tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50068734039150044452024-03-06T00:21:49.563-08:00Gonzorilla It's A Jungle Out ThereStories and Biographies about Music, Politics, Celebrities and Dead Rock StarsBrian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-1568979638930428632017-10-02T18:57:00.000-07:002017-10-11T16:27:24.994-07:00Tom Petty Running Down a Rock and Roll Dream<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Into The Great Wide Open</span><br />
October 2, 2017</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
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</center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">Tom Petty was all about heart, until his own gave out.</span></center><br />
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Nobody said getting old would be fun, but the death of Tom Petty from a heart attack at 66, just makes our collective aging process seem lonelier and more desperate. (At press time, he had been taken off life support but was technically still alive) <br />
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Tom Petty was a selfless artist who continually stood up to record companies at his own expense. He was generous and supportive of countless other musicians, and maybe harnessed the best rock band for pure chops, ever. Ask Bob Dylan who handpicked The Heartbreakers to replace The Band on several worldwide tours. <br />
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Hailing from Gainesville, Florida, Tom Petty moved to L.A. in 1975 with his band, Mudcrutch, and was signed to Shelter Records. A year later, he released the single “American Girl,” and from that point forward, his career never looked back. Over the next 42 years, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were an encyclopedia of rock and roll. Being from the South, they easily mixed Southern Rock with Cali studio finesse (Skynyrd meets The Byrds). <br />
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They also married sixties Garage Rock, like The Standells, with Americana folk and country. Tom Petty was Neil Young without all the personal drama. His style forged Del Shannon guitar licks with British Invasion R&B. The Heartbreakers’ cover of The Animals, “Don’t Bring Me Down,” was fierce and unrelenting, soulful and defiant. In some ways, you could compare Petty to Paul Shaffer’s house band on David Letterman. Not only could The Heartbreakers master any rock and roll style, they were frequently better at it than the originals.<br />
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Tom Petty was a music historian and facilitator. In Jimmy Carter-type fashion, he managed to corral the egos of Bob Dylan and George Harrison and form the supergroup Traveling Wilburys, which also gave us an 11th hour taste of the brilliance of Roy Orbison, weeks before Orbison passed. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers toured with Bob Dylan in the 80’s, which was a treat, not only for fans, but for Bob, who was awed by their cooperative, laid-back musical taste and once declared Mike Campbell, “the greatest guitarist I ever worked with.” (Hopefully Robbie Robertson wasn’t listening).<br />
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If rock and roll is not truly dead, as Gene Simmons recently said, most of its original practitioners are. Some deaths are expected (like Weiland and Lemmy), others, such as Chris Cornell and Tom Petty, hit us out of left field, like a flat tire on your way out of town for a long vacation. Rock, like other obsolete forms of art, must be cherished, preserved and handed down to generations unlucky enough to have missed it. To rail against its loss by blaming the disappearance on American mall-kids who took up rap instead, may have some validity, but it serves no purpose. One of the first Twitter responders to offer sympathy to Petty’s family was Chuck D.<br />
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Tom Petty once said, “Fuck politics, Rock and Roll is about heart.” Petty always had plenty of it until his own gave out on him. Life is short my friends. Celebrate every moment of it and never lose the feeling of liberation that the music gave you the first time you heard it. I have included a link here to some of the best Petty interviews that capture the brilliance, bluntness and balls that made him our national rock n’ roll curator and keeper of the flame.<br />
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<a href="https://www.axs.com/5-best-interview-moments-of-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers-75934" target="_blank">5 best interview moments of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers</a><br />
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<!-- End GoStats JavaScript Based Code -->Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-13131339999403451542017-05-26T21:56:00.000-07:002017-05-29T19:36:43.068-07:00Was Chris Cornell a Martyr for Our Depression?<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Jesus Christ Pose</span><br />
May 22, 2017</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
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</center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">Chris Cornell’s suicide is a shock to the system</span></center><br />
<br />
It took a very long weekend for me to process the tragic suicide of Soundgarden singer and front man, Chris Cornell. This was not a slow fade to black like Scott Weiland. The news came out of left field and the shock has yet to wear off. There has been no shortage of analysis, but little real insight into what was certainly an unexpected and devastating act of resignation.<br />
<br />
I’ve always believed that intelligence, insight and a sense of humor are the keys to survival, even when depression is so overwhelming that a human being is obsessed with morbid thoughts night and day. Chris Cornell was the smartest, most articulate and seemingly well-balanced musician the “Grunge” movement ever produced.
Cornell had it all. <br />
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Soundgarden was one of the first groups to join Seattle’s groundbreaking Sub Pop label and the first to break nationally by signing to a major label (A&M Records in 1988). They provided a template of how to balance commercial instincts with artistic integrity for countless Northwest bands (like Nirvana). When Soundgarden disbanded in 97, Cornell made a seamless transition to a solo career and later was the engine driver behind Audioslave, one of the most successful rock bands of the 00’s.<br />
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Chris was a stable family man, physically blessed beyond belief and the owner of a spectacular, five-octave vocal range. Because he so effortlessly blended punk and metal, Cornell was loved by the world, respected by everyone – a senior spokesman for all of rock and roll. Only Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl have higher “Q scores.”<br />
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But success forces you to continually meet or exceed both financial and artistic expectations because your legacy and your bankroll depends on it. That's a lot of pressure. Cornell was notoriously moody and temperamental. He had struggled with drugs and done his share of rehab. There were times onstage when his band mates were hapless bystanders if Chris was feeling ornery and difficult. His often gentle and easygoing nature served as a neat front for a brooding intensity and struggle for perfection that was rarely satisfied. <br />
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At the core of Cornell’s personality was a frightening level of passivity and nihilism. He often accessed the identical “Fuck you and all of this” worldview that made Kurt Cobain throw in the towel. Because of the tremendous strain to hit those notes that few rock singers could reach, Chris' voice had been partially blown out years ago. His stage manner increasingly gave the impression of a person who'd rather be doing something else. <br />
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There have been many observations regarding Cornell’s lyrics. The subject matter was darker than Edgar Allen Poe at the bottom of a well. Songs like “Fell on Black Days,” “Let Me Drown,” “The Day I Tried to Live” and “Like Suicide,” left little to the imagination. But this was prose inherent to the musical genre that Soundgarden was in. Mick Jagger wrote some pretty dark lyrics and it never mattered. It always seemed that Soundgarden was mostly bleak in a theatrical sense. These were smart guys who understood the dumbness of living out your song’s themes to your own detriment.<br />
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Is there any way to find some closure to what led Chris Cornell to hang himself in a Detroit hotel room, two hours after a show and in the middle of a sold-out tour? Can we process this in the slightest? As someone who has sunk to levels of depression that only ex-girlfriends appreciate, I can attest that the outer trappings of life will not save you. <br />
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Even self-insight is not enough. If the brain is chemically wired wrong, it has a fascinating way of processing and rationalizing data to make you believe that no matter what you accomplish, you are still a failure. It leads to all-or-nothing, black and white thinking that only recognizes when you fuck something up, and rarely celebrates what you have to be grateful for. Ironically, this can also be the mental make-up of very successful and creative people.<br />
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<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFuchhYkies-6zXh1lHXe-cWwjGKWrAwXE1G0MA8tlAZ5VdSR1xwLd_QYYhjp9XpfrO9qZTV-Sr-AjC7fr85KzFNmYgn3WPgVaR0AwIJSwCpnZeFmfzo_49f4RAaX3r9hQsdp8ryQVbg/s1600/see-photos-from-chris-cornell-last-show-detroit-d74806ba-99e1-40b4-94b3-1edf82e5a6e4.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFuchhYkies-6zXh1lHXe-cWwjGKWrAwXE1G0MA8tlAZ5VdSR1xwLd_QYYhjp9XpfrO9qZTV-Sr-AjC7fr85KzFNmYgn3WPgVaR0AwIJSwCpnZeFmfzo_49f4RAaX3r9hQsdp8ryQVbg/s320/see-photos-from-chris-cornell-last-show-detroit-d74806ba-99e1-40b4-94b3-1edf82e5a6e4.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="580" data-original-height="325" /></a>
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<span style="font-size: 79%;">In Detroit, at Soundgarden's last show, May 17, 2017</span></center><br />
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Let’s add another scenario. You are Chris Cornell, arguably one of the three or four best rock singers in history. You’ve accomplished everything possible and are at the summit of your profession. Yet, you still feel like shit. Now what? The depression is woven into your soul and there’s nowhere to go but down. <br />
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Maybe you’ve had a bad week/month/year. A lot of your contemporaries have died. You’re feeling the downward spiral that soldiers who are lone survivors in battle go through. You ask yourself. Who were my brothers in arms? Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone. Kurt Cobain in Nirvana. Layne Staley in Alice in Chains. Even Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots. THEY ARE ALL GONE. Why am I still here? I have done it all before and better.<br />
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Now you finish a discombobulated live show in a classic music city, Detroit, not far from Illinois, where your musical journey began. Your mind and body are tired. You’ve contemplated ending this for years. An impulsive sense of anguish hovers over every thought. How can you finish this tour? Are you headed for a career disaster, like when Nirvana bailed on headlining Lollapalooza ‘94? Why tell the band and your agent and your family and put them through all that again? It’s your problem and you know what to do. Just take care of biz, man. Fucking finish it.<br />
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I present these thoughts only as possible theories for a tortured mental state, a catalyst for Chris Cornell to blow up his outside world. What's clear is that we’ve lost another chapter of our youth, in an age where everything good seems to be going and everything bad seems to be staying. When a man with so much to live for chucks it all, what are we as lowlier worker ants supposed to think? It certainly seems to lower the standard for the phrase, "Nothing to live for." Cornell’s passing could even be interpreted as a challenge, a suicide gauntlet thrown at the feet of anyone with worse circumstances to get a clue.<br />
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As of this writing, the Detroit press is reporting that Cornell called his wife, Vicky, from the dressing room after the show to say, “I am just tired.” This is what alarmed her enough to call for help. His depressed state of mind was not about an extra Ativan pill or two, despite what celebrity ambulance chaser and rehab gasbag, Dr. Drew Pinsky, proclaimed to any media outlet who would listen.<br />
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Many years ago, my cousin dropped by my parents’ house for the holidays. He brought along his best friend, Mark Silver. Mark’s sister is Susan Silver, formerly the biggest manager in the Seattle music scene and Chris Cornell’s ex wife. The couple had just gone through a divorce. But Susan said that Chris had taken his acoustic guitar to a holiday party and sang Christmas songs for all the children. They sat around him in a circle, mesmerized and thrilled. <br />
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This is how I choose to remember a man who was not only an incredible singer, lyricist and guitar player -- he was a trailblazer who made it a little easier for every artist who followed him to be heard. Chris Cornell is gone but his work lives on, any time music is close by. Rock is about aggression and rage, but Cornell demonstrated how it can also include grace, humility and a vast, sensitive intelligence that cuts deep.
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<!-- End GoStats JavaScript Based Code -->Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-92025178526734060642016-01-22T20:53:00.001-08:002016-01-23T05:53:27.884-08:00Eagles’ Glenn Frey 1948-2016<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">California Dreamin'</span><br />
January 22, 2016</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLkseRrfeGByyreAPEg5ek5kPTv1FwzaPleVWjw62iyT5ITWM7TjAT8oYeNFS8WPqhxJCEhja2MwZq9IRxnjtRj9xVJNTHSvWo1Lrw8wXbndATP8mNGH5xVXxEFYAykVLVHx7MKRD8k6E/s1600/GFreyOTBSB01+-+EDIT+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" height="417" width="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLkseRrfeGByyreAPEg5ek5kPTv1FwzaPleVWjw62iyT5ITWM7TjAT8oYeNFS8WPqhxJCEhja2MwZq9IRxnjtRj9xVJNTHSvWo1Lrw8wXbndATP8mNGH5xVXxEFYAykVLVHx7MKRD8k6E/s1600/GFreyOTBSB01+-+EDIT+2.jpg" alt="Glenn Frey turned rock fans onto country music" title="Glenn Frey turned rock fans onto country music" /></a>
</center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">Glenn Frey turned rock fans onto country music</span></center><br />
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I stopped writing about music a few years ago because all I was doing was writing obits. So here I go again. Music appreciation is a subjective experience. You either like an artist or you don’t. Logic seldom applies to taste. I loved Weiland and Bowie and Lemmy, but I lived through the Eagles and Glenn Frey. I grew up in L.A. and for my pre-punk generation, after The Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds and The Beach Boys faded, the Eagles became our So Cal house band. It was an amazing time. Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, Dan Fogelberg and the beloved Joe Walsh, were mostly immigrants to L.A. who created an extended family of musicians with gorgeous and emotionally-resonant songs.<br />
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In the 70’s, New York and London wielded considerable cultural power. But I have always regarded with suspicion anyone who evaluates art through the perspective of the tagline “avant garde.” It can be a meaningless fashion statement that worships style over substance. There were plenty of bad musicians that critics worshipped who could not write a decent song. The Eagles were always hampered and suspicious of that East Coast snobbery. By the mid-70’s, sentiment seemed corny and no longer cool. Punk was a lather, rinse, repeat of the English Invasion ten years earlier that killed The Beach Boys and sent Brian Wilson into psychotic exile. As Jimi Hendrix mumbled in “Third Stone From the Sun,” “You’ll never hear surf music… again.”<br />
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I have always thought you really aren't a songwriter until you can write a sad love song. Love songs are our oldest and most dependable inspiration. There is nothing wrong about listening to music with a tear in your eye. Even John Lennon, the cynic of cynics, was capable of a stunning tune like “Julia” (about his departed Mom). Love songs are important because they demonstrate strength by exposing the author’s vulnerability and celebrate the positive aspects of humanity by paying respect to our collective heart and soul. Old-school country love songs were often pained romanticism with a profound sense of loss. They could be weepy, but they were always real.<br />
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The Eagles have been accused of homogenizing country music and bastardizing it into calculated Top 40 hits. In reality, they turned a nation of kids onto country music and made it possible for artists like Gram Parsons to get the attention they deserved. “Desperado” (1973) was a monumental concept album that equated rock musicians to outlaws in a narrative with serious literary cred. Without the Eagles, the best country rock songwriters of the 90’s, The Gin Blossoms, would have been just another Tempe bar band.<br />
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Glenn Frey formed the Eagles and they were no doubt, his band. Like Stewart Copeland in the Police who deferred to Sting, Frey gave Don Henley free rein to be the spokesman. But without Frey’s muscular, Detroit rock-purist’s enthusiasm and business sense, the Eagles would have been The Don Henley Experience. Frey’s jockish cool was the perfect counterpoint to Henley’s sometimes pretentious wordsmith abilities and massive ego. Frey was the average-guy dude who put the rock in the Eagles’ rock and roll.<br />
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The Eagles were the most commercially successful rock band in history. They sold more records than the Beatles or the Stones. But they never sold out to be commercial. They were popular because they were stupendous songwriters and those songs have not aged in the slightest. The next time you are home alone for an evening and taking a break from social media, listen to Eagles catalog nuggets like “Hollywood Waltz,” “Ol’ ’55,” “Doolin Dalton,” “Outlaw Man,” “Good Day in Hell” and “The Last Resort.” No band could vocalize their storytelling better and their unequaled Americana harmonies sounded like The Blue Ridge Mountains meeting the Malibu shoreline.<br />
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I’ve heard a lot of lazy critics throwing together insta-obits like, “The Eagles gave us plenty of peaceful easy feelings and tequila sunrises and made America feel good.” Yeah they did all that, cause Lord knows, the 60’s were not a downer in any way. But they weren’t an invention of Hollywood or a simplistic Top 40 band. Glenn Frey was the face of the Eagles and a confidant, handsome guy he was. He might have had the best hair of any rocker in history and anyone can relate to that.
