'll ever erase the joy of his music in my heart.

coltrane

It took a long time for me to come around to john coltrane's music, despite the fact that he was the most famous sideperson on perhaps the greatest album ever. I resisted in large part because of john's non-secular inclinations, but when i finally heard an entire album (which by chance was GIANT STEPS), i was blown away. I'd never heard music so clearly wrestle with its own possibilities.
Are you surprised by the absence of trane's "masterpiece", A LOVE SUPREME, on the following list? I initially dismissed miles' veiled dismissal of that work, as motivated by the typical competitive jealousies of bonded alphas. But davis was right...it's a simplistic appeal to god-oriented longing, and looked at objectively, it treads no musical ground trane hadn't trod before...and arguably not as brilliantly. It's truer to say that ASCENSION is the one trane "religious experience", transcending the boundaries of convention...though as fascinating as that album is, it doesn't measure up musically. Here's the masterpiece, and the others that come close.
JOHN COLTRANE'S GREATEST ALBUMS
-GIANT STEPS (1960)
Has there ever been a more appropriate title? You can almost literally feel the sound of metaphorical elbows pushing hither and yon.
-AFRICA/BRASS (1961)
Somehow both laid-back and grand. Most of the album never strays from the key of F, yet it's utterly enthralling.
-OLE' (1962)
More entrancing than its likely inspiration, SKETCHES OF SPAIN.
-THE JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET PLAYS (1965)
"Chim Chim Cheree" elicits an initial groan, sounding like yet another pandering cover...but before long, your eyes might pop as you wonder whether you've ever heard a more perfect sax solo. Just impossibly muscular and graceful. "Brazilia" is mesmerizing, "Nature Boy" features a bed of dissonant strings underscoring a magisterial solo, and "Song of Praise" is a drum/sax dialogue that feels like being inside a desert wind.
-INTERSTELLAR SPACE (1967)
I didn't imagine any of his "free jazz" entries would make this list...but this album-length duet with drummer/percussionist rashied ali is breathtaking. Even with a smattering of blats and shrieks, it's mind-blowing. Take away chords and scales, and focus on one musical voice flying free, like a mythological bird taking bites out of the ether. Ali's drumming is relentless and unself-concsious.
STRAY GEMS
"After the Rain"
"My Little Brown Book"
"Alabama"
"Wise One"

"What the Hell Happened"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by bruce hornsby
I think one doesn't want to hear songs that are TOO on the nose on this day ("All Things Must Pass", "Days are Numbers", "Dust in the Wind", "Lost Soul"...), but bruce is the first artist to have two songs herein. Of course, miles will have two too (but not from TUTU).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8M4aAfttpo

"The Moral Arc"

(How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom)
-by michael shermer
2015
One of those exceedingly rare books in which you can actually feel yourself getting smarter as the chapters roll by. The central thesis is that since the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, humynity has been on a measurably upward moral swing (and in the big picture, a stunningly speedy one), a direct result of the embrace of science over superstition. So many of our ancient inhumynities are based upon assumptions (wimyn and non-pinks inferior, etc.) which science conclusively de-pants. And this process will only continue, as we accumulate more data which shows that democratic, egalitarian, free-trade societies flourish (a brilliant example being North and South Korea over the past half-century), and that as autocracies decrease, so does war. Notwithstanding a media that feeds us unrelenting images of violence and deprivation, shermer contends that a smaller percentage of the world's population are impoverished and a smaller percentage die from violence, than at any time in recorded history. Slavery is outlawed everywhere, rape is outlawed in all western states, and the death penalty/torture are almost universally outlawed...nor have you seen many witch-burnings lately. Compare all that with just a century or two ago.
The driving force is the expansion of the moral sphere, those to whom we show ethical consideration. Not long ago, this included only our families, then our tribe...but it has grown to encompass the entire humyn race (and now beyond). The advent of game theory has contributed to the rejection of the winner/loser mentality. Shermer details the moral march from civil rights to wimyn's rights to gay rights to animal rights. He contrasts retributive and restorative justice, to show the future (and for New Zealand, the present) of jurisprudence. He graphs the statistical superiority of non-violent protest over violent. An in-depth analysis of nazi Germany shows how easy it is for any state to backslide...a lesson which probably would have been hammered with more force had this book been written post-2016.
Shermer writes with style, humor, concision, and statistics. He perhaps plays a bit fast and loose with his contention that all prehistoric humyns were startlingly violent, as he lumps pre- and post-agricultural people together. And the latter half of the first chapter drags. But get through that, and it's sparkling sailing. This is a work of far-reaching breadth, which belongs on the must-read list of any thinking humyn.

america's judicial flaws

The american judicial system is flawed and compromised, perhaps irreparably. Our culture in general is steeped in barbarism that will horrify anyone from the not-so-distant future, but let's focus on the specifics of how we mete out justice in the U.S.A. (mandatory minimums are bad, but they don't even crack the big four). In descending order...
1) CAGING SENTIENT BEINGS IS A CRIME AGAINST LIFE
...and makes convicts worse people, not better. The scientific data that bears this out is swiftly accumulating. I'd like to call this new information, but the natives of this continent had very effective judicial systems, and would have been appalled at the thought of locking someone in a cage.
2) JUSTICE FOR PROFIT IS JUSTICE BLIND (IN THE BAD WAY)
The newest entry into the big four. Making prisons independent of the state and profit-based, encourages corruption of the system and escalating inhumynity within prison walls. Capitalism has shown itself incapable of protecting the humyn rights of law-abiding citizens who are poor. How do you think it treats "less-than-citizens"?
3) WE SEEK THE WINNER, NOT THE TRUTH
The adversarial system is one in which neither side is interested in honesty. This leads to profound immorality and corruption. Imagine instead all parties focused on one goal - truth.
4) WE FOCUS ON THE OFFENDER, NOT THE VICTIM
Our system is vengeance-based, and ignores any responsibility we might have to help victims of crime. For victims who don't believe in vengeance, a punitive system only increases the suffering of all parties. Over the past two decades, New Zealand has been replacing it's retributive system with a restorative one, focused on the victim's needs.

"Virtual Insanity"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by Jamiroquai
If my feet can still shuffle on the day i die, if my legs have any lingering leap, if i can only wiggle one little finger, play this song and dance with me...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE

Riptide 3

Two more songs i debuted at the Riptide open mic this week - "The Raw Dog Blues" and "Sexy Fuckers". When i walked out of the bar at the end of the performance, i laughed at the trainwreck i'd just left. The second song felt pretty great, like i'd won the crowd back, but the first one...i never imagined i'd post this link for you here. I very nearly stopped performing mid-song, to put everyone out of our misery. It felt just horrible...i could barely hear my own "bass" plucking, the bar background noise never quieted down like it did for my second song, i kept screwing up the fingerings, my kazoo string got caught in my uke strings, pretty much no one was doing the shout-backs i'd given them...and the song itself is so strange that i was suddenly sure it was a writing disaster which i should never perform anywhere ever again. Which was a mortifying thought, as i'd already promised to perform it later this week, as part of a set with another singer who has a very well-written PRO-condom song. That was my inspiration for this song - his infectious tune was so lyrically banal, that i decided the world needed an anti-condom song to balance galactic karma. I initially abandoned my effort after about a week, convinced that not even I could write a bitchin' anti-condom song. It finally came together...
But as i got to my bike in the street, a funny thing happened. This fellow followed me from inside, saying his girlfriend had dared him to tell me how amazing they found my song. I smiled and said "The second one?" And he said NO, the first! My mind was blown. We talked for a few minutes, his smile never fading. I guess the lesson is, disasters are not always what they seem. Listening to it now, it's not nearly so awful as it felt. It's rough, to be sure, and the bass line is way too quiet...but perhaps you'll hear the seed of a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser which will be performed by me (and covered by others) many thousands of times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLOZXGdFzoA

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by Pink Floyd
There is no more perfect song in this world to play late at night when you're all alone, by the light of a single candle...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXircX3VdM