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-66481639921596171652015-01-09T21:04:00.002-08:002015-01-09T22:29:11.410-08:002015 Rose Bowl: The Oregon Trail to a Championship and Respect<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Florida State Blown Out by Oregon in a Duckwalk</span><br />
January 9, 2015</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjawFRXcx9qQUmtk8-ODiNVOIypUZriDZ0QAzWFPeGNbzmHHhSs5omOLzuGab8-aTlvPlYMed_xVxUrMgehz5J5xHKudl_NWEYwpdghZRFzTxlaHu2KLZcqOD5bulSVXgP7NQYFA-jVodM/s1600/2-Rose2-Color-54p-1024x704+-+Copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" height="324" width="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjawFRXcx9qQUmtk8-ODiNVOIypUZriDZ0QAzWFPeGNbzmHHhSs5omOLzuGab8-aTlvPlYMed_xVxUrMgehz5J5xHKudl_NWEYwpdghZRFzTxlaHu2KLZcqOD5bulSVXgP7NQYFA-jVodM/s400/2-Rose2-Color-54p-1024x704+-+Copy.jpg" /></a></center><br />
<br />
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say, “Respect? I don’t get no respect!”<br />
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In the 2015 Rose Bowl, the first College Football Semifinal playoff game ever, the Oregon Ducks proved that if nobody gives you respect, you can take it like someone’s wallet. On a sunny, chilly winter day in Pasadena, they stole the game from the dazed and confused Florida State Seminoles. The second half of the contest was such a blowout that many fans pulled over their hoodies and exited by the beginning of the fourth quarter.<br />
<br />
The final score was 59-20, but the Ducks beat-down of the Seminoles resonated far beyond the lopsided 39 point victory. The 2015 Rose Bowl was the highest rated program in the history of cable television. It was a passing of the torch from one national power center to another. College football has been dominated for eons by teams from the South.<br />
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These yahoos have hyped their hubris and carved their contempt for the Pac-12 Conference with the kind of blatant disregard that made institutionalized racism a Southern institution. This Rose Bowl was about emotional and physical payback – revenge for the disrespected West Coast and an Oregon team fed up with the label “soft.” It could have been a Dirty Harry sequel. Call it <i>Sudden Impact: Pasadena.</i><br />
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Under the creaky BCS Championship format, which was finally euthanized this year in favor of the more logical four-team playoff, two Southern schools, Alabama and Florida State – both losers in Semifinal Bowl games on New Year’s Day – would have been playing in the newly-minted College Football Playoff title game. Seven of the past eight winners of the BCS National Championship game hailed from the Southeast Conference. Not this year, Gomer, as Oregon and Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State will battle for the prize in Arlington, Texas on Jan 12th.<br />
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If true respect must be earned the hard way, the Oregon Ducks have done so, whether the South is on board with the concept or not. Oregon has been arguably the best team in the 2010’s, the first to win 50 games and the team with the scariest and most productive offense in college football history. Their up-tempo offense, brilliantly designed by former head coach Chip Kelly and handed down like a prized family rifle, initiated a play every 16 seconds in the Rose Bowl. Time waits for no one, especially opposing defenses.<br />
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It’s tough to stop an offense that sets up that fast, and the Seminoles scrambled to get players to the line of scrimmage in time for the snaps. Heisman Trophy winner, Marcus Mariota, the most gifted college quarterback of the decade, orchestrated a spread offense that moved with inhuman precision and accuracy. Oregon chews up defenses like a pit bull shredding up your favorite shoe. Nine times this year, they have produced touchdown drives in 36 seconds or less. The Ducks often start games slowly, but only four teams since 2011 have been able to contain and beat them for four quarters.<br />
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In boxing, you can often predict a winner just by how the fighters chose their entrances. Football is likewise and it’s possible to hedge your bets by how loose and confident the players look in the tunnel heading to the field. While Florida State appeared hesitant and a bit overwhelmed pre-game, Oregon players were bouncing around like dozens of mischievous Muhammad Ali’s, poised and bratty at the same time, straining at the bit to wreak havoc.<br />
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To understand how the cocky 2015 Oregon Ducks are not the same nervous bunch that choked under expectation and lost the 2011 BCS title game against Auburn, one needs to appreciate safety Erick Dargan. The team leader in tackles with 70, he also leads the Pac-12 in interceptions with five. A smart and fearless competitor, he played a backup role until finally getting his starring shot as a senior this year. Dargan’s fierce play, along with his cold, pitiless stare embody the best qualities of “thug” street toughness without the unnecessary byproducts.<br />
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<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGUtFXYhSOVUHLSiJ3Gac9mtijjFckf0thYhscSSRfRgJJb1OLyzX9cylzViWI5BhhEIkWe9DhD0oOEakkbhxnubMoRZCHlh3mW2Q13K4WSWBzICz27Z_Ey24Ydnt-qI5G3tJh9JaDTI/s1600/Erick+Dargan+Oregon.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGUtFXYhSOVUHLSiJ3Gac9mtijjFckf0thYhscSSRfRgJJb1OLyzX9cylzViWI5BhhEIkWe9DhD0oOEakkbhxnubMoRZCHlh3mW2Q13K4WSWBzICz27Z_Ey24Ydnt-qI5G3tJh9JaDTI/s320/Erick+Dargan+Oregon.jpg" title="Erick Dargan"/></a>
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<span style="font-size: 79%;">If you have questions about Oregon’s toughness, come see safety Erick Dargan.</span></center><br />
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Championships are forged from balanced teams and predatory gladiators like Dargan. This latest version of the Ducks is an opportunistic, attacking group of battle-tested veteran seniors and sensational freshmen like “can’t be knocked off his feet” running back, Royce Freeman. These are supremely talented guys who understand it is their time and are too young, and full of life to be scared of anything like losing. Oregon’s reputation as an entitled team that gambles is more about calculated risk-taking to frustrate and cripple the opponents’ will to fight. Part of the mystique is the snappy and garish, sometimes goofy, Nike uniforms that change color schemes every week. If you can pimp the other team, they are left with the intimidating impression that you don’t give a fuck. To walk onto a field dressed like that you have to be good.<br />
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Jameis Winston, Florida State’s quarterback and the Heisman Trophy winner last year, also came to play at the Rose Bowl. With his unsavory legal past and murky reputation, Winston is the polar opposite of Oregon’s humble, lovable QB, Marcus Mariota. But he is no less a competitor, and coming into the game, his team was enjoying a 29-game win streak. Winston had not lost since he was a senior in high school. While he often appears exasperated with an air of emotional wreckage, he’s led his team from behind to victory nine times this season. Winston’s grown-man energy was the driving force that kept the game close in the first half. When the halftime show began, the teams were locked in a near statistical dead heat with Oregon ahead by the indifferent score of 18-13.<br />
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Analysts say that winning football games is not just about stats, but about certain key moments that swing the momentum from one side to the other. To beat the Oregon Ducks, you don’t have to play a perfect game, although near-perfect would be desirable. But your team cannot turn the ball over, cannot come out of the Red Zone with only field goals. You can’t come from behind to win, because nobody can play catch-up with Mariota when he is ahead and his offense is firing on all cylinders. Trading scores does not work if you trail Oregon by two or more touchdowns and you can’t stop them from scoring.<br />
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Imagine the night sweats that defensive coordinators must suffer before they play Oregon. If your defense can actually cut off the corners so the Ducks spread-formation plays don’t get many yards after catch, then you’re set up to be attacked down the middle, with Mariota firing strikes through vertical passing lanes. The quarterback who seldom throws from the pocket, threw 56 touchdowns this season. You heard right, 56. Nobody can freeze a defense with a look-off or a play action fake like Oregon’s main man. If your linebackers and D backs hesitate for a moment or commit the wrong way, Mariota, the fastest quarterback to ever play the game, is off and running free. It’s like trying to catch dust in the wind.<br />
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Opportunity lost against the Ducks is opportunity rarely seen again. In the fiercely contested second quarter, Florida State had eight snaps inside the Ducks’ 15 yard-line and came away with only three points. On fourth and goal at the one yard-line, Oregon’s Tony Washington ankle-tackled Winston to save a touchdown. The officials removed another potential FSU touchdown opportunity with a blown non-call of interference on tight end Nick O’Leary in the end zone.<br />
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With two minutes left in the first half, the ACC champs were trailing 18-6. Gaining some footing in their familiar come-from-behind mode, FSU mounted an impressive six-play, 71 yard drive, producing a touchdown to make it a five-point game at halftime. Despite Oregon appearing to have the edge throughout the first two quarters in speed, swagger and stops, the game was knotted up. Neither quarterback had thrown a touchdown. But Mariota did throw only his third interception in 397 attempts, a rare miscue that Florida State failed to convert to points. As fans rushed to be first to the bathrooms, they left a game with little rhythm that felt clumsy and in need of definition.<br />
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From the perspective of the Florida State Seminoles, the third quarter of the Rose Bowl was a dose of the mortality they had rallied against and lucked away from for 29 games. It was a reality check delivered in a brutal series of body blows by an unbeatable opponent who sucked the wind and then the heart from them.<br />
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Oregon’s success lies in the tempo of their offensive attack and a newly gelled defense. Nose guard Alex Balducci and defensive ends Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner were a three-man front that routinely head slapped, sucker punched and muscled their way through five offensive lineman and made the FSU backfield their home. Three players beating five off the ball left Winston on his own and chased from the pocket like a man with a twisted ankle fleeing attack dogs.<br />
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The third quarter began quietly but suddenly turned otherworldly at about the eight minute mark. That’s when Nike CEO and Duck benefactor/mojo man Phil Knight appeared on the sidelines, gestured to the heavens and the sky fell in on Florida State. With the score 25-20, the Ducks shifted into overdrive. Mariota hit receiver Darren Carrington with a sideline bullet that turned into a 56 yard touchdown scamper. FSU running back Dalvin Cook fumbled and Mariota quickly connected again with Carrington for a 30 yard touchdown.<br />
<br />
Florida State is known for having no quit, and mounted a drive to the Oregon 30. Trailing 39-20 on fourth down, this was their opportunity to make it a two-score game. But Jameis Winston’s number was finally up and he stuck the dagger into his own team’s heart. Flushed from the pocket, he tried to make a play and slipped like a throw rug had been pulled from under him. Flopping to the ground, he fumbled the ball backwards. Tony Washington, the Defensive Player of the Game, scooped it up and rumbled 58 yards for another touchdown. Game, set, match.<br />
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The game was a beat-the-traffic score of 52-20 at the start of the fourth quarter. FSU had committed five turnovers in six possessions in the third quarter, leading to four unanswered Ducks touchdowns. In retrospect, it wasn’t that hard to see coming. Oregon is ranked second in the nation in turnover margin (good). The Seminoles are ranked 101st with 12 fumbles and 20 interceptions. Expecting to win a close game against Oregon with those numbers is like leaving a can of lighter fluid inside the fireplace at Thanksgiving dinner and hoping for a quiet meal.<br />
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Oregon head coach, Mark Helfrich’s enjoyed his 29th 50-point game since taking over as the master of the offense. The Ducks racked up 639 yards in total offense. Running back Thomas Tyner was running downhill contributing 124 yards and two touchdowns. Darren Carrington, not exactly a household name, had a career performance with seven catches for 165 yards and two TD’s. Meanwhile, the Oregon defense was performing a Vulcan mind meld with FSU receivers all day – in synch with their every move, cutting off and anticipating routes and harassing Winston to no end.<br />
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As the game’s outcome became inevitable, Florida State had the body language of a man being led to the gallows. Their corner threw in the towel when Mariota took off on his own touchdown run and the defense hardly bothered to line up. Oregon’s bloodthirsty avalanche of tempo, speed and execution sent a message to the world, addressed to the SEC. There’s a new sheriff in town.<br />
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<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6H7_gbcnklZlyKYgQqpL1b_DjRwDgi2L0B4DOFiIsQkCaSCTRGaFzp4f5BFeijKyTTxwD5trcHLTJXRptZrBZ-RZvS6E2rSTbLu8aX5DI3frdlaszRvg2n4eNoh0_NgvNMz0u3GKNic/s1600/IMG_1465.JPG" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="314" width="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6H7_gbcnklZlyKYgQqpL1b_DjRwDgi2L0B4DOFiIsQkCaSCTRGaFzp4f5BFeijKyTTxwD5trcHLTJXRptZrBZ-RZvS6E2rSTbLu8aX5DI3frdlaszRvg2n4eNoh0_NgvNMz0u3GKNic/s320/IMG_1465.JPG" title="The view from Section 28" /></a>
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<span style="font-size: 79%;">The view from Section 28 got better as the game went on</span></center><br />
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For Oregon alumni like myself who saw this final L.A. game of the Mariota era in person, it was hard not to leave the Rose Bowl misty-eyed. It felt like the end of a movie that took five long years to make. The credits haven’t rolled as the College Football Playoff championship game is Monday. The Ducks are six point favorites and Oregon’s first national championship is still 60 minutes away. But what a ride through the 2010’s it has already been. Nothing can replace the excitement and buzz of seeing your old school, with years of unremarkable football distinction, become the rock stars of our time and the media darlings of everyone west of the Cuyahoga River.<br />
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This Rose Bowl win is dedicated to the ghosts. The ghosts of former Ducks: Dan Fouts, Bobby Moore, Joey Harrington, LaMichael James and coach Chip Kelly – the man with the incredible vision who made it possible. This was for all the Oregon fields of dreams that were cut short. For favorite son and track superstar Steve Prefontaine, who died in a single-car accident at 24, before he could bring the Olympic Gold Medal back to Eugene. It was a fist pump for the countless warriors with losing seasons who shed green blood to represent a town best known for rain and a smelly sawmill. But mostly, it was about respect. Whether the Oregon Ducks ever climb this high up the mountain again, respect is something you carry to a place that no one can take away.<br />
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Go Ducks.<br />
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-26733374827000794712014-12-12T22:34:00.000-08:002018-11-08T20:46:27.462-08:00Freelance Copywriter Survival Strategies<center><strong>
<br /><span style="font-size: 180%;">Surviving as a Freelance Copywriter is Up to You</span><br />December 15, 2014</strong></center>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center>
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRg3XRM8WXxd0MhH2X0u3LdDhyScjUMcVaEUdLtu4_65Q3Dp4j9zP07ycKEFPayHtrCrRHncUfPAHdTIxQ2IU2-nhnWGMD9-m4lafqLhSRRvqbcq8aq5FscPexVbQrzCEEeHKhufYqYi8/s1600/don-draper-shrug+Edit+-+Copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRg3XRM8WXxd0MhH2X0u3LdDhyScjUMcVaEUdLtu4_65Q3Dp4j9zP07ycKEFPayHtrCrRHncUfPAHdTIxQ2IU2-nhnWGMD9-m4lafqLhSRRvqbcq8aq5FscPexVbQrzCEEeHKhufYqYi8/s1600/don-draper-shrug+Edit+-+Copy.jpg" height="254" width="400" /></a></center>
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Today’s topic covers some of the strategies for survival as a freelance entertainment copywriter. What exactly is this? Think of Don Draper from <i>Mad Men</i>, only you’re writing ad copy for something far more cool than ketchup or cold cream. You’re in the movie business. Sure, you won’t get passes to the Academy Awards, but many of the people you work for will. I have been an entertainment freelancer for years, contributing copy for over 300 films and TV shows. My work has gone to finish on posters and video boxes for <i>Dances With Wolves</i>, <i>Blade</i> and <i>Buffalo 66</i>.
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This is a tough business and nobody makes much money because writers don’t get paid a whole lot anymore. But the rewards are plenty. Imagine you are walking down the street with a friend and you both notice a 20-foot high billboard for the HBO series <i>Girls</i>. The image is four young women gazing upward into white space. The tagline is “Nowhere to Grow but Up.” And you wrote that. Whip out the iPhone and immediately post the photo. You can’t buy how good that feels.
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If you are starting from scratch, the first thing you will need is a copywriting portfolio.
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A good creative director can spot a talented writer in two seconds, even from a spec ad. Find some taglines and movie synopses you admire and break down their components to replicate them. It’s fairly easy in many software programs to insert your own copy into existing key art and create a finished ad. Work on taglines, synopses, actor bios and sell sheets. Press kits to emulate can be found online. Once you have built a decent portfolio, the next step is to target potential clients.
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LinkedIn is a nice resource. So are the Golden Trailer Awards. Any database that lists agencies to approach is good. TrailerPark.com is one of the industry leaders.
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Most people will be happy to tell you the things that are so great about the biz and how you can still make it, even though the entire industry has been hammered and shrunken by technology. In the late '90s, it was mostly print and broadcast. Now it’s mainly online. But the principles of keeping your sanity have not changed. I am going to tell you things that you won’t find in typical places, but maybe they will help you keep focused and determined.
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<ul style="list-style-type:disc; margin-left:-25px;">
<li>When I was doing this full-time, I made an average of 50 to 100 cold calls for work every week. I kept detailed logs of each prospect, when to call back and what my follow-up strategy would be in each case. If you are afraid of rejection, realize that this is a numbers game. The more people you call/contact, the easier it will get and the better the chance you are going to hook up with someone (kind of like dating). You are not selling Internet bundling packages. You are selling a service that is going to be profitable for both you and your client because you know you can deliver the goods.
</li>
<li>The gatekeepers at studios and agencies are hired to keep people like us away and out of the boss’s hair. Make these gatekeepers your friends. Don’t let them intimidate you. If they are complete a-holes, then move on, you don’t want to work there. But often you can get them to see you as a determined and sincere person and they will do all they can to help you.
</li>
<li>Draw up profiles of all your targeted execs. Find out what they have worked on and any awards. Do your research homework. This will impress and flatter them if you are lucky enough to engage them in a conversation.
</li>
<li>Avoid passive communication like sending out resumes without phone calls or repeated email/text/online follow up. Cold resumes are often tossed in the trash. Rarely does anyone call back from a resume unless you went to the same college as the boss or are friends with one of their best friends.
</li>
<li>Try hard to make them empathize with your career goals. When someone is impressed by any candidate they will go out of their way to help them succeed.
</li>
<li>If you are a beginner, you can work for spec (paid only if copy used) exactly ONCE for the same client. After that, ask them if they could “pay their bills working for free?” and tell them diplomatically that anyone who works for free is getting paid what they are worth. If they get snippy or claim that other writers work for free, move on. There are more clients out there than you think and the harder you look, the more you will find.
</li>
<li>Once you get a client or two, then your job is to not lose them.
</li>
<li>Be aware of idiots in the front office who will absolutely destroy your chances of success at the company. If you find yourself taking copy direction from someone you sense is incompetent, diplomatically confirm with higher-ups that the direction you are being given is what the brass really wants.
</li>
<li>This can be done delicately, but sometimes you just have to be forceful. Better to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m getting mixed messages here and I want to make sure you guys are happy with my work.”
</li>
<li>One reason you are doing this is because your time is valuable. More importantly, if you are sent in the wrong writing direction by a well-meaning but clueless lower level employee, the boss you are working for will usually blame you, the writer.
</li>
<li>Deadlines are the most important facet of this. Whenever possible, get them verified in writing. Even if you agree by phone to deliver them by 5 pm on a Tuesday, send a follow up text or email that confirms that in a casual way. This gives you a back-up note to send to the boss that proves the deal was made for a certain deadline.
</li>
<li>Use a Purchase Order (P.O) whenever you do a job for anyone, and have the fee plainly stated. E-mail is OK to confirm your fee, but some people can claim to lose an e-mail, so I try to make it an official P.O. with my company and address at the top.