good young whatsername

I had a beautiful moment a few weeks ago. A moment of the most unexpected, delirious, intimate humyn contact, bursting with possibility...the kind of intimacy we all need to stay sane, and of which i've had basically none for over a year.
I walked away from that moment. I practically ran.
Since then i've returned to the scene twice, hoping to meet her again. "Never fail to seize a moment" shouldn't be so bitter a lesson...it shouldn't come laden with the fear of lost opportunity resulting in permanent sadness.
I was at an open mic...a cafe i'd been to four or five times, and had decided that was enough, as the energy was too new agey spiritual for me. It was a kava bar, a kind of tea that supposedly gives the loving disinhibitions of alcohol without the deleterious effects. The reason i'd come back that night was a connection with one of the workers. She'd been so loving, giving beautiful hugs and an offer of massage (This was the second cafe worker with whom i'd experienced amazing hugs and a seemingly open door to friendship, but both times their energy withdrew - the coincidence was so pronounced that the cynic in me wondered whether they were coached in patron-baiting...or just taking too much of their own product?).
Over the past decade, i've been lowering my emotional walls. Great things feel more wonderful, but awful things (the loneliness, fear, and aggression that permeate this world) are so keen it's like a slow drowning...which brings with it an erosion of my ability to never get involved in a relationship that isn't fully healthy for all involved. As you connect more to the physical and emotional alienation around us, you become more feral and predatory. I was always so good at not treating other people as a means to an end, even if it meant sacrificing potential romance...but when you haven't been loved intimately for weeks, months, or years, you start to wonder what you might be capable of.
As for romance itself...the self-absorption we're taught as children, and how ALL relationships become reduced to ongoing negotiation - "I'll give you THIS if you give me THAT"...we pretend we're not mercenary...
But we lie. Usually to ourselves most of all.
Having reached "middle age" without tasting the deep romance i've grown ever more capable of, i've insanely speculated that the only way to transcend all that would be to give my next lover ANYTHING. To be absolutely whatever she asked, without considering whether it was right for me. Perhaps 100% radical giving might be the only way to prompt someone else to rise to the same level. Stupid? Yes. I could find myself in a situation that consumed my life and crippled my artistic gifts. Yet on top of everything, i've also had relentless impregnation fantasies.
Anyway, back at that beautiful moment...she sat down across from me, and we shared a look of recognition. We'd met before, but...
I couldn't remember where or when. She rose to offer me a hug, and it was so instantly beautiful i didn't know how to cope. This hug was potentially legendary. The way she pulled me to her, my lips against her neck...it was a hug that seemed to promise anything. I broke it off before i lost my composure. I returned to my chair, half-pretending nothing special had happened.
Had i sat by her, we'd almost certainly have held hands, probably left together, and very possibly have shared the night. Instead, i soon left alone.
Why??
For a host of reasons that seemed "sensible", and probably are. In a lost world though, sensible and self-destructive are often synonyms. Firstly...i couldn't remember her name or where we'd met! I was pretty sure it was an open mic, but could recall no details. Surely she deserved better.
Also, i was still smitten with that cafe worker. Despite my affinity for "love the one you're with", i've never been able to shift gears so quickly.
Plus, my intuition said she might be too young, and not bright enough. She was twentysomething, probably closer to the start of that decade than the end. I've always striven to not care about age, which is the correct attitude - except in this all-or-nothing world. I once believed i could love anyone, but you ignore the mandates of this jealous/possessive world at your peril, so if you don't feel an irresistible pull, stay away. Otherwise, an explosion of unhappiness is just a ticking clock.
What a horrible way to think. It negates all the wonderful things we might have to give so many people, and receive from so many others.
"Irresistible pulls" are rare, though. Mutual ones, more so. You can go years waiting.
I also left because she was maybe out of shape. I HATE caring about that! The lust for physical beauty isn't unnatural, but it's magnified beyond any proportion in this airbrushed culture. It's not pure shallowness - i like athletic wimyn because i want a lover who can share the physical part of my life. It's taken me decades to get to a point where, under the right circumstances, i don't care if my lover is out of shape...but the broken child in me still longs for the hardbody.
Also, her eastern european heritage isn't my type.
Ach, such bullshit in us all. She's just a humyn who needs love.
I've dreamed of giving her that love every day since.
Fourteen days later, i finally remembered where we'd met. Don't throw heavy objects at me - it was at that same open mic, the previous week. Yes, i'm that dumb. We had shared some eye contact, and i was attracted. One of my musical friends tried hard to "pick her up", and she wanted no part of it. He should have taken the hint sooner. I think if that hadn't happened, i would have offered to walk her wherever she was going, because she left the cafe alone, and we shared some more sweet eye contact as she left.
The next week, i didn't remember any of it. Don't be hard on me. Some weeks, i go to six or seven open mics.
What was it that attracted me to her that first night, despite my intuitive misgivings? Was it simply her eyes that shone without any of the well-earned cynicism of wimyn over thirty?
So here i am, still going to an open mic i've moved on from spiritually, just on the chance she'll return. Which as mentioned, might be terrible for me. I've long since learned though, that if you try to live by pure rationality, you'll almost certainly be alone.
Is it possible i'm way too much "in my head" over all this? Um, sure. Is it possible she just wanted someone to hold? I suppose. Could she be as bright as me?? Well...
Intuition is a bizarre beast, and my own explorations therein might make ME the loopy new ager to a good rational empiricist. I usually feel like i know everything about a possible relationship within ten seconds of meeting someone. Maybe i'm too cynical, just because i feel like i've never met a female of my own species. What do you do if the womyn of your dreams might not exist? Do you love the one you're with, condemning them to being a consolation prize? Too much in my head, i'm too much in my head, in this bullshit all or nothing world...
Do i sound rational? I suppose i am, in a fashion. My descent into the lowered walls of semi-insanity is something i can still be objective about. I remember when i discovered the truism "never get involved with someone who's drowning". To live that from an insider's perspective is...fascinating, especially when you've got gallows humor and appreciate irony. Like this paradox - the more years of resensitized/underloved damage that pass, the more i need uncomplicated physical/emotional healing. Yet the accumulating wisdom of those years also shrinks the pool of humyns who might love me with real understanding.
It leads you to a point where you think you might settle for anything...and do anything to get it.
If i become rich, i'm going to have tons of touch in my life. What a tragic indictment of our culture, that that's one of the few salvations i can imagine.

Riptide 2

My second Youtube appearance, again courtesy of the Riptide Bar open mic. Two new songs, "The Not-Dyin', Sci-Fyin' Blues" and "Confused".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_Cuz6e9hA

"In the Air Tonight"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by phil collins
Most air-drummed drum fill ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1_OfmrPAfo

Riptide!

My set this week at the Riptide Bar, in Sunset by the beach...and my first YouTube performance. I did "Treesexual" and "Kill the Blues". Bars aren't my best venue, though this one was nice. Sadly, you hear the chatter in the back room, but in my room they were pretty entranced. I didn't do the kazoo solo on the second song, because i'm too intimidated still...it's challenging enough to achieve blues on a ukulele. Next time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2nfgiMvTRw

"F*CKED"

(BEING SEXUALLY EXPLORATIVE AND SELF-CONFIDENT IN A WORLD THAT'S SCREWED)
-by corinne fisher & krystyna hutchinson
2017
Corinne and krystyna distill the essence of their "Guys We Fucked: The Anti-Slut Shaming Podcast" into a book. The podcast is a forum for open, shameless talk about an activity we all do (or if we don't, it defines us just as much). This book is alternately wonderful and worrisome - you'll cheer at the warts-and-all positivity, the denial of shame, and the glorious embrace of healthy sexuality. You'll laugh at their wry observations and anecdotes. It's easy to see how they've gathered many followers, and inspired listeners to share their most intimate secrets. On the whole, you'll be quite proud of these two.
But for every nine times you cheer, you'll cringe once. You might find yourself wishing they'd waited a decade or three before writing this book - one can't help thinking they'll be so much wiser and more centered down the road, and that they're still too caught up in the ego games and disney diarrhea endemic to our stunted society.
Part of it is just lacking the courage of one's convictions. Krystyna condemns the crippling effect that possessiveness has on relationships...but then pivots and embraces said jealousy. Corinne almost says that everyone would be better off not playing the games at all...but also turns back and runs the other way. Her trainwreck of a chapter, "Relationshipping", is the low point of the book, because in almost everything else she writes, she's the more advanced of the two.
If i'm overly critical, it's only because it's so easy to root for them. They are significantly sharper than most twentysomethings. My favorite corinne quote - "Don't get me wrong, I'm still miserable, but at least that misery has nothing to do with a man."
A brilliant, funny, and very nearly great book.

"There'll Be Some Changes Made"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by mark knopfler & chet atkins
Chet and mark trade laughs and licks. Has there ever been a more glorious celebration of this thing called guitar?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pklluASxfA

"What Love Is"

(and what it could be)
-by carrie jenkins
2017
A philosopher's take on our evolving attitudes toward love. Jenkins does a sterling job of synthesizing the history of love philosophy (a branch that's disparaged and disregarded within the field), and argues that elevated attention be paid, for what could be more essential than our feelings about our feelings?
If you're a philosopher, you'll love this book. If academic incursions cause you to drift, read chapter 3 and the coda, for the history of our most prominent philosophers' attitudes on love (and jenkins' recommendations). The giant of the field, bertrand russell, was advocating open marriage almost a century ago. Though russell didn't disparage homosexuality, and believed in premarital sex for all, he also had an unspoken heteronormative assumption - that love, marriage, and parenting are about one man and one womyn. He also bought into amatonormativity, the notion that a life without romantic love (and offspring) is meaningless. Jenkins touches upon nietzsche's misogyny and schopenhauer's double standards, then delves into writers from de beauvoir to the present who are trying to give love a more humynistic bent. She's unafraid to criticize the hyper-progressives, as when she takes "Sex at Dawn" to task for trying to replace a monogamous paradigm with its opposite, ignoring the possibility that the truth may lie in the middle. Hmmm.
The main divide jenkins focuses on is the gap between love as biological imperative and cultural construct. She tries to reconcile those views. How much freedom is really coming? As conservative voices defend "one true love forever", jenkins is guardedly optimistic. Will jealousy lose the sanction of the moralists (and screen/song writers)? Will temporary marriage become the norm? Will marriage disappear? Whither polyamory?? Will the paradigm of romantic love (which has propped up classism, racism, and homophobia) be replaced by one based on biology? Will the connection between love and private property be severed? Will private property itself (whether over a love partner or material resources) fade away???
All (save that last, which is just me) are wonderful questions to which carrie directs her keen eye. Her writing is fluid, and she has skin in the game, as she talks openly about her life and what it means to be unconventional (she certainly is - don't take my word for it). Her humynistic, scientific analysis is unerringly spot-on. A delightful read.