</li>
<li>Sometimes no news is good news. Just because you turned in an assignment and didn’t hear back, it doesn’t mean they are unhappy. If you are satisfied with your work and convinced you put in 100% effort, it just stresses you out to project anything negative. Creative Directors are swamped with things to do.
</li>
<li>There is one constant in this. If they like you and you gave them their money’s worth, they will use you again. But often they won’t compliment you in the slightest because they are worried this will cause you to want more money, or, even worse (if they really like you), disappear and start working for their competition.
</li>
<li>The flip side is if they didn’t like the work they will never tell you why. They just won’t use you again.
</li>
<li>When it comes to assignments, always promise less than you can deliver and then deliver more than you promised. Ask for more time than you really need and then give them more copy directions than they asked for. If they ask for 25 taglines, give them 50.
</li>
<li>Rewrites are free. If the first pass isn't exactly on target, let them know that you will write one revision and maybe a little more. But if there are major changes in direction on their end after you submit copy, then the fee needs to be renegotiated. Money really is about time spent. Your time.
</li>
<li>When negotiating fees, be honest but clever. Most budgets are loosely set by companies before they contact freelancers. But there can be considerable wiggle room. If they think you will take bottom dollar, they will presume that you suck. You want to be near the top end of their affordable range. Ask other writers what they charge. Try to find one exec who is sympathetic and ask them straight out what they usually pay. I was once called for a fees quote to write radio spots for the movie <i>Shrek</i>. The woman on the phone asked me what I charged and when I gave them a figure, she told me that my quote was half of what the other writers asked for so I “must not be any good.” I replied, that I would be happy to charge her more if it would make her feel better.
</li>
<li>Friends are good. Industry friends are even better. My best and longest contacts were people with whom I enjoyed a certain camaraderie. There was one guy who was a musician and we were on a great social wavelength. He’d call to give me the background info on an assignment and we would spend most of the conversation talking about bands and gigs and then he would finally say, “Oh yeah, the tagline concepts are blah, blah, blah, same old shit,” and then send me all his coverage to work from. If you can find a relationship with a freelance employer this natural and real, you have struck career gold.
</ul>
I hope I’ve given you a few freelance entertainment copywriting strategies that I spent years figuring out the hard way. Now, as Don Draper would say, “What are you waiting for, a pat on the back?”
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4Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-64361749730955608322014-08-24T22:07:00.000-07:002018-12-14T21:31:18.782-08:00Charles M. Young: Remembering a Pioneer of Punk Rock Journalism<center><strong>
<br /><span style="font-size: 180%;">Rock and Roll<br />Should be Frightening<br />(Not Unlike God)</span><br />August 24, 2014</strong></center>
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<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center>
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvGN7Rp-glew9I-sNReoVztUSIgWtR2Je5aQ6HPtoHGXW-ezwcs_qLbhETo7WThMtI5uNbPDDqeZZhqi0FzlfReK7JguB8CNq6NfSSk8a2bZxskf5ykbS7bmdvj0qOE0ode7sZCBLqUo/s1600/Chuck+Young+Best.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvGN7Rp-glew9I-sNReoVztUSIgWtR2Je5aQ6HPtoHGXW-ezwcs_qLbhETo7WThMtI5uNbPDDqeZZhqi0FzlfReK7JguB8CNq6NfSSk8a2bZxskf5ykbS7bmdvj0qOE0ode7sZCBLqUo/s1600/Chuck+Young+Best.JPG" height="281" width="393" /></a></center>
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On Tuesday, August 19th, my friend, Carlos “Cake” Nunez, called to tell me the sad news that legendary music writer, Charles M. Young had died from a stage four brain tumor. A dozen years ago, Carlos introduced me to Chuck by forwarding him a story I wrote. So it was only fitting that he be the person to inform me that the great CMY had left this earth at 63. <br />
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I had the unique privilege of a 10-year correspondence with Chuck Young that was an irreplaceable source of inspiration and creative ideas. Over the years, we exchanged more than 100 emails and IM’s with dizzying regularity. He tutored me on writing and the writing markets, gave me legal advice, discussed Oregon college football, our mutual love of comedian Bill Hicks and delved into touchy topics like how to connect with women who were emotionally available. <br />
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In short, Chuck became a friend I would chat with at all hours of the night about any subject, professional or deeply personal. He was holed up in New York and could never quite make it out to L.A. to visit, except the time he dropped by Carlos’ apartment in the late 1990’s for research on a book he was writing about The Butthole Surfers. Carlos knew plenty about the band as a longtime writer for the legendary punk fanzine, <i>Flipside</i>. (The book about the BH Surfers never came out, but that’s another story.)<br />
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Charles M. Young was a student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism when he won a national writing competition sponsored by <i>Rolling Stone</i>. In no time, he was a major contributor at the magazine, specializing in witty, humorous and deeply researched profiles of punk, country, blues and rock artists – often captured at the peak of their careers. In 1977, he was the first rock journalist at a mainstream publication to write an in-depth cover feature on the Sex Pistols, “Rock is Sick and Living in London.” Chuck introduced the Ramones to mall-rat America with his breakthrough portrait, “The Ramones are Punks and Will Beat You Up.” <br />
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In 1985, Chuck was instrumental in producing the TV show, <i>Punks and Poseurs</i>, the first authentic program dedicated to punk rock ever featured on MTV (and maybe the last). In the debut episode (check the You Tube clip), a scholarly Charles M. Young, decked out in wire framed glasses and a motorcycle jacket, patiently explains the bizarre ritual of slam dancing and how punk fashions influenced everything from studded wristbands on Ozzy Osbourne to Madonna’s punkette stage look.<br />
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Chuck was attracted to difficult, contradictory subjects of all musical genres. His knack as a fearless Method style interviewer who physically integrated himself with interviewees, often found him locked in psychic combat and at the mercy of unstable, egomaniacal musicians like Jerry Lee Lewis and Don Henley of the Eagles.<br />
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There weren’t a lot of punk rock critics who were passionate about the Eagles, but Chuck regarded them as uniquely human, dug their songs and wasn’t afraid to say so. He found Don Henley’s hypocrisy, blatant sexism and hatred of the East Coast music establishment annoying, but respected his ambition, intelligence and dedication to songwriting craft. Young hammered Henley to expand his thinking and open up to different kinds of music. They became lifelong friends the day the Eagles took on the Rolling Stone team for a spirited softball game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, home of the USC Trojans. The Eagles took their softball so seriously they rented the pricey facility and invited their friend, California Governor Jerry Brown and an abundance of national media. <br />
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The Eagles won the game but offered to let Chuck Young follow them around for the better part of a year. In 1979, he was along for the ride as a first-person witness to every fist fight and line of coke while the band struggled to complete their swan song album, “The Long Run.” It was a mammoth and draining marathon which yielded a so-so album but a masterpiece story about the band, and a flaming coda for the 70s, “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-eagles-hell-is-for-heroes-19791129">Hell is for Heroes, the Eagles Slow Burn in the Rock and Roll Inferno</a>.” Young’s piece was funny, playful and revealing. Preconceived notions that the Eagles were simply pompous careerists were proven wrong, reminding us that it’s rebellious kids who form rock bands. Who knew a dour, S.O.B. like Henley had a silly delinquent side and was capable of blowing up a laundry cauldron with a cherry bomb? <br />
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Southern rock overtones could be heard in the Eagles’ tunes and Chuck was fond of Southern music in general. Maybe it was spiritually linked to his great-grandfather, who had fought for the Confederacy and once owned slaves (the latter being something Chuck was not thrilled about, but in his typical wisdom, understood). Chuck was born in Wisconsin, the son of a minister, which is a long way from the Mason/Dixon line. But he admired how many of the Southern bands didn’t conform to conventional or hip thinking. Young was attracted to contrarians and libertine outsiders and anyone who challenged rigid or conventional thinking. Southern rockers seriously embraced the manifesto of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll and implicitly understood the commitment involved in partying to the bitter end.<br />
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In the fall of 1976, Charles M. Young was the editor of <i>Random Notes</i> at <i>Rolling Stone</i>. Probably the most consistently-illuminating music column in history, <i>Random Notes</i> was a behind-the-scenes glimpse of rock stars at their most enlightened, dangerous or ridiculous. One day in ‘76, it was suggested that Chuck go downstairs to a hot dog joint inside the mammoth building that served as <i>Rolling Stone’s</i> New York offices, to interview the South’s most notorious rock band, the original Lynyrd Skynyrd. <br />
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The hot dog stand story symbolized the circus-like excesses of the era. I have a fairly deep knowledge of Southern Rock and the original Skynyrd, so when Chuck told me what happened that afternoon, it was a wholly-formed, first-person confirmation of everything I had heard about only in fragments. We sent pages of emails back and forth about the chimp that MCA Records brought to the event that was guzzling a bottle of Jack Daniels with the band. This unusual pairing resulted in one of the most bizarre and iconic rock photos ever. Away from the cameras, Chuck and the chimp hit it off immediately. Young was a master at getting drunk with musicians to loosen things up and make the interviews jump.<br />
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<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbbTyvwpBYdQjOdiEyw3CQCfpqxyB3c60dKDjabjCoNWAPx5VF81puItfi2ChXO-PtZ9MWpuCEqF6dL0P-5cZdA4mPK8G6AAvzKr168FxDZXPrCyHJDvsLXhBPVH5B45-uBSuJJ4txO4/s1600/Skynyrd_Chimp.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbbTyvwpBYdQjOdiEyw3CQCfpqxyB3c60dKDjabjCoNWAPx5VF81puItfi2ChXO-PtZ9MWpuCEqF6dL0P-5cZdA4mPK8G6AAvzKr168FxDZXPrCyHJDvsLXhBPVH5B45-uBSuJJ4txO4/s1600/Skynyrd_Chimp.jpg" height="281" width="393" /></a></center>
<center><span style="font-size: 79%;">“The Monkey and Me” Lynryd Skynyrd drink Jack Daniels<br />with a Chimp
at NYC press party, 1976</span></center>
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This was a dangerous proposition with a band like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their lead singer, <a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/lynyrd-skynyrd-gimme-back-my-rock-stars.html">Ronnie Van Zant</a> was a lyrical genius, but also a ruthless, violence-prone thug who would have fit in nicely with the guys in Compton on Death Row Records. Van Zant was arrested 11 times for fighting and public drunkenness. Given that the rate of arrests compared to incidents without an arrest, is probably weighted 40-1, you get an idea of the unsavory risks involved. But for an adventurous journalist like Chuck, the interview was a priceless opportunity to mix it up with fellow pros at anarchy. <br />
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Taken from our IM’s and e-mails, here’s what Charles M. Young had to say about drinking with a chimp, getting kicked in the balls by Hunter S. Thompson, allowing The Ramones to steal a song title from him and how hard it is to make it as a writer. I can say without hesitation that you won’t find these quotes in the other stories out there about CMY. <br />
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BB: So what are your memories of the Lynyrd Skynyrd day? Was it like a meet and greet with the band?<br />
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CMY: Lynyrd Skynyrd rented a hot dog restaurant called Nathan’s that happened to be 23 floors below <i>Rolling Stone</i>. It was chosen because of its proximity, on the theory it would be easier to coax us writers to go if we didn't have to travel far. And it was chosen because the record company figured that if the band busted it up, how much damage could you do in a hot dog restaurant?<br />
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As the writer of <i>Random Notes</i> in the fall of '76, I arrived at the restaurant and got drunk with (band members) Allen Collins and Artimus Pyle. For some reason, they had a chimp there, who shared our Jack Daniels. We all got drunk, me, the guys in the band and the chimp. Both Collins and Pyle warned me to stay away from Ronnie Van Zant, who was extremely drunk and very mean. I observed him closely, but didn't ask him anything, because he was so obviously volatile. <br />
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BB: I heard Van Zant's violent instability was really unsettling to be around.<br />
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CMY: Yes! The rest of the guys were decent fellows but Van Zant appeared dangerously out of control. Later, he indeed beat the crap out of somebody on the sidewalk, and Pyle had an LSD freakout. I wrote a <i>Random Note</i> about it, and Russell Baker, the humor columnist of the <i>New York Times</i>, plagiarized the whole thing. Just took my <i>Random Note</i> and changed the name of the band. Fucker. <br />
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BB: I once heard a quote from Billy Powell (Skynyrd keyboardist). "When Ronnie was drunk and picked on you, you didn't fight back. Because if you fought back, you'd get really hurt."<br />
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CMY: Before I was at <i>Rolling Stone</i>, I remember an editor at <i>Crawdaddy</i> (magazine) telling me that Van Zant had told him that he liked fucking groupies in the ass, because he had a small pecker, and that way it would seem bigger and they'd remember him. So he definitely wanted to be bigger than life.<br />
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BB: Al Kooper found them in some beat-to-shit Florida club and immediately signed them to his “Sounds of the South” label. Right after, he booked studio time for their first album and brought them up to New York. Talk about fish out of water.<br />
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CMY: I didn't know what to think of Lynyrd Skynyrd in their prime. I admired their let-it-all-hang-out ethos, but I was terrified that they'd let it all hang out on me. While most of the great bands were simultaneously inspiring and frightening (not unlike God), Skynyrd was really frightening up close.<br />
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BB: More scary than G.G. Allin?<br />
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CMY: Never saw G.G. I remember George Tabb used to say, "Chuck, you gotta see G. G. Allin."<br />
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"Why?" I would say.<br />
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"Because he shits onstage and throws it at the audience."<br />
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"I don't want to be in the same room with that act."<br />
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"Yeah, but the last time I saw him, he stuck his finger up his ass and chased people out of the club."<br />
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"You go see him and tell me about it later."<br />
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BB: Obviously one of the most crazy and charismatic guys you ever met was <a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/rip-hunter-s-thompson.html">Hunter S. Thompson</a>.<br />
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CMY: I tried to strangle him at the <i>Rolling Stone</i> office Christmas party in 1980.<br />
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BB: You wanted to kill him? What happened?<br />
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CMY: I was actually (in drunken jest) trying to kill (publisher) Jann Wenner, and someone pulled me off him. Hunter was next to him, so I decided to kill him instead. He kicked me in the nuts and I went down like a sack of potatoes. It was one of the low points of my drinking years, but it's kind of a fun story. (Chuck’s drinking led to a departure from <i>Rolling Stone</i> that lasted ten years, but he emerged sober for life.)<br />
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BB: Does anyone really know exactly what happened on the Vegas trip that led to his book, <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?</i><br />
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CMY: I'm sure he did that stuff and the Hells Angels book is true. He had the artificial hip and bad vertebrae to prove it. But after <i>Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,</i> he was making a lot up. I thought he was at his best when he did the reporting, and then hallucinated. Hunter was true to himself, to his own style in the first three books. After that, it was somewhat hit and miss.<br />
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BB: Given Hunter’s love of guns, his depression and his flair for the dramatic, was it a shock to you that he committed suicide?<br />
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CMY: He was very depressed from all the physical pain he was in. It's one thing to decide rationally that you don't want to live with the infirmities that Hunter had, which were many. It's another thing to off yourself in front of your family. I'm not sure what that statement is. Hunter had just told his son Juan where all the important documents were, then he went in the next room, called his wife on the phone, and shot himself. To me, it was a bad scene, an act of anger.<br />
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BB: I think if he had died right after he wrote the 1977 piece, <i>The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat</i>, about his late friend, Oscar Acosta, the writing establishment would have put him on Mount Rushmore.<br />
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CMY: Well, he still deserves to be on Mount Rushmore.<br />
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BB: I saw Thompson give a lecture at UC Santa Barbara. He showed up several hours late after getting drunk in a bar in Goleta and when he finally arrived, people were so pissed and freaked out, it caused a riot.<br />
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CMY: His lectures were usually riots. That was part of the show and why you were there.<br />
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BB: That classic 70’s piece you wrote on The Ramones was flawless.<br />
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CMY: Oh thanks. I was upset by some of the editing, but I'm the only one who knows what could have been. Here’s some trivia for ya. The subhead on that article was “Teenage Lobotomy.” The Ramones stole it for their song. I saw Tommy Ramone recently, and he reminded me. I'd forgotten.<br />
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BB: Were there any successful punk bands you didn’t like?<br />
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CMY: I confess I didn't like The Clash much. I wanted to like them and felt I should like them, because of their politics. But once I'd seen the Sex Pistols, nobody else quite measured up. Even if it weren’t for the Sex Pistols, I’d have found the Clash boring, although Mick Jones had something. My favorite Clash song was, "I'm so Bored With the USA." Me too. I also hated Motley Crue and some of those other terrible hair bands from the 80s.<br />
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BB: I was reading an article recently about the 50 worst bands of all time. The Doors easily made the list, but I always thought Morrison’s stage attitude influenced punk rock.<br />
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CMY: I'd put The Doors on my best AND worst lists. When they were good, they cut through everything else on the radio. When they were bad, they sucked the entire mop. The later singles, "Touch Me," and "Riders on the Storm" were dreadful.<br />
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BB: What did you think of the Oliver Stone movie on The Doors? <br />
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CMY: Ray Manzarek hated the way he was portrayed in that, because it made him look like a disconnected, hippie intellectual doofus, but that's exactly how the guy talks, on and off camera. My favorite Door is John Densmore, because he refused to let the songs be used for commercial jingles when Manzarek and Kreiger insisted they sell them to Madison Avenue. Densmore argued that Jim Morrison would have viewed it as selling out. I agree. I also loathed hearing "Rock & Roll" by Led Zeppelin on Cadillac commercials. To this day, whenever I hear "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," I think of that fucking dancing raisins commercial.<br />
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BB: At the height of punk, you were writing for a national magazine. How much flack did you take from underground bands when you would go to see them?<br />
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CMY: For a national magazine, RS was always trying and I give Jann the credit. We were out there and willing to write up bands that had something to say. There has been a continuum. Now Matt Taibbi gets to say what he wants, and he's said some things about Wall Street and the economic system that needed saying. And yeah, I do wish RS would give me the freedom they give to Taibbi. But that's not going to happen in this incarnation. I try not to think about it a lot.<br />
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BB: I know that you were writing music reviews for <i>Playboy</i> and more recently, a blues column for <i>The Atlantic</i>. Is that your favorite music right now?<br />
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CMY: Yeah, I listen mostly to old blues these days. Hardly an original taste in someone of my age, but that's what I like, and that's what I play. I feel fucking sorry for kids coming up on Justin Bieber. Bubble gum has always been out there, but us baby boomers were extraordinarily lucky with the music we came of age to. Now, Corporatism is killing everything, including the arts.<br />
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BB: What do you have going on in the story pipeline?<br />
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CMY: I'm doing a story about Skunk Baxter right now. Then I’m going to go hang out with Jerry Lee Lewis and see what happens. Everyone's waiting for a band to come along and change things again. Nirvana was the last band that really resonated in the culture. It's been a long time.<br />
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BB: Is it possible to actually survive as a freelance magazine writer? I took a break from advertising copywriting in the 90's and gave it a go and found it a dead end.<br />
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CMY: Ya know, it's pretty much impossible to make a living doing what I'm doing. I don't recommend it to anyone. I make it worse for myself with fear and perfectionism and shit, but it's mostly unattainable. I remember, when I was in journalism school, some guy came to my reporting class and outlined the finances of free lancing. He said it was impossible to make a living, and I didn't believe him, but he was right. I got published in <i>Crawdaddy</i> before I was ever in <i>Rolling Stone</i>. The <i>Crawdaddy</i> clips gave me something to show other magazines, even though <i>Crawdaddy</i> paid for shit. <br />
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The state of magazines is very discouraging. Most magazines sell a lifestyle – and now nobody can afford the magazine, let alone the lifestyle. They all seem stunningly irrelevant. These days, you have to be a machine or a hack to make it work. Or strike it rich somehow as a celebrity, like Hunter. I'm always scrambling, and it's unpleasant. But it's better than having a corporate job. You should go for it, if that's what you want to do. But don't have any illusions about how tough it is.<br />
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BB: I have a question for you. Why do you think the life expectancy, even for writers, in rock is so short? Robert Palmer just passed away. It seems like musicians, writers, anybody in rock goes out before their time.<br />
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CMY: Well, hard living is a tradition in rock writing, and there's not a chance of getting rich. A sociologist in England figured out that people at the top of any social hierarchy live longer than the people at the bottom. Rock writing is pretty fuckin' low in prestige. Lotta stress. Timothy White (Chuck’s close friend and fellow writer, who died at 49 in 2002) had his father killed by a heart attack at a young age. But mostly in Tim's case it was stress. <i>Billboard</i> was hard on him. <i>Billboard</i> is an awful, stupid, corrupt magazine. I'm talking about the management at that place. They're all dirtbags.<br />
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My last question to Charles M. Young, regarding the short life spans of rockers, is one that hangs heavy with irony in the air tonight. I never thought I would be writing this story. I figured Chuck would be around for another 10 to 15 years to bounce ideas off of. The only real friend I ever had in the publishing business was always reachable and inexhaustible in his support. <br />
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Chuck cared greatly, which was his blessing and his burden. He was a mentor and a confidant. Whenever I wrote something important, he was one of the first people I sent it to. He was a “made man” in journalism, and his informed opinion was the most valuable. Sometimes I would phrase a piece a certain way just to impress him. He mattered like the teacher in high school who drove you to your best work. In his indomitable spirit of encouragement, he was “Mr. Miyagi” in the <i>Karate Kid</i>. He gave me the greatest compliment ever when he said we were “peers.”<br />
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In the mid 2000’s, restless to find a freelance market that magazines like <i>Rolling Stone</i> could never offer, Chuck dived into writing incendiary articles for thicantbehappening.net. The website is a blog collective Young co-founded, along with an impressive stable of other writers, that begs to be censored or investigated by all branches of the government that suppress independent thinking. Thiscantbehappening.net skewers both the Right and the Left, but more often, addresses how corporations and their massive influence on politics and world economies continue to pollute the planet. Chuck’s tribute to comedian <a href="http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/610">Bill Hicks</a> is a reminder that a true satirist attacks everything.<br />
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Always fond of politics and searching for a cause with impact, Chuck immersed himself in the Occupy Wall Street movement, chronicling it in his blog and sometimes marching in street protests. His outlook was energized in a way he hadn’t felt in years. But with the highs came an increasing number of lows. After his parents died in 2008, Young withdrew and indicated that he was in the throes of a great depression. His despondency reached alarming proportions. Chuck’s usual cheerfulness had always been tinged with a certain fatalistic, funny cynicism as in, “we’re all fucked, Brian,” but lately, his heart seemed defeated and veering toward capitulation. Friends say he was a virtual recluse and had mostly stopped writing or returning calls. His last <i>Rolling Stone</i> piece was a Solomon Burke profile in 2010. Technology and the decline of magazines painted his career into a corner. Chuck never humped his accomplishments via social media, a numbingly redundant practice these days for anyone “artistic.” At the time of his death, he had no personal Wikipedia page and only three photos of him appeared in Google Image Search. <br />
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In late 2012, a few months before he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and while he was reportedly dropping out of contact with many of those who knew him closely, Chuck’s rate of emails to me doubled. Often he was effortlessly brilliant and could sum up or dismiss a lifetime of expectation in a single sentence. When I rambled on about how I had found the game of No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em poker to be almost a religion, based on the mastering of psychology and the optimization of personal performance, Chuck replied curtly, “I’ve never had any luck at cards.” But more and more, he would repeat details of the same stories over and over, like a child might or an old man. In retrospect, the Glioblastoma that had invaded his brain may have been affecting his mind and behavior.<br />
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Chuck Young was not necessarily alone. Hundreds of veteran journalists like him have become fossils of a bygone age, dinosaurs with no museum to house or honor them. Long, expansive music articles that delve deeply into philosophy and complicated truths have been extinct for years. Few people possess attention spans and freely admit to avoiding any block of copy that takes up more space than a mobile device screen. Writers such as Chuck, who used to fight like frightened monkeys to preserve their original editorial edits, now settle for bylines on 100 word sidebars, right next to the Katy Perry bendover photo. At any dollar rate, the money is laughable. I still remember the perception that writers who got paid “$2 a word” had it made. <br />
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Many writers in Charles M. Young’s “New Journalism” generation addressed their subjects from the top down, straining to be intellectual, aiming for high-brow epic-ness at the cost of clarity. Chuck wrote from the bottom up, for the average guy, for the guy who waited in line 8 hours for a ticket to a rock show that meant everything. Chuck was a music academic, but also a man of the people and never forgot that many people think academics and musicians are full of shit. <br />
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At the heart of Chuck’s writing was the concept of absurdism. From Wikipedia: “In philosophy, ‘the Absurd’ refers to the conflict between (1) the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and (2) the human inability to find any. Absurdism is very closely related to existentialism and nihilism and has its origins in the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who developed existentialist philosophy.”<br />
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There were many tired sacraments in rock journalism and one was that the artist was to be deified and placed on a pedestal (see Bob Dylan). Chuck’s Midwestern school of thought (see <i>Creem</i> Magazine out of Detroit) embraced absurdity and argued that legends could be the biggest clowns, and to worship them simply for being legends was kind of funny. From his 2006 <i>Rolling Stone</i> Jerry Lee Lewis story “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-killer-reloaded-20061019">The Killer Reloaded</a>.”<br />
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“The last of the original Sun Records pioneers of rock & roll, and by far the least likely to be walking around in the twenty-first century, the only guy in all of music who makes Keith Richards look about as dangerous as Jessica Simpson, the Killer continues to rage into the night. Outside in his front yard. he is wearing only his underpants — bikini briefs, not boxers — and it appears that the most rock & roll of all rock & rollers might be having a senior moment. <br />
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He marches to the middle of the driveway, which goes up a short rise from Malone Road. Over the white fence that surrounds his forty acres and pond, the headlights of the passing cars seem to be gaping at the Killer, who is illuminated by the garage lights as if onstage. Hunched but unbowed, after six decades over the piano, he flaps his arms, he jumps up and down, he screams vowel sounds at the cars, daring them to gaze upon his nakedness in the humid night air.”<br />
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Chuck Young was a man of wit and grace, a writer who readers trusted because there wasn’t an insincere, dishonest bone in his body. Somehow, he managed to be intellectual without being snotty, tough but also sentimental, supportive but sometimes discouraging. “Real” is the term that would best describe him. Because he was a fan first and a prominent writer second, musicians believed him and he became their best friend. He once hung with The Butthole Surfers and drove them all over town (reportedly after the band had given him some acid). <br />
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From guitarist Paul Leary’s website: <br />
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“He was a champion for the band, writing reviews for us in big magazines. He let us sleep on the floor of his small mid-town NYC apartment for more nights than I can count. We almost got him kicked out of there a couple of times. I still remember the times he bought us all BBQ sandwiches for lunch. We were hungry. When we were living in Winterville, GA, he flew down to hang with us, showing up in a rental car that had an unlimited mileage agreement. This was at a time when we had absolutely no vehicle of any kind to get around, and were living in the middle of nowhere. We started calling him "Charles 'Unlimited Miles' Young". <br />
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Paul Leary was like many musicians and writers who Chuck sponsored. The closest I ever got to him was when he came to my emotional rescue – before, during and after my one foray into magazine writing. For years, I had been an advertising copywriter specializing in music and movies. I had written for most of the record labels and film studios in town. My taglines had appeared on one-sheet posters for <i>Dances with Wolves</i> and <i>Blade</i>. I had worked with a difficult Vincent Gallo to write the video box synopsis for <i>Buffalo 66.</i><br />
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But nothing compared in stress, effort and emotional turmoil to the experience of trying to place a story I had written about a <a href="http://rikki-madrigal-story.blogspot.com/">Silver Lake, CA woman</a> I knew who died in a house fire under suspicious circumstances. No charges were filed but the arson investigator went to his grave believing the woman’s boyfriend was involved. I approached a local L.A. magazine of national prominence and they paid me upfront to deliver the story. After a year of negotiations and tense rewrites, the article was killed. My theory was that the piece was a little too edgy and weird for both the magazine’s readers and its advertisers. But what I mostly remember was how Charles M. Young was the best friend a writer could ask for – supportive in good times and bad.<br />
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Chuck, I will never forget you buddy and I thank you for everything. I hope that somewhere out there you are reading my tribute and that I got it right. This email you sent me about the story that was killed is something I will treasure for the rest of my days. <br />
Later dood. Yerz, Brian.<br />
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CMY: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Brian. I'm so sorry to hear this. <br />
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You cannot win a battle of wills with these shitheads. If you make a frontal assault, they have all the weapons, and you'll lose. Do NOT insult them, even though they deserve it. If you do, the mag will feel justified in screwing you over even more. Do everything you can to suck up, make ‘em feel like they owe you (which they do). <br />
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The problem is, they've paid you money. You've cashed the check. You can't take it elsewhere until it’s officially killed. If you publish it elsewhere to the vast acclaim you deserve for your excellent reporting and writing, the editor will look bad. Being an autocratic jerk, he lives in constant fear of looking bad. He doesn't want to publish it because it's different and good, and he doesn't want to kill it, because then you have a chance to thrive somewhere else at his expense. So he's going to sit on it until it's too old to publish elsewhere.<br />
<br />
You're totally fucked.<br />
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The times in my life when I got into a direct fight with an editor, I lost even when I won, because they find a way to stick the knife in your back in some way you're not even expecting, like putting a stupid headline on your story, or shrinking your byline to microscopic size. So I would try sucking up to the sonofabitch. If he still doesn't slot it, ask in the nicest possible way for him to kill it so you can sell it elsewhere.<br />
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Chances are, nothing will work, and you'll still be totally fucked. That's how freelance writing works. Keep in mind that your task is to get the article into print. Insulting him is fine for your imagination, but in practice, he's impenetrable. Don't give him any reason to want to fuck you over. You are at his mercy, and that's just the fact of it. <br />
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Shit like this is why I've been fighting depression for decades.<br />
Keep at it. Don’t give up. You have talent. You rule.<br />
<br />
lemme know what happens<br />
chuck<br />
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<br />Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-88688400847648230732014-08-12T06:46:00.000-07:002018-12-14T21:30:48.072-08:00<strong></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: 180%;">Robin Williams: A Funnyman Comes to a Sad End</span><br />
August 11, 2014</strong></center>
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<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
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Robin Williams, who was found dead at his home in Tiburon, CA at noon today, was a giant of film and comedy and his shocking celebrity suicide has rattled the nation in a manner not seen since the death of Kurt Cobain. Whatever you were doing, when you heard the news that Williams had killed himself, the sobering effect dominated your thoughts for the rest of the day.<br />
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How could it not? Robin Williams was an actor who made us feel good to be alive whenever he walked into a room. He was 63 and in the twilight of his career – but what a career it was. The traditional media can provide an exhaustive list of his credits and a complete blow by blow retrospective. But how about the movies “Good Morning Vietnam,” “Dead Poets Society” and “Good Will Hunting,” for starters?<br />
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Williams’ cinematic masterpieces came long after he had helped define the essence of drug-fueled comedy that ran manic through the streets of the 1970’s like a coke fiend on fire. Richard Pryor and George Carlin re-invented comedy and set the stage for Williams’ contemporaries like John Belushi, Andy Kaufman, Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin. “Crazy” was the term that defined most of these acts. There was silly-crazy like Martin’s “wild and crazy guy;” smartly-cynical crazy like Aykroyd; weird, foreign-guy wacky like Kaufman and stone cold fucking nuts crazy like Belushi and Pryor – two radically creative comics who seemed intent on capping their volatile careers with early exits.<br />
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It is impossible in 2014 to appreciate how new and exciting all this was in 1978, but the country had emerged from a relentlessly repressive decade of war-mongering, assassinations and racial turmoil. People were fed-up with “the establishment” and lies and bullshit and Watergate and bummers of all kinds. Society was suffering from a sense of collective nihilism and anarchy was a popular notion. Punk rock stars were singing songs declaring there was “no future” and whether you subscribed to that bleak a philosophy or not, everyone seemed to agree it was time to let it loose and party.<br />
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Comedy and music took the lead in burning the candle at both ends. Drugs, decadence and living on the edge were badges of honor and achievement. Back then, the country was addicted to the image of hard living and getting high the way we are junkies for Facebook now. Guys like Belushi and Pryor and Keith Richards were considered marvels of modern medicine and self-determination.<br />
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Robin Williams wound up on the cover of Rolling Stone with his inventive, hit TV series, “Mork and Mindy.” He was a superstar stand-up comic known for boundless energy. It was exhausting to watch him work a stage and impossible to separate his amped-up routine from his offstage personality. To keep that rush going, he did copious amounts of cocaine, often in the company of his fast lane peers. Nobody has ever provided evidence, but it’s apparent to anyone who followed this story that Williams was shooting speedballs along with John Belushi at the Chateau Marmont Hotel the night that Belushi OD’ed – and managed to get out of town about five minutes before the cops slapped him with a trumped-up conspiracy charge that would have fallen apart in court but dealt a severe blow to his brazenly clean-cut public image.<br />
<br />
Surviving those times, when many of his professional friends did not, was no mean feat. But Robin Williams (who was never a cast member) did something phenomenal that most of his buddies from the original Saturday Night Live could not – he became an extraordinary dramatic actor who made great movies. There was often a sly sadness and wistful melancholy ingrained in his roles and this was reflected in his private life. Williams entered rehab on numerous occasions and confessed in interviews to prolonged bouts with cocaine, alcohol and depression.<br />
<br />
In one of his greatest roles and certainly against type, he played a lonely, creepy photo-processing clerk in “One Hour Photo.” As Seymour Parrish, Williams stalks a young suburban family, using their cheerful and “normal” photos to fill the holes in his empty life. While his character spins down a drain of psychosis and obsession, Williams enters into uncharted waters for a comic actor. The aching sadness in his eyes and longing for human contact chillingly capture the insecurities in all of us to belong.<br />
<br />
After the events of the last 24 hours, it is difficult to know just how much Robin Williams was acting in real life. When a man who seemingly has everything – money, family, prestige, a beautiful home overlooking the San Francisco Bay, decides to take his life, it sends a message to us all that depression does not care who you are or what you have accomplished, just what you are missing and what you believe you lack and will never attain. That loss of purpose is more dangerous to one’s survival than any drug.<br />
<br />
As the Boomer generation drifts into their final years, there has been much discussion that suicide will become a natural and increasingly popular remedy for the slow and painful disintegration of old age. When an accomplished and respected director like Tony Scott has the strength and willpower to climb a bridge scaffolding to leap to his death, one wonders if these precedents had an impression on a fitness freak like Robin Williams, whose body was fit enough for marathon bicycling but whose mind and heart had quit. Williams has several films yet to be released and these will be viewed, as will all his work, with a fresh perspective and a search for answers to the kinds of questions that can never be answered.
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-49308781927906538032011-11-25T22:18:00.001-08:002018-12-07T22:47:00.839-08:00Brian Bentley Stories<center><br />
<a
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVT1rZfNe9Z9I0iKhBRtgAH-siBcVlxVAgq2Gvvc9-1RX2JuQEuN0yOS1OSTo4F-CGGdSOkFRcIy9-3kuozKidVS5YyJNe4tr2-gxta9tvNCgGWWcP_sAeA4QKcVj-mF0ZC2v-HvDPyQ/s1600/Hunter-S+Thompson+CROPPED+for+Tagline+Writing+Story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="323" width="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVT1rZfNe9Z9I0iKhBRtgAH-siBcVlxVAgq2Gvvc9-1RX2JuQEuN0yOS1OSTo4F-CGGdSOkFRcIy9-3kuozKidVS5YyJNe4tr2-gxta9tvNCgGWWcP_sAeA4QKcVj-mF0ZC2v-HvDPyQ/s400/Hunter-S+Thompson+CROPPED+for+Tagline+Writing+Story.jpg" alt="Hunter S. Thompson as a sportswriter for the U.S. Air Force, 1958" title="Hunter S. Thompson as a sportswriter for the U.S. Air Force, 1958" /></a></center><h4>Music</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/lynyrd-skynyrd-gimme-back-my-rock-stars.html">Lynyrd Skynyrd: Gimme Back My Rock Stars </a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/booze-betrayal-and-broken-gin-blossoms.html">Booze, Betrayal and Broken Gin Blossoms</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/whats-wrong-with-music-business.html">What's Wrong with the Music Business?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/how-electronica-became-new-grunge.html">How Electronica Became the New Grunge</a></li>
</ul><h4>Media</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2014/12/freelance-copywriter-survival-strategies.html">Freelance Copywriter Survival Strategies </a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/taglines-and-entertainment-copywriters.html">Taglines and Entertainment Copywriters</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/rolling-stone-sells-out.html">Rolling Stone Sells Out</a></li>
</ul><h4>Bios</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/why-i-wont-miss-steve-jobs.html">Why I Won't Miss Steve Jobs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/rip-hunter-s-thompson.html">Hunter S. Thompson: Goodbye to the Last American Hero</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2014/08/charles-m-young-remembering-pioneer-of.html">Charles M. Young: Remembering a Pioneer <br />of Punk Rock Journalism</a></li>
</ul><h4>Politics / City Beat</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/09/we-sheeple.html">We The Sheeple</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/america-loses-its-shit-after-911.html">America Loses Its Shit After 9/11</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/dick-cheney-melts-down.html">Dick Cheney Melts Down</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/john-kerry-lost-in-translation.html">John Kerry: Lost in Translation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/2004-presidential-debates.html">The 2004 Presidential Debates</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/09/four-dead-in-ohio.html">Four Dead in Ohio</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/la-strip-clubs-to-be-banned.html">Lap Dancing in L.A. Strip Clubs to be Banned?</a></li>
</ul><h4>Dead Rock Stars</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2017/10/rock-icon-tom-petty-dies-of-heart-attack.html">Rock Icon Tom Petty Dies of Heart Attack</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2017/05/was-chris-cornell-martyr-for-our.html">Was Chris Cornell a Martyr for Our Depression?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/kurt-cobain-joins-dead-rock-star-club.html">Kurt Cobain Joins the Dead Rock Star Club</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/layne-staley-didnt-burn-out-he-just.html">Layne Staley Didn't Burn Out, He Just Faded Away</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2016/01/eagles-glenn-frey-1948-2016.html">Eagles’ Glenn Frey 1948-2016</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/09/warren-zevon-will-sleep-when-hes-dead.html">Warren Zevon Will Sleep When He's Dead</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2014/08/robin-williams-funnyman-comes-to-sad.html">Robin Williams: A Funnyman Comes to a Sad End</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/visiting-ghost-of-kurt-cobain.html">Visiting The Ghost Of Kurt Cobain</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/remembering-john-lennon.html">Remembering John Lennon</a></li>
</ul><h4>On The Street</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/10/jaywalking-with-britney-spears.html">Jaywalking With Britney Spears</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/09/life-imitates-death.html">The Accidental Vigilante</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/melevolence-riding-shotgun-with-mel.html">Melevolence: Riding Shotgun with Mel Gibson</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2009/07/jaywalking-drunk-and-running-into.html">The Life Expectancy of a Homeless Jaywalker</a></li>
</ul><h4>Reviews: Music, Film, TV</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2009/07/sopranos-final-episode-fade-to-hack.html"><i>The Sopranos</i> Final Episode: Fade to Hack</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2010/05/courtney-love-unplugged.html">Courtney Love Unplugged</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/mudhoney-album-review-tomorrow-hit.html">Album Review: Mudhoney <i>Tomorrow Hit Today</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2010/04/rock-and-roll-high-school.html">Rock and Roll High School with <i>The Runaways</i></a></li>
</ul><h4>Sports</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2015/01/2015-rose-bowl-oregon-trail-to.html">2015 Rose Bowl: The Oregon Trail to a Championship <br />and Respect</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gonzorilla.net/2011/11/2011-bcs-title-game-oregon-vs-auburn.html">The 2011 BCS Title Game: Oregon vs. Auburn</a></li>
</ul><h4>Rikki Madrigal</h4><ul><li><a href="http://rikki-madrigal-story.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Playing With Fire: The Rikki Madrigal Story</a></li>
</ul><h4>My Poker Blog</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.acrossthefelt.net/" target="_blank">Across The Felt</a></li>
</ul><h4>My Copywriting Portfolio</h4><ul><li><a href="http://bentleybt.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Entertainment Copywriter</a></li>
</ul><br />
<br />
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-74659895006462869072011-11-21T21:10:00.000-08:002012-11-25T17:00:05.140-08:00Hunter S. Thompson Goodbye to the Last American Hero<strong><br />
<center><span style="font-size:180%;">The Headless Thompson Gunner</span><br />
February 25, 2005</center><br />
</strong><span style="font-size:130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<span style="font-size:100%;"><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA94CE1EDEiGs-bqTlf2Dk3lhgtF7k9Ep71h88cnKvWbguS-G8wPSW8tkQFi0d04kH7iV4GBd8c_oUqX8DGtok5CsDpSbvyDnuBxnJnfx04c5Lo5-99zbMdhDMNMIKrkR9c3aASLddnS0/s1600-h/HST+Photo+for+Blog+Story.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354100475595231346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 306px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA94CE1EDEiGs-bqTlf2Dk3lhgtF7k9Ep71h88cnKvWbguS-G8wPSW8tkQFi0d04kH7iV4GBd8c_oUqX8DGtok5CsDpSbvyDnuBxnJnfx04c5Lo5-99zbMdhDMNMIKrkR9c3aASLddnS0/s400/HST+Photo+for+Blog+Story.jpg" border="0" alt="Hunter S. Thompson was the most brilliant satirical writer of the twentieth century" title="Hunter S. Thompson was the most brilliant satirical writer of the twentieth century" /></a><br />
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Sunday afternoon, on the 20th of February, on the cusp of Pisces, Hunter S. Thompson, the most brilliant satirical writer of the 20th Century, was no match for the business end of a .45 handgun he used to scatter his brains like snowflakes across the Colorado winter.<br />
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Suicide seemed a fitting end for a writer who was the closest thing the Boomer generation had to Ernest Hemingway. Thompson was not going to shrink from the responsibility of determining his own destiny. You weren't going to find him tied to a hospital bed on the end of a tube, ready to meet his maker. There is only one way an old soldier goes out and that’s with his boots on. Don’t leave it to the pill pushers and bean counters and the do-gooders to decide what's best for you.<br />
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Hunter S. Thompson, the founder and Godfather of Gonzo Journalism, was 67 years old and had lived a half dozen different lifetimes when he died last week. Clearly his best work was behind him, even though he was still writing regularly and cashing paychecks from ESPN.com. There was nothing amiss with his mechanics; it was more like he had run out of subject matter, while the values he idealized in his writing, the ones that seemed precious enough to die for in the 1960’s, were compromised away by a world that had become too jaded to care anymore.<br />
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Despite the setbacks, Hunter always enjoyed himself. His last column for ESPN was about a sport he had just invented called, “Shotgun Golf,” in which the object of the game is to blow the opponents ball out of the air in mid-flight. It was the perfect metaphor for the Thompson literary ethos: to be high, to be moving at great velocity, to be blown to pieces like some doomed speed freak outlaw.<br />
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The amazing aspect of Thompson’s story is how he managed to live as long as he did. He had the kind of lifestyle habits that kill bulls. His daily drug regimen would have brought most men to their knees; with the exception of cats like Keith Richards, he had few peers still standing. But in the end, I suspect, it wasn’t the drugs or the physical ailments that did him in. It was the isolation. The world had forgotten about Thompson. He was suffering from irrelevancy. And to a man who had made such on impact on so many, to be ignored was a fate worse than death.<br />
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Hunter Thompson didn't start out to become an icon, which can be rare in the icon business. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, he served two tumultuous years in the Air Force and by the early 60’s, was a struggling sportswriter. In 1965, Thompson unwittingly launched a revolutionary participatory literary style when he persuaded the Hells Angels to let him ride with their thug gang and write about the experience. Two years later, his diaries were optioned into the book, <i>Hells Angels: a Strange and Terrible Saga</i> and Thompson became a cultural star overnight.<br />
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<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTrLG2xdViKKMIerz3ONNgM4vEPPuB89ykzppl5gAvQrsQ78e0xAedxgctETatRY7teNsEST0iIej-VFIgB2-V0IpM1w2pal7MSe7TqdihmTKC5cG1SdXUs-YNUNWfzoiqbqW0zAH2QKU/s1600/Hitching-Hunter-S-Thompson-crouching-by-road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="252" width="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTrLG2xdViKKMIerz3ONNgM4vEPPuB89ykzppl5gAvQrsQ78e0xAedxgctETatRY7teNsEST0iIej-VFIgB2-V0IpM1w2pal7MSe7TqdihmTKC5cG1SdXUs-YNUNWfzoiqbqW0zAH2QKU/s400/Hitching-Hunter-S-Thompson-crouching-by-road.jpg" alt="Hunter S. Thompson hitchhiking before the days of Gonzo" title="Hunter S. Thompson hitchhiking before the days of Gonzo" /></a></center><br />
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Suddenly, the icons of New Journalism like Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese and George Plimpton were lining up to sing his praises. With the 60’s providing the perfect canvas for Thompson's foot-to-the-floor, drug-laced narratives, he blazed with moral outrage and a manic, first person, subjective style of reporting that incinerated the lines between fact and fiction.<br />
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But fiction and embellishment were not to be confused with Thompson’s eternal quest for the TRUTH. There was often more truth in his eccentric ramblings, simply because he didn't conform to the conventional school of reporting. In his day, writers veered toward safety and mediocrity. Hunter never sold out. He challenged the process and the editors he worked with to keep up with him. There was no compromise, no quarter. Thompson's press credentials from <i>Rolling Stone</i> gave him the same priceless access as the guys from <i>Newsweek</i> and <i>The Washington Post</i>, yet he was covering stories with an underground zeal that lampooned the dreary realities of standard news coverage.<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“One of the constant nightmares of traveling with politicians is the need to keep them in sight at all times. Every Presidential campaign has its horror stories about reporters who thought they had plenty of time to “run across the street for a quick beer” instead of hanging around in the rear of some grim auditorium, only to come back in 20 minutes to find no sign of the press bus, the candidate or anybody who can tell them where they went. The temperature is always below zero, there is usually a major blizzard to keep cabs off the street, and just as the victim remembers that he left his wallet on the press bus, his stomach erupts with a sudden attack of Ptomaine poisoning. And then, while crawling around on his knees in some ice-covered alley and racked with fits of projectile vomiting, he is grabbed by vicious cops and whipped on the shins with a night stick, then locked in the drunk tank of the local jail and buggered all night by winos.”<br />
("Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith” from <i>The Great Shark Hunt</i>)</span></blockquote><br />
By the turn of the decade, Thompson was no longer content to just reference the other side. He was becoming the other side – a volatile, loose cannon who injected himself into his stories and made his very survival dependent on their outcomes. Part of it was obviously an act, a manipulation of reality, a form of the Living Theater that artists like Jim Morrison and Andy Kaufman made their own.<br />
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<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguqDzG_KB8OvVj7KyloztysD88DO6gYOb1g71Maf4u2I2GpBCuu3G5Ny01mcsdm_rKoRvoKHukre_oaa5BFQmZcZK2ivQm0zO8qNvlElqEtHcRuEi-HgG-M7hOKa46iR_A4kBzEyg-rB4/s1600/hunter-s-thompson-fear-and-loathing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="340" width="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguqDzG_KB8OvVj7KyloztysD88DO6gYOb1g71Maf4u2I2GpBCuu3G5Ny01mcsdm_rKoRvoKHukre_oaa5BFQmZcZK2ivQm0zO8qNvlElqEtHcRuEi-HgG-M7hOKa46iR_A4kBzEyg-rB4/s400/hunter-s-thompson-fear-and-loathing.jpg" alt="The book jacket for Hunter S. Thompson’s best book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" title="The book jacket for Hunter S. Thompson’s best book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" /></a><br />
</center><br />
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The breakthrough for Thompson came in 1971 when he took his act to Las Vegas. Sent by Rolling Stone uber-editor, Jann Wenner, to ostensibly cover the Mint 400 desert motorcycle race and a convention of drug enforcement officials, Thompson turned the fractured, psychedelic weekend into a tour de force account of drugs, destruction, imminent nervous breakdown and excessive room service bills. The book which rose from the ashes, <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>, was a masterpiece of literature – part fact, part fiction and completely insane. Colonel Kurtz had taken a trip upriver, landed on The Strip and turned it into a towering inferno.<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Circus Circus (casino) is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazi’s had won the war. The place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent with all manners of strange county fair/Polish carnival madness going on in mid-air over the gambling tables. And for 99 cents, your likeness can appear, two hundred feet tall on a screen above downtown Las Vegas. We will close the hotel room drapes tonight. A thing like that could send a drug person careening around the room like a ping pong ball. Nobody can handle the possibility that any freak with a $1.98 can appear in the sky twelve times the size of God, howling at anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”<br />
(<i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>)<br />
<br />
</span></blockquote>To writers and erstwhile social critics, <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i> was our generation’s equivalent of Kerouac’s <i>On the Road</i>, or Salinger’s <i>Catcher in the Rye</i>. It was a shotgun blast to the face of the establishment and changed pop literature the way Sergeant Pepper’s changed pop music. Part of the beauty was its inclusive counterculture charm and how effortlessly it brought the reader into Hunter’s road trip from hell, diving headlong from the sheer boredom of everyday life into a darkly hilarious world where you can get away with anything you’re crazy enough to try.<br />
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Thompson’s partner in crime on the Vegas trip was his real life buddy, L.A. renegade attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta. True life could be stranger than fiction and Acosta was certainly up for the task. He was Hunter’s greatest character and the complete embodiment of all things Gonzo – a borderline psychopath who was smart enough to be thoroughly dangerous.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Oscar was not into serious street fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a 250-pound Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach – but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a defacto suicidal conviction that he WILL die at the age of thirty-three – just like Jesus Christ – you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Specially if the bastard is ALREADY thirty-three and a half years old with a head full of Sandoz acid and a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt.”<br />
(“The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat” from the Rolling Stone Tenth Anniversary issue)<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ3EhvuBSVlHF1p5mSvuCHMnvl7zp2ftgxsxj2pUMeNKg4UQtb2sCVhP5ihMnVDFyWQw5MDZwVfL3lXG79dGLUiX4NLOP439S73lhS-0SmjUdAzeLqYGG5Y8m0N-PyWG7PAXh1YtBubfE/s1600/HST+and+Acosta+BEST.png" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="266" width="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ3EhvuBSVlHF1p5mSvuCHMnvl7zp2ftgxsxj2pUMeNKg4UQtb2sCVhP5ihMnVDFyWQw5MDZwVfL3lXG79dGLUiX4NLOP439S73lhS-0SmjUdAzeLqYGG5Y8m0N-PyWG7PAXh1YtBubfE/s400/HST+and+Acosta+BEST.png" alt="Hunter S. Thompson’s attorney, Oscar Acosta, was the basis for Benicio Del Toro’s character in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" title="Hunter S. Thompson’s attorney, Oscar Acosta, was the basis for Benicio Del Toro’s character in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 79%;">Thompson and his attorney, Oscar Acosta (circa 1971)</span></center><br />
<br />
On a major creative roll, Thompson was back on the road again, this time as the National Affairs editor for <i>Rolling Stone</i>. With the release of <i>Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72</i>, a collection of stories he’d filed on the looming re-election of Richard Nixon, Thompson took the hallucinatory stylings of FLLV and directed them downward, on a journey to the center of madness, the campaign to elect a President.<br />
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The book made him a superstar. A masterfully detailed primer on the grim realities, manipulations and sheer insanity of the political landscape, Campaign Trail '72 chronicles the further co-opting of the American dream as great careers are born and dissolved under the new-found power of media examination. By the book’s end, Thompson was flat on his back in a hotel room, suffering from an exhaustion-based nervous breakdown. Candidate Ed Muskie, once a front-runner, saw his candidacy go down in flames, assisted no doubt by Thompson’s published assertions that Big Ed’s slurred speeches were the result of a hopeless addiction to Ibogaine, a mind-altering drug that supposedly rendered its users tired, feeble and confused.<br />
<br />
Hunter S. Thompson was at his best and brightest when he tackled his arch nemesis, Richard Nixon, a man he seemed to fear, loathe, respect and desperately need for satirical inspiration. In 1968, when Nixon was running for President, Thompson finagled a limousine interview, but with strict Nixon ground rules: only football would be discussed. While the average reporter would have declined, Thompson considered Nixon’s request to be a sporting proposal and an eminently reasonable, if not brilliant, idea.<br />
<br />
Every great story has a frightening villain and Nixon was to Thompson what horror is to Stephen King. Hunter chronicled every chapter of Nixon’s scary rise and fall from power with profound observations that captured the heart of the man’s darkness.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Innocence? It is even hard to type that word on the same page with Nixon’s name. Nixon's entire political career – and in fact his whole life – is a gloomy monument to the notion that not even pure schizophrenia or malignant psychosis can prevent a determined loser from rising to the top of the heap in this strange society we have built for ourselves in the name of “democracy and “free enterprise.” For most of his life, the mainspring of Richard Nixon’s energy and ambition seems to have been a deep and unrecognized need to overcome, at all costs, that sense of having been Born Guilty – not for crimes or transgressions Already committed, but for those he somehow sensed he was fated to commit as he grappled his way to the summit.”<br />
(“Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises”)<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
Things were never quite the same after Nixon's premature exit from the White House. Thompson had sped to the summit in the fast lane and after ten crazy years, his career was running on empty. He continued to write magazine articles for <i>Rolling Stone</i> and released a steady stream of books that grew more strident and less impactful as the years wore on. Thompson’s legacy for excess, however, remained fully lit. When he wasn't holding court at the Woody Creek Tavern near his home, a few miles from Aspen, he could be often found firing tracer bullets over the local highway or hunting rogue bears on his property with tasers and shotguns.<br />
<br />
When one stops to consider the best performance comics of modern times – the ones who flipped reality on its rear end – when you consider the Andy Kaufman's and the Dick Shawn's and the Ali G.'s – Hunter S. Thompson might well be considered the Cro-Magnon who started the entire evolution with one big bang.<br />
<br />
As Tom Wolfe wrote last week, “You didn't have lunch or dinner with Hunter Thompson. You attended an event at mealtime.” Such was the case with his infamous college lecture tours, like the strange night I witnessed “An Evening with Hunter S. Thompson” on the UC Santa Barbara campus.<br />
<br />
Over a thousand rabid fans of Doonesbury's, “Raoul Duke,” filed into the school gym, unaware of what lay in store for them. The mood was festive, like some kind of hippie rock concert lecture by the nuttiest professor of all. The opening act, a magician, was quickly booed off the stage beneath a shower of spent beer cups. The crowd was impatiently waiting for the man.<br />
<br />
At one hour past the scheduled show time, a student body affairs geek announced that Thompson had been “unavoidably delayed,” and was in a bar “somewhere in Goleta.” The audience groaned. As the clock ticked, the stage announcements grew stranger. “Thompson has left the bar and just called from his mobile phone. He's lost. Wait, he's on the phone and just got directions, he's on his way.”<br />
<br />
Random booing and the predictable early exits of the uninitiated continued for another half hour. Somewhere, stage right, a vicious fist fight broke out. The mood was sullen as so many of the faithful had mistimed their drugs and were coming down. Things were getting fairly ugly.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, almost two hours beyond reason, Thompson's jug-eared, skinned-rabbit silhouette appeared in a dimly lit doorway to the left of the stage. The crowd erupted in a long, low volcanic howl, screaming insults, half in jest, half in real anger. Some in the audience were literally berserk with rage. I never saw a performer get that kind of reaction in my life.<br />
<br />
Thompson promptly ran into the bowels of the building like a frightened rat. After some backstage huddling, the student speaker issued an apology. “Dr. Thompson says he's very sorry for being two hours late and would like to tell you from the bottom of his heart … that you can all kindly kiss his Ass.”<br />
<br />
After several in the crowd rushed the stage and were ejected, Thompson finally sat down at the lectern with a bottle of booze and a large glass. But I never saw him drink from it. He began to field questions from the audience and because of the kind of technical problems one finds in school gymnasiums, barely any of these exchanges were audible. I do remember him plainly calling Hubert Humphrey a white slave trader who was running a concentration camp in the wilds of Minnesota. His mumbled monologue lasted about forty minutes and by the last question, there were only about 40 people still there.<br />
<br />
Those who had come expecting Thompson to let them in on the joke didn't understand that the joke was on them. It was a dose of his pure anarchy, which is funny to read about, but not so funny to experience firsthand. Pay the admission and enjoy the show. Hunter was one of those prophets who considered expectation to be only premeditated disappointment. Besides the books were better anyway…<br />
<br />
---------------------------------------<br />
And now, he’s gone. I still don’t believe he’s dead and that a man like Thompson could be killed with a single gunshot. He was Superman. Bullets were supposed to just bounce off his animal-skin hide. In a world where cynicism and political apathy are the foregone conclusions of rigged Presidential elections, Thompson was the ultimate idealist and it cost him. No one will ever know how much John Kerry’s defeat, three months before Thompson's suicide, affected his will to go on. His final column in <i>Rolling Stone</i> in which he postulated that Kerry might win handily, seemed hopelessly naïve and wishful for better days. Too bad the country was no longer on the same page with him.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“All energy flows according to the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him. He knew. He knew all along. I had run far enough, so He nailed me … closing off my escape routes … plunging me into fear and confusion. Never cross the Great Magnet. I understand this now … and with understanding came a sense of almost terminal relief.”<br />
(<i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>)<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
“A generation of swine” is what Thompson called the shallow, me-first yuppies of the 80’s who now seem to own the world with their conspicuous consumption and self-important, yak-on-cell-phones-in-the-movie-theater mentality. In the irony of ironies, the social oppression of the 60’s – that twisted totalitarian way of thinking that seeks to control the free will of others was finally defeated – only to reappear in the late 80’s in the form of Political Correctness. But this time, the forces of oppression were no longer the other guys – the enemy we could plainly see. This time, the enemy was US, the progressive people who were supposed to have fought so hard for personal freedoms.<br />
<br />
Thompson was sacrificed by the PC forces. They labeled him a misogynist, a minority hater, a drug-addled bad influence, a gun nut and then they turned their back on him like he was Jesus and nailed him to that old-hippie cross – too out of touch, an embarrassment to us all. His legacy was forever tarnished because a bunch of dummies took a lot of drugs to attempt piss poor imitations of him and then he got blamed for it, as if it was his obligation to be a role model instead of an artist. In the end, those he had fought for, judged him for everything and understood nothing.<br />
<br />
So now, in the dead of winter, with the dark heavens above L.A. twisting ominously and the rain clouds spewing their venomous piss onto homes sliding into the Great Beyond beneath the local hills, the gods upstairs must have realized by now that a newly-minted, crazed soul just broke into St. Peter’s liquor cabinet and is creating an unholy shitstorm in the sky.<br />
<br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rZUKtHm14sPsTgXE3AJfaCKF_wlrKgc0L01KmyqnQYWNWEZvK2jRPbdkGEHUkFXK-LJfSMd-15TDc_3afm9RT0HrQhUzX4IuYGmv357hOSAn7JxvdCDq5R4gu81Vle6f7OZvJXZwCu8/s1600/Hunter+BEST+with+Gun+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="255" width="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rZUKtHm14sPsTgXE3AJfaCKF_wlrKgc0L01KmyqnQYWNWEZvK2jRPbdkGEHUkFXK-LJfSMd-15TDc_3afm9RT0HrQhUzX4IuYGmv357hOSAn7JxvdCDq5R4gu81Vle6f7OZvJXZwCu8/s400/Hunter+BEST+with+Gun+3.jpg" alt="Hunter S. Thompson holding what appears to be a .44 Magnum" title="Hunter S. Thompson holding what appears to be a .44 Magnum" /></a></center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">Hunter S. Thompson loved guns, drugs and the Gonzo Life</span></center><br />
<br />
Down here, things just don't seem the same. Filmmakers like Michael Moore still stir things up, but they are too self-serving and well-balanced to see the demons at night. They are not one of us. Who is out there to inspire the rest to show courage in the face of political and cultural defeat? Thompson stood toe-to-toe against the forces of darkness – .44 Magnum in one hand and a bottle of Wild Turkey in the other and inspired everybody to drive stakes through the hearts of the liars and bloodsuckers. Hunter was the point man for all the loonies in the hall.<br />
<br />
Bob Dylan wrote, “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” Hunter S. Thompson was an outlaw and a brute, an anarchist and a royal pain in the ass. As one of his Colorado drinking buddies put it, “He will be hard to replace and I'm not sure you'd want to.”<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Hunter Thompson's art is purer than that of Norman Mailer or Tom Wolfe. Thompson never preaches. He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.”<br />
--Washington Post<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
Thompson was really from the old school. His peers were newspapermen, and because he was so well grounded in his craft and because he was a consummate reporter with an infinite eye for detail, his flights of narrative fantasy carried true weight behind them. He combined his background in traditional journalism with the street aesthetics of a 60’s revolutionary. It was a lethal mix. Once he’d been initiated into The Hells Angels, Thompson had an epiphany, one of those crossroads moments so many people arrived at in the 60’s. It was almost as if someone had dosed anchorman Tom Brokaw with twenty sheets of blotter acid and he woke up the next day as Frank Zappa. The world had a smart, dangerous and dedicated threat to all that was sacred.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Thompson elicits the same kind of admiration one would feel for a streaker at Queen Victoria's funeral.”<br />
--William F. Buckley, Jr.<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
As an Agent Provocateur, Hunter S. Thompson established Gonzo Journalism as the literary equivalent of rock n’ roll revolution music – like The Who’s “My Generation” and the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” (as interpreted by Charles Manson). Gonzo was at first purely observational, but it quickly evolved into sheer disruption. Hunter was at his best when operating as a button-pusher, square in the center of the action, becoming the action, risking his life and limb to up the ante. He kept his wicked humor and his fearless style amidst the kind of desperate compulsive gambling only a high roller at the crap table understands.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop heart. The thing to do – when you're running along about a hundred or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your trail – what you want to do then is ACCELERATE. Never pull over at the first siren howl. Mash it down and make the bastard chase you at speeds up to 120 m.p.h…”<br />
(<i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>)<br />
</span></blockquote><br />
But as the world kept moving and the 80’s became the 90’s, Thompson pretty much stayed at home, freeze dried in the past, kind of like Cheech and Chong. He had begun his writing career as a distanced observer with an abundance of insight – rocketing skyward with warp-speed chronicles of American institutions like the Kentucky Derby and the Super Bowl – and by the early 90's, he'd de-evolved into an extremely biased professional who kept repeating himself over and over. Now, the “story” was only about what was going on inside his head.<br />
<br />
Hunter might have been at the happiest point in his life in 1998, when the filmed adaptation of <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>, starring a perfectly cast Johnny Depp and directed by Terry Gilliam, hit the big screen. While the movie worked in plenty of ways and had a spectacular soundtrack, the net result of its cartoonish depictions was to pretty much cement Thompson's legacy as “that Nutty Guy on Drugs.” If you have a reputation for being crazy, staying at the top of your game requires a certain dedication to preserving that reputation. Loyalty’s a killer. The more Thompson partied and fed the myth, the hungrier his soul became. The cycle just got worse as time wore on. With his health failing and his body joints and spirit worn to a nub, he obviously preferred to be master of his own destiny. I don’t fault him at all. I’ll just miss him.<br />
<br />
They say the souls of suicides wander the earth, haunting the night with their restless yearning. Not yet in Heaven and just removed from Hell, they exist in that In-Between where sinners and would-be saviors dwell in uneasy company. Here's to you, Hunter – Ruler of the Roost of the Damned – you were the Greatest.<br />
<br />
And to anyone who has to ask what all the Thompson tribute and fuss is about, just read the Work – in fact, the Work speaks so much more eloquently as to why his viewpoint mattered. The thinking behind that inflamed logic simply doesn’t age. Start with the 1979 compilation of his best stories, <i>The Great Shark Hunt</i>, and go from there. You will find yourself less afraid as a result. Move confidently in their midst, like Thompson did, as he stripped away the bullshit of the world to move closer to simple basic truths, or what Neil Young likes to call, “The Source.”<br />
<br />
Hunter S. Thompson started his career as a sportswriter and died working as one for ESPN.com. Sports provided everything his writing demanded: action, color, speed, violence. His favorite athlete of all time was not coincidentally, Muhammad Ali, a man who had suffered dearly at humanity’s hands for having the courage of his monstrous convictions.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Muhammad Ali moved from the very beginning with the same instinct that drove The Great Gatsby – an endless fascination with the green light at the end of the pier. That was always the difference between Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw and if he didn't entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.<br />
<br />
Res Ipsa Loquitor”<br />
</span></blockquote></span><br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.gobblerhosting.com" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000">Web Hosting</a>Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-5125619141719640922011-11-19T22:24:00.000-08:002012-11-25T17:26:04.312-08:00Why I Won't Miss Steve Jobs<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Technology Under The Influence</span><br />
October 7, 2011</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8V7GSVsnakVyawZjgJd70UrqgmxwOBk4C7D7mbKVAd7k8nAxk-yrTCJnokvs2EoMP2lTmRPc6BrQFMP7Rfmw0gImnqLhis1J3UVj0aOlbOprYab-W1GAU3U4bMJiZxVyNM7Gj4C-KIik/s1600/Steve+Jobs+Cropped+with+Apple+II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="346" width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8V7GSVsnakVyawZjgJd70UrqgmxwOBk4C7D7mbKVAd7k8nAxk-yrTCJnokvs2EoMP2lTmRPc6BrQFMP7Rfmw0gImnqLhis1J3UVj0aOlbOprYab-W1GAU3U4bMJiZxVyNM7Gj4C-KIik/s400/Steve+Jobs+Cropped+with+Apple+II.jpg" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 79%;">Steve Jobs introduces the Apple II computer in 1977</span></center><br />
<br />
Steve Jobs died this past Wednesday, on October 5th. It was perhaps the longest, most protracted, analyzed and expected departure in cultural icon history. Jobs’ death was not a surprise, but still carried shock value. Like Kurt Cobain, he went out on top. It’s hard to think of another figure of his stature who died more at the peak of his game. In 1985, Jobs lost a power struggle with the board of directors at Apple, and was pushed out of the pioneering company he’d co-founded. By the late 90’s he was back as CEO and on a mission to radically reshape his legacy. <br />
<br />
Job’s second career arc began with a technological big bang in 2001 when he introduced a cute little MP3 player called the iPod to an unsuspecting world dominated by CD’s. Nothing in the music business would ever be the same again, and neither would he. Steve Jobs’ ascendancy back up the mountain was truly a rags to riches to rags to riches story, and he became a very different man. The need to prove himself and dominate the competition was now the driving force in his life.<br />
<br />
For years, Jobs had carefully cultivated his persona as the motorcycle riding, casual dressing, no-bullshit hater of corporate stuffiness. A bit of an enigma, he could be accessible and impossible to know. But with the iPod and later the iPhone, he morphed into something much bigger – the cool dude who came up with the cool gadgets that plugged the world in – and took media technology out of the house and into the street.<br />
<br />
His inventions featured smooth interfaces and amazingly simple and practical designs that worked as nicely as they looked. People fell in love with these cuddly devices, integrating them into their lives like household pets. Anything with an i in front of it was an automatic purchase. The success and adulation turned Jobs into a tech god. Like Jesus, he was a man of the people, and like a rock star, he owned the stage. His passing at the age of 56 is a loss felt by his friends, family, co-workers and millions around the world. <br />
<br />
But I won’t miss Steve Jobs at all. In fact, I’m glad he’s gone. Not dead, just gone, out of the picture, no longer a threat to burden us with another tech toy that promises convenience, but delivers complication and the obligation to upgrade every year. Jobs was like Owsley, the guy who mass-marketed LSD in the 60’s. He manufactured shiny gadgets that worked like drugs. They made us high and changed our thought processes. For awhile, they were mind expanding and a trip, but like any powerful hallucinogenic, people had trouble handling them with restraint.<br />
<br />
After 9/11, overwhelmed Americans were in desperate need for diversion. Unable to control the outside world, we found comfort in the power to shape our own realities with computer phones and social networks that positioned each user as the center of their own universe. <br />
<br />
Myspace gave the average Joe the opportunity to fashion himself as a celebrity and create a personal webpage just like a movie star, like one of the contestants on “Survivor,” the show that ruined network television. Handheld electronics just blew that concept up. Casual narcissism slid into blatant exhibitionism, as our private lives, photos, hobbies, tastes, opinions, and likes became something we were positive had to be shared with the world. Social networking created a culture of false intimacy, the meaningless accumulation of “friends” we barely know, and a cyberscape of talkers, not listeners, people who used and abused the medium to lose themselves in a babbling bubble of self-reference. Rate this “Dislike.”<br />
<br />
By 2005, machines became our preferred, and eventually, our mandatory method of communication. Keyboards were the lifeline equivalent of old landline phones, and this seismic shift in how we interacted fostered a dependence bordering on enslavement – the direct brainchild of enablers like Steve Jobs. <br />
<br />
Fortune Magazine once referred to him as “Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniac.” Last week, free software blogger Richard Stallman proclaimed, "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.” A demanding and temperamental perfectionist, Jobs was ready and willing to not just sell technology, but push it like a dealer on a street corner. His obsession with presiding over a wired world meant giving us not just what <i>he</i> decided we should want, but what we couldn’t live without. <br />
<br />
In 1949, an English writer named George Orwell published “1984,” the prophetic book about the evils of totalitariasm and manipulative social phenomena. In the mid-90’s, Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) authored a startlingly coherent manifesto addressing the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technology – but added a grisly footnote, sending over a dozen mail bombs that killed people. Thirty five years ago, DEVO, a punk rock band from Ohio, advanced the concept of “De-evolution,” a theory which states that instead of continuing to evolve, mankind has actually begun to regress, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society. <br />
<br />
Steve Jobs can’t take all the blame for the evils of technology. But there’s no denying that he was the spiritual leader of a movement that was about making huge bucks while putting enormous pressure on the consumer to keep up. I often wondered if Jobs cared much about the collateral damage that came from our blind rush to go digital, while we dumped analog media faster than an old girlfriend. <br />
<br />
The hip notion is to celebrate the demise of the music industry (which was directly triggered by the iPod) because big, greedy record companies needed to go. Well big, greedy record companies were the only method musicians had to make a living. Once an artist could not sell a CD to pay his/her bills, the quality of music degraded. MP3’s were free on file sharing sites and changed the focus from albums to single songs. This lethal combination crippled not only most artist’s careers, but the entire music business. Had the legendary recording exec Ahmet Ertegun been born 30 years later, he’d be selling real estate now. <br />
<br />
Jobs’ business was booming because of his uncanny knack for anticipating trends and seamlessly integrating production with marketing. He popularized the Smartphone when Apple introduced the first generation iPhone in 2007. The long lines that wrapped around every Best Buy the night before the iPhone went on sale were testimony to Jobs, and the cachet he had created for the Apple brand. Nobody stood in line for a Nokia. The Cult of Steve was all-encompassing. Online forums were clogged with the breathless faithful who hung on every morsel of new product info. On any given topic, there were deep-seated feelings of love, hate, worship, rejection, and self-recrimination. Some posters seemed to savor the abuse they got from Uncle Steve’s whims, like masochists longing to be victimized.<br />
<br />
Apple has long been infamous for its proprietary strong-arm software tactics. A thorny issue was the company’s refusal to allow the Flash program onto its iPhone platform. Since many websites operate on Flash, iPhone customers were given the option to load up cheesy and unstable third-party applications, just to view what Droid customers could easily watch while speeding down a freeway. Jobs knew the issue was a hot enough political potato, that he wrote a five-page letter about the subject on his home page.<br />
<br />
While some of his arguments have merit, they were basically misleading and dishonest in their smarmy “you can trust me,” tone. The real reason behind omitting Flash was simple. Like one of those Mafia wars that date back to ancient Sicily, Apple and Adobe, the creators of Flash, had been engaged in a petty, decades-long feud that began when the two fledgling companies were upstarts working out of competing garages in the Silicon Valley.<br />
<br />
<center><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhIobXjm7Ujn4n_uaH4AWCp13uW7Ibkw85WppdZkQxhBTQib7EG075uqHX75FXO_3P-J7t6bgCa8v9LRs_wja7vb6_sYWYfLNOd2rxjQjbNX2a7T2srp-53VpBf2_9IAi6heFWQhW7kU/s1600/Steve+Jobs+Cropped+Introduces+iPad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="320" width="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhIobXjm7Ujn4n_uaH4AWCp13uW7Ibkw85WppdZkQxhBTQib7EG075uqHX75FXO_3P-J7t6bgCa8v9LRs_wja7vb6_sYWYfLNOd2rxjQjbNX2a7T2srp-53VpBf2_9IAi6heFWQhW7kU/s400/Steve+Jobs+Cropped+Introduces+iPad.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 79%;">Jobs in 2010 with the iPad, his final creation</span></center><br />
<br />
Last year, the iPad became the crown jewel in the Apple collection, igniting the world of tablets and revolutionizing yet another corner of the tech universe. Though competition has sprung up everywhere, 85% of all tablets sold today are iPads, and sales of tablets are one of the few positives in retail electronics. <br />
<br />
While the iPad peaked, Steve Jobs’ health worsened. After years of battling pancreatic cancer, it was sad (if not expected) to hear the standard corporate line that everything was fine, that Steve’s condition was “robust.” In fact, the intractability that defined Jobs may have led to a needless early death. His decision to seek alternative treatment, when conventional medical solutions offered him a 90% chance at recovery, was symptomatic of his severe inability to relinquish control. <br />
<br />
Cynics accused him of manipulating Apple stock prices by not divulging the truth and extent of his health problems. But as his traditional black turtleneck sagged, and his jeans grew more drawn in at the waist, it was clear that the spindly Jobs was losing the only battle he had left. Not only did the man defiantly dissipate before our eyes, but he died a hero of his time, the dude who made our world more fun. <br />
<br />
Some folks reacted as if a President had been killed. Check that, no President would ever have been loved like Steve Jobs. The faithful were hard to miss as they clogged the doorways of Apple stores, candles in hand, ready to tell anyone with a camera or audio recorder how much Jobs meant to them. They bore a disturbing similarity to the idol worshipers who clogged Hollywood Boulevard a couple of years ago to walk in circles around the star for Michael Jackson. It was hard to watch the unrelenting hagiographic TV tributes to Jobs without immediately thinking of our all-or-nothing mentality, and how the overblown mourning was much like the gadgets he gave us. People just didn’t know when to quit. <br />
<br />
I don’t begrudge Steve Jobs for his ambition or his thirst for privacy or even the manic way he ran his company like it was selling crack. I just hope we don’t see another guy like him for awhile. The world can’t handle a new visionary. The pace we are going is already much too fast. Instead of expanding the planet, technology has actually shrunk it, and reduced our real-world experiences, as we blow more and more of our spare time in front of various-sized TV sets. <br />
<br />
Directors, who made films intended for the big screen, must watch their hard work streamed on smartphones. DVD sales are down 40%, as the movie biz adjusts to downloading, anticipating a blockbuster sequel to what whacked the music labels - devaluation and piracy. Disney Studios recently announced plans to pull a sizeable chunk of their newspaper print ads for new releases, and concentrate on promoting movies via Facebook and Twitter. The financially crippled L.A. Times recently said, “writers and book publishers will eventually see the value of any given manuscript reduced to zero,” as Kindle lowers the sale price of books, and digitization opens the door to rampant file sharing.<br />
<br />
Newspapers should know. They gave their product away for free and wrote their own obituaries. I was having a conversation about this with a man in Hollywood who owns a newsstand. These days he makes more money selling cigarettes than Vanity Fair. Packaged media is in nearly as bad a shape. The enormous profit cycle that sprang from the days when consumers replaced vinyl albums with CD’s, and VHS tapes with DVD’s, is long gone. 3-D has been an enormous dud. Digital promises little sales growth. It may be the “dead end” sign at the end of the road for media formats. This week, Mike Lang, the CEO of Miramax said, “failure to attract consumers to cloud-based digital lockers could spell doom for the home entertainment industry.”<br />
<br />
Some side effects of this new age are amusing to watch. There was the woman I saw at Home Depot, sobbing uncontrollably into her phone that someone had de-friended her on Facebook. A store supervisor came over to console her. Or the kid I heard about who was texting on his bicycle, ran a stop sign, got hit by a car, and continued to text while a cop demanded he drop the phone. Maybe next year, that kid will be behind the wheel of a car.<br />
<br />
I talked to a grandmother who doesn’t get many visits from her grandkids anymore. Try explaining to an 80 year-old woman why a text is the same thing as a real conversation. A colleague told me that he preferred texting and Facebook because he could “control” his interaction better and not waste time. His logic seemed to consider people as objects to be shuffled about on a chess board to fit his liking. After all, time is precious when you have to check your e-mail and notifications on a half dozen accounts, three times a day. It’s no wonder most people haven’t read a book since they were assigned one for a class. <br />
<br />
The ease of communication via text, e-mail, IM and Facebook messaging has made it easier to communicate a quick thought, arrange a meeting, or drop a short line to someone. Unfortunately, this convenience has become a crutch. It has shut us off from each other and from spontaneous interaction. We have become, in essence, more like computers and less like humans. This chilling effect could be described as “negative societal reinforcement.”<br />
<br />
<center><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgDYx42GVubgcSvvtNZ6VTR_te2Nw4CVrYBx3-DOR8TCxmivZr5PrJtETkwk0Yk0Z8dK-o3Wsg26qmalGWgC3nRixpq0poGSPF85n_D4jcQp0nyREU957rwTtiRtWSkwOUd7yZKKc7gE/s1600/Jobs+Story+Woman+on+Phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="320" width="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgDYx42GVubgcSvvtNZ6VTR_te2Nw4CVrYBx3-DOR8TCxmivZr5PrJtETkwk0Yk0Z8dK-o3Wsg26qmalGWgC3nRixpq0poGSPF85n_D4jcQp0nyREU957rwTtiRtWSkwOUd7yZKKc7gE/s400/Jobs+Story+Woman+on+Phone.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 79%;">"Honey, I'm getting a text to landline message"</span></center><br />
<br />
The New York Times ran a great piece called “Nobody Calls Anymore.” It says that in the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone – land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.<br />
<br />
Here’s an excerpt from the story that’s priceless. <br />
<br />
“It’s at the point where when the phone does ring – and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter – my first thought is: ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’ My second thought is: ‘Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?” <br />
<br />
“Phone call appointments have become common in the workplace. Without them, there’s no guarantee your call will be returned. ‘Only people I’ve ruthlessly hounded call me back,’ said Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars.” Writers and others who work alone can find the silence isolating. ‘But if I called my editor and agent every time I wanted to chat, I think they’d say, ‘Oh no, Mary Roach is calling again.’ So I’ve pulled back, just like everyone else.”<br />
<br />
While there may be no turning back the clock, one should still appreciate the collateral damage that over-reliance on the Internet has wreaked on small businesses – like your favorite bookstore, or video store, or the record store you loved, or the neighborly hardware store on the corner. The last major brick and mortar electronics chain, Best Buy, has suffered a steady decline, with sales down as much as 40%. As a cost-cutting move, the company recently announced plans to lease large amounts of floor space to retailers like Starbucks. <br />
<br />
Think back when shopping was so less complicated; before every transaction had to be done online, with separate orders that the delivery person delivers to the wrong door, if at all. The U.S. Post Office is going broke, partly because nobody mails letters or bills anymore. Check out the hilarious new USPS TV spot where the announcer warns that “a real letter can’t carry an online virus.”<br />
<br />
It’s not too late to support your local retailer. The Web is excellent for tracking down impossible-to-find items. But shoes? I have seen my local shoe store packed with dozens of people, trying them on for size, and then commenting aloud that they intend to save a few bucks by purchasing them online. Soon, these tools will spend three times the effort buying, returning, and then reshipping, shoes that don’t fit to Zappos – because their local store will be replaced by a condo. Just remember that Amazon may not charge sales tax (at least for another year in California), but Amazon is not your neighbor, or your friend. <br />
<br />
Of all the human traits, the need to be liked is so powerful that studies have shown that we will change our habits and thinking, even our moral standards, to gain the approval of our peers. Several years ago, I’d hear people saying stuff like, “I was kinda forced in to Facebook.” You don’t hear that anymore, for good reason. Nobody wants to be penalized, to miss out on what’s happening, and be marginalized from the rest of life. Even if the price of this tethered subscription includes the shameless marketing of your privacy to the same companies who drop junk mail on your doorstep. <br />
<br />
What does all this mean? Is it really that bad? These next few years should be interesting. Maybe they will mark that point in time when a backlash developed, when people woke up and rebelled against technology, questioning whether all of this shit is getting out of hand. Or maybe, like some noir episode of “The Twilight Zone,” it will be remembered as the point when man finally lost control of his machines, a period that future generations will look back on with regret. <br />
<br />
The other day, the subject of Steve Jobs’ came up, and everyone agreed he was a brilliant inventor and salesman. But a 23 year-old kid offered something extraordinary. He said he rarely used his cell phone, never texted and despised Facebook, considering it trivial and annoying. I was astounded, and asked him what kind of life he expected to lead when nobody could track who, where, or what he was. He smiled at me with the knowing look of someone who had heard that before. “My real friends know how to find me,” he said.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Marketing a Film in <br />
15 Words or Less</span><br />
June 6, 1998</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVT1rZfNe9Z9I0iKhBRtgAH-siBcVlxVAgq2Gvvc9-1RX2JuQEuN0yOS1OSTo4F-CGGdSOkFRcIy9-3kuozKidVS5YyJNe4tr2-gxta9tvNCgGWWcP_sAeA4QKcVj-mF0ZC2v-HvDPyQ/s1600/Hunter-S+Thompson+CROPPED+for+Tagline+Writing+Story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="340" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVT1rZfNe9Z9I0iKhBRtgAH-siBcVlxVAgq2Gvvc9-1RX2JuQEuN0yOS1OSTo4F-CGGdSOkFRcIy9-3kuozKidVS5YyJNe4tr2-gxta9tvNCgGWWcP_sAeA4QKcVj-mF0ZC2v-HvDPyQ/s400/Hunter-S+Thompson+CROPPED+for+Tagline+Writing+Story.jpg" alt="Hunter S. Thompson as a sportswriter for the U.S. Air Force, 1958" title="Hunter S. Thompson as a sportswriter for the U.S. Air Force, 1958" /></a></center><br />
<br />
<i>Here’s one of the last stories from the vault left to post. In the summer of 1998, I was in my usual weekly spot inside Spaceland when Steve Moramarco from The Abe Lincoln Story asked me if I wanted to be interviewed for a web magazine. He was writing a column for Word.com about people with weird, out-of-the-way jobs. He’d just written a piece on a bounty hunter. Since I was working as an entertainment copywriter doing taglines for movie posters, it seemed like a good fit. This was the profile that resulted from our long talk.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
I write promotional copy for films. Basically, it's just trying to get people motivated to see a movie using elements such as video box synopses, taglines on posters and billboards, press kits and radio spots. <br />
<br />
My career started at ad agencies. I got into that because I thought advertising combined creative pop culture with writing that was immediate and impactful. But what I was doing was just dull, plain and simple. I decided to try ad copywriting for the entertainment industry. So I clipped a bunch of movie ads out of the L.A. Times and pasted my own taglines over the existing ones, and then xeroxed the mockup. <br />
<br />
I sent these samples out on spec to entertainment agencies, and I got very lucky, very fast. My first assignment was for <i>Dances with Wolves.</i> Against some fairly long odds, and competition from legendary ad agencies with unlimited budgets, my taglines went to finish, and they used my stuff for the teaser campaign and also for the final one-sheet. My fee was low, but after that, things started happening quickly. It's a cyclical business. You'll get very hot and all of a sudden, things will dry up and you'll have to go back and pitch people. But that one worked out sort of magically. <br />
<br />
My tag for <i>Dances with Wolves</i> was: "Inside everyone is a frontier waiting to be discovered." It was supposed to be a psychological approach, because they wanted something that wasn't just cowboys and Indians. It was 1990; Westerns were really out of style. In fact, I think that was the reason they gave the job to an unknown – because a lot of people figured nobody would see the movie anyway. So it ended up winning about ten Oscars, including Best Picture of 1990.<br />
<br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVLi6VJUiiz7MVUKUrM5mFzldZuus6jrDkp7OvDmN92igpJNTjl3P9GtqYV0xqhU7Jb8Y78qnzkFJG5FYoJ5hP4GvZBZrbf0FkQOewH8dQRNAgiser8ikBhhXqrIFcHtbrIJMcNfhV9lM/s1600/Dances+Teaser+Cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="330" width="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVLi6VJUiiz7MVUKUrM5mFzldZuus6jrDkp7OvDmN92igpJNTjl3P9GtqYV0xqhU7Jb8Y78qnzkFJG5FYoJ5hP4GvZBZrbf0FkQOewH8dQRNAgiser8ikBhhXqrIFcHtbrIJMcNfhV9lM/s400/Dances+Teaser+Cropped.jpg" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 79%;">The teaser poster for <i>Dances With Wolves </i></span></center><br />
<br />
That was eight years ago, and I'm still at it. I'm freelance, so I do a lot of different stuff, and I've taken breaks from the movies and done writing for the music labels, but mostly it's been movies. What happens is I get a script or I go to a screening, sometimes both. Then I talk to the people in the marketing department, and they tell me what they want, what they don't want, what they've seen before. <br />
<br />
I've built this technique for coming up with lines. A lot of it revolves around my own gut instinct. I mean, there are formulas you can use, but you don't want to get too formulaic because you don't want to sound like a cliché. If you see the stuff that's out there, you can tell the people who follow weak formulas. That's why when something comes out that is really creative, it makes an impact with people. Like the movie <i>Volcano</i> – "The Coast is Toast" – that kind of thing. It’s a brilliant tagline that grabs you. <br />
<br />
The best taglines play off the title. You also have to consider the theme, the artwork for the poster or the box, and so forth, but everything starts and ends with the title. I'll write long, narrative tags if I think the title is vague and needs explanation, and I'll generally let myself go a little wilder, into more abstract territory, if the title is very straightforward. <br />
<br />
I draw up huge word association lists. You have to explore all the various combinations. For the film, <i>Meteorites</i>, my list included words like "meteors, destruction, survival, hope, impact, speed, annihilation," and on and on. I had stuff like "Bad News Travels Fast" – as in speeding meteors crashing into earth. The video box actually ended up with two of my lines on it: <i>Meteorites</i> – "They've Traveled a Billion Years to Destroy the Earth in One Night," and then, to punch it home with a short and memorable line: "They're Going to Rock Your World." When you know in your heart that you nail an assignment like that, the feeling is usually mutual. The client almost always sees the light. Sorry, But I’ve been known to speak in taglines too. <br />
<br />
Right now, I do much more home video than theatrical – a lot of sci-fi, which is a huge market. It's maybe also a bit of a fringe market, but, actually the smaller the movie, the less channels of approval you have, so they'll let weirder stuff get through. For <i>Pinocchio's Revenge</i>, that satanic puppet movie, I had "Evil Comes with Strings Attached." (Laughs.) <br />
<br />
It’s a fun job. You drink a couple of beers and go for it. The downside is that it's a fairly lonely profession. You're just a freelancer, a guy at the other end of a phone. And if someone like Disney waits ninety days before they even look at your invoice, well, that's just tough. Also, you frequently have only twenty-four hours to deliver your product. When a festival arrives like Cannes, you get three calls in one day and everybody wants it yesterday. Some people might find the pressure to come up with stuff on the spot like that totally insane, they might freeze, get writer's block. But I find it challenging. I think my record was I wrote twenty-five taglines in thirty-five minutes for something. I didn't really know what I'd written after I finished because I was going so damn fast. <br />
<br />
Another thing that drives you nuts is negotiating your fee. The problem is that sometimes you are competing with people who want to get a foot in the door in entertainment any way they can, and they're willing to work for spec (free), which I don't do. I mean, I did it when I first started, but it's pretty much insulting. It devalues your work and your reputation. I try and stick to my guns for what I think I'm worth. And if a client tries to lowball me, I'll only agree if I'm just starting out with them. Once they like what I do, then I figure it is worth it for them to pay me what we both know is fair. Because if I sell their movie, the amount of money they're shelling out is worth it. And they know that. <br />
<br />
It's a very tough business. There are probably fifty other people doing the same thing I'm doing right here in L.A. All freelancers. It's extremely competitive. I worked on this movie <i>Atomic Dog</i>, a Paramount film that wound up on the USA Network. I had a couple of good lines – "Someone's Been a Very Bad Dog," and my personal favorite "Reality Bites," – and apparently, those lines got framed and put up on a wall in the Paramount offices. I thought that was pretty complimentary, so I called them up and said "Can I work on anything else for you?" And they said, "Who the hell are you?" That's show biz. <br />
<br />
If you have thin skin or rejection is difficult for you, I highly recommend getting into something else. In fact, it takes a lot of stick-to-it-ive-ness to freelance anything. I've got to get on the phone every other month and make dozens of cold calls to keep the thing going, because companies downsize, companies get swallowed up, they go in-house. It's a constant challenge to keep contacts current. Fortunately, I've got a couple of clients that have been great to me over the years. They pay well, they're fair, and they’ll even fight for a good idea in a meeting, which is great. <br />
<br />
I don't consider myself as someone who works in show business. I work in retail advertising. It's not much different from the guy who toils at Target writing catalogues for Sunday newspapers. In ten years, I just hope I'll still be making a living as a writer, because if you can actually survive as a freelancer, you are a success. <br />
<br />
The rewards vary. If I'm out socializing at a club and I tell a woman what I do, frequently, she either thinks I'm making it up, lying or exaggerating. You don't get a lot of recognition, because you don't get a byline. Still, a lot of people see your stuff, and that's pretty cool. Walking into a Tower Video and seeing dozens of video boxes with your work on it is something you can take pride in. I have gone to finish on over 200 films and my portfolio includes the posters and video boxes for <i>Blade, Billy Bathgate, Get Shorty, My Best Friend’s Wedding,</i> and <i>Bride of Chucky.</i><br />
<br />
I just worked on <i>Buffalo 66.</i> It's a really poignant and also mean-spirited film. Vincent Gallo, the director, was a very hands-on guy. I was proud to work with him, even though I had to do ten different rewrites for the box synopsis. The synopsis is your life story for a movie in ninety-five words or less. Like: "Billy Brown is a three-time loser with a score to settle, da, da, da." <br />
<br />
If you think about how much money goes into a film, and that the video box customers see in the store is what prompts some to buy it, you can see why studios get very, very, particular about the copy. I would too. Gallo had some concepts that I built on and he didn't like them, and I kept doing them over and over again. I thought I was going to get an aneurysm. But finally, it all worked out great, and it was probably one of the best synopses I ever wrote. I hope it makes it onto the box.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Courtney Love Unplugged<br />
Hollywood Bowl<br />
Los Angeles, CA </span><br />
October 27, 2001</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn_pnM7Dmeb4DxYcoTXNcU0XT-Bd61MDPA-tZM-mNAk7r1Tua1xA-iC6DlHlJ6x-7gOcCuWcuMYX85MOdYpOLfq1TYt4kO0S8a3hBAIMKBqLBt8rVoFmHYXgDXhlWl1oWpG2qxx-CqaUo/s1600/Courtney+Blog+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="400" width="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn_pnM7Dmeb4DxYcoTXNcU0XT-Bd61MDPA-tZM-mNAk7r1Tua1xA-iC6DlHlJ6x-7gOcCuWcuMYX85MOdYpOLfq1TYt4kO0S8a3hBAIMKBqLBt8rVoFmHYXgDXhlWl1oWpG2qxx-CqaUo/s1600/Courtney+Blog+3.jpg" alt="Courtney Love's Baby Doll Punk hasn't grown up yet" title="Courtney Love's Baby Doll Punk hasn't grown up yet" /></a></center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">Courtney Love has a full-time job as <br />
the world's most famous rock star widow</span></center><br />
<br />
Leave it to Perry Farrell – half industry weasel, half punk visionary – to discover the only guaranteed method of shutting up Courtney Love. Just unplug her. That's what happened, four songs into her scattered and self-indulgent set, opening for Farrell's 90's icons, Jane's Addiction at the Hollywood Bowl. It seems Ms. Love suddenly found herself sans amplification. <br />
<br />
With the house lights turned on and her spotlight gone – her microphone as dead as her musical career – Courtney continued to perform for the few dozen unlucky fans still stuck in the front rows. She wasn't playing music anymore, she really hadn't done that all night, she was just performing Courtney. That would include her latest role as the bitter, professional widow whose lawsuit against the surviving members of Nirvana has stalled release of their long-awaited box set and left her with the karma of an American Airlines pilot. <br />
<br />
As roadies scrambled about, Courtney refused to vacate the stage, strumming her soundless guitar for the benefit of a few well-paid, nearby flacks like KROQ's briny, Jed The Fish. Earlier, approximately one song before they cut her mic, Love had boldly announced that "Perry just told us we have only two songs left before we have to get off. F you Perry Farrell, we're going to play four!" Courtney's punk pledge fell on deaf ears when, a few minutes later, Farrell bitch-slapped back and cued the house DJ – sending Love into a complete meltdown. Screaming at the members of her band to stay on stage, she was, by turns: shocked, angry, frustrated, outraged, flabbergasted, flat-footed, stymied, thwarted, humiliated, flummoxed, flustered, bamboozled – and most certainly, pissed. All at the same time. <br />
<br />
But then Ms. Love got just what she asked for and Courtney always gets what she wants. As for the rest of the show, what more can you say about a line-up including Jane's Addiction and grizzled techno vets, Stereo MC's? Ten years ago, this exact bill would have actually meant something significant, both musically and socially. But tonight, in the vast, acoustically-challenged, half-filled Hollywood Bowl, it seemed to signify little more than the creaky wheels of nostalgia and the methodical flow of commerce. <br />
<br />
Jane's Addiction performed with grace and power, although Dave Navarro needs to update his stale, Jimmy Page-isms and add a second guitarist to match the nimble power of the band's rhythm section, featuring drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Martyn LeNoble. Farrell was his usual New Age, punk, hippie, grand bad-ass self and sang fabulously. The leggy stripper/dancers he employed to ride giant seesaws were politically fine with the crowd because nakedness is really so Jane's. <br />
<br />
As the headliner rolled into the night, Ms. Love was obviously long gone into the bowels of the building, perhaps paging her lead attorney to begin drafting civil suit papers. But her mystifying and horribly awkward latest appearance begs for a few helpful career pointers.<br />
<br />
Dear Courtney:<br />
<br />
BUY A WATCH: <br />
When the venue's set-in-stone curfew is 11 p.m. and thousands of schmoes have shelled out $50 each for a ticket that says, "Jane's Addiction," on it, you might negotiate your set change in under 45 minutes. <br />
<br />
REHEARSE YOUR MATERIAL:<br />
This includes tuning your guitar and singing on-key. It also means including actual Ends to your songs that are more than just free-associated rantings in search of a subject. <br />
<br />
FIRE YOUR HAIRSTYLIST AND WARDROBE PERSON:<br />
The low-slung, three-inches-below the navel, hip huggers you were wearing looked to be stolen from Robert Plant's dressing room during the filming of <i>The Song Remains The Same</i>. Those pants are as last year as this article. <br />
<br />
BEG ERIC ERLANDSON TO COME BACK AND BEG PATTY SCHEMEL TO NEVER LEAVE AGAIN<br />
New guitarist Steve McDonald sounded great in Redd Kross but his thin, uncertain playing has none of Erlandson's confident, sustained crunch. As for Love's longtime drummer, when Courtney announced, "Patty wrote half of the songs on my last record and I didn't let her play on it, so tonight's her chance to redeem herself," Schemel looked ready to crawl inside her kick drum. <br />
<br />
GROW OLD GRACEFULLY<br />
Your late husband set a rather poor example, but don't you think it's time you found a new identity to take you with dignity into middle age? Seven long years ago you were associated with one of the best albums of the 90's, and now you're a C-List movie actress. What happened? <br />
<br />
How's this? To start with, fire all your lawyers. Give Kurt's music back to his true fans, whose dollars for "Nevermind" helped make you a player. Then quit rock and roll. Start a country band. Tour the country in a smelly van. Live on $20 a day. Sleep with Mike Watt. Sleep with whoever will get the job done. But the one thing you might want to avoid, is screwing with Perry Farrell. <br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.gobblerhosting.com" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000">Hosting</a>Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-69483243633432546072011-11-04T21:32:00.000-07:002018-12-14T21:30:24.047-08:00Kurt Cobain Joins the Dead Rock Star Club<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Underneath The Bridge</span><br />
April 11, 1994</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6C_QozvcutStnLQBc4WiKEJN-DoFxl-bGyNeA5i4g_qga3D5in9BAWg9VEmxgTcqSIm2XoFO9JWA5cLHVwNi823VK-YO7t2ObBbJnYrOkpRn1w4qyYRHalj6j2o7KBE-yS85ptz4OAwg/s1600/Cropped+of+Kurt+Cobain+B+%2526+W.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="400" width="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6C_QozvcutStnLQBc4WiKEJN-DoFxl-bGyNeA5i4g_qga3D5in9BAWg9VEmxgTcqSIm2XoFO9JWA5cLHVwNi823VK-YO7t2ObBbJnYrOkpRn1w4qyYRHalj6j2o7KBE-yS85ptz4OAwg/s400/Cropped+of+Kurt+Cobain+B+%2526+W.jpg" alt="The tragic death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain turned a punk rock star into a Grunge martyr" title="The tragic death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain turned a punk rock star into a Grunge martyr" /></a></center><br />
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<i>In April 1994, several days after Kurt Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, I wrote a fan’s lament to the tragedy. I sent my ideas to editors at several music magazines in hopes of generating an article. Katherine Turman, then editor at the metal mag, RIP, was very supportive. <br />
<br />
My mini-feature story never came out, but the meat of it was bill-boarded on the RIP letters page. 17 years later, and Kurt’s death still seems shocking. More than any figure in rock history, his passing marked the end of an era. Of all the ways that Nirvana made our lives better, it was Kurt’s fanatical attention to quality control that meant the most. Not only did he strive to stay true to himself in his own music, but he raised the bar for every band out there. Rock musicians in the 90’s were actively competing with Nirvana and for most, it resulted in the best work of their careers.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
This business of dead rock stars was old 20 years ago. Now it's just boring, a cliché that didn't need to include Kurt Cobain. "That stupid club" is how his mom Wendy described it to the press. The likes of Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin make up the club – all people Kurt had little in common with except death at the age of 27. <br />
<br />
Kurt Cobain wasn't some pathetic reject from an Oliver Stone movie. His was not a gradual descent into the oblivion of self-pity. He wasn't a burned out, washed-up caricature of former greatness or someone who figured he'd better die before his legacy evaporated. Kurt should have lived to be 90. We could have grown old with him. His wife and baby daughter needed him. The world needed him, not because he was a "spokesman" or a rock God to worship from afar. We needed him because he was none of these things, because he achieved success accidentally, dragged into superstardom kicking and screaming.<br />
<br />
It's been only three days since the news of Kurt's demise turned MTV into a 24-hour tribute channel. You can’t look at a photo of the band or listen to their music and think of Nirvana in the past tense. It's impossible to imagine someone as completely vital as Kurt gone. Now the media circus really begins. Captions next to every Cobain story will include the inevitable words "troubled" and "doomed." The name Nirvana will come to represent failed potential, suicide, and, worst of all, fodder for <i>A Current Affair.</i><br />
<br />
Surely, someone will conjure up a chart with diagrams to show the similarities between John Lennon and Cobain. Let's see: 1. They both have the same amount of letters in their first and last names; 2. Same number of letters in their band's name; 3. They both died on the 8th of the month; 4. Both favored pop melodies; 5. Both were small-town lads who hit the big time in cold, rainy swinging cultural meccas (London, Seattle); 6. Both loved heroin; 7. Just when both seemingly had it together, they wound up on the wrong end of a gun; 8. And, finally, both attached themselves to vilified artist wives who are now arguably the most famous widows in rock history.<br />
<br />
Kurt once said that he wanted to kill off his career before it got too big. Suicide is the ultimate way of telling the world that no one owns you but you. There will be those who judge Kurt in the harshest of terms because he took his own life. These wise men will conclude that everyone has pressures and only weaklings cave in. But the last thing Kurt wanted was to be remembered as a dead rock star. For all his alienation and anger, he was possibly the most sensitive man to ever sell 10 million albums. And, like all sensitive people, his hurt ran deeper, his doubts loomed larger, his physical ailments became more disabling, his depression more bottomless. <br />
<br />
Long after the funeral wreaths and tributes, long after the last <i>Hard Copy</i> expose, long after the Top-40 world has forgotten everything Kurt stood for, there will be his family, friends and true fans. For them, there will just be an empty space. And that emptiness will be there every day, for as long as memories last.<br />
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-71950771124488738292011-11-03T22:30:00.000-07:002011-12-10T04:31:17.128-08:00The 2004 Presidential Debates<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Speechless in Miami</span><br />
October 3, 2004</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinPsH3myDa5BzZqs36AR9Zl76NVWvNlRn__fZjrVYCLVuPNU0912nZS9hzN5JN07JBaASEWFdJ7PCQ8EI8FfQsp3nwQDFTHZyxsZnahsohmNEQTWt7wHO_lN_g7MtOyeERP-5k-oeGKOo/s1600/bush_kerry_debate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="335" width="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinPsH3myDa5BzZqs36AR9Zl76NVWvNlRn__fZjrVYCLVuPNU0912nZS9hzN5JN07JBaASEWFdJ7PCQ8EI8FfQsp3nwQDFTHZyxsZnahsohmNEQTWt7wHO_lN_g7MtOyeERP-5k-oeGKOo/s400/bush_kerry_debate.jpg" alt="John Kerry shaking hands with George W. Bush at the 2004 Presidential debate" title="John Kerry shaking hands with George W. Bush at the 2004 Presidential debate" /></a></center><br />
<br />
In 1966, John Kerry stood before his Yale graduating class and thousands of others and delivered a remarkably polished speech critiquing American foreign policy and questioning U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The speech was well-rehearsed, analytical and very nearly perfect. But in its perfection, something important was lacking.<br />
<br />
"It was a policy wonk's speech, pretty analytical and dispassionate,” recalled his brother, Cameron Kerry, who was in the audience that day.<br />
<br />
Five years later, after his baptism of fire in the Vietnam War, John Kerry delivered a very different kind of speech before a Senate committee. Wrenching, emotional and direct, Kerry's anti-war diatribe concluded with a question that still hangs in the air nearly 35 years later: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"<br />
<br />
At the first Presidential debate of the 2004 race, George W. Bush could not answer that question. But John Kerry answered a big question in the minds of voters and viewers. Which Kerry would stand before us in Miami – would it be the plodding Clark Kent Kerry or the Superman of the Swift Boat? <br />
<br />
Like the Man of Steel, Kerry hit the stage with hurricane force and had Bush crouching for cover from the very outset. This was the crunch-time John Kerry, the fighter we had been told was lurking underneath all that hair. It was a performance delivered better late than never. In the past two months, Kerry had swung in the polls from five points up to eight points down and never, in the history of presidential elections, was more riding on the outcome of one evening. <br />
<br />
With his career on the line, Kerry's Mission was formidable. On the one hand, he had to be the anti-war candidate to rally his own demoralized Democratic troops and maybe woo some of the knuckleheads who plan to waste their votes on Ralph Nader. On the other hand, there are real fighting troops in the field and a slew of moderates who would not settle for Kerry channeling his inner Jane Fonda. Surrounded by hostile forces, he took aim and hit his political target dead center. <br />
<br />
Kerry built his arguments around the cornerstone theory that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are about as connected to each other as George W. Bush is to his European allies. The Senator turned the emphasis away from his own credibility and pointed us in the direction of Bush's dismal job performance. Walking a semantic tightrope, Kerry skillfully and at long last, defined his opposition to the conflict in Iraq, not as a theoretical opposition to war being an instrument for liberty, but as an opposition to THIS War being the wrong way to combat terror right now.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYR9fY65_sgIb8Lb_X_ZSi1JWg1OYVwx4HgPSW8CWhArCxUoJXrVph_HspIEH9JRiFAurbuUKdE1PEIOmYrhXvo-9ZOg7dgnLVxQc6a506UnR4OlVAJ-8_GkKodd2jOka3KhG1o6kakHI/s1600/Kerry+Lecturing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="240" width="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYR9fY65_sgIb8Lb_X_ZSi1JWg1OYVwx4HgPSW8CWhArCxUoJXrVph_HspIEH9JRiFAurbuUKdE1PEIOmYrhXvo-9ZOg7dgnLVxQc6a506UnR4OlVAJ-8_GkKodd2jOka3KhG1o6kakHI/s400/Kerry+Lecturing.jpg" alt="George W. Bush looks on as John Kerry makes a point at the 2004 Presidential debate" title="George W. Bush looks on as John Kerry makes a point at the 2004 Presidential debate" /></a></div><br />
Bush squirmed noticeably when Kerry delivered the best sound bite of the evening, calling Bush's sinking campaign in Iraq a "colossal error in judgment," adding that there was a vital difference between "certainty" and foolish stubbornness and that it is possible to be certain and still be wrong. Then, in a speechwriting tagline for the ages, Kerry managed to hit two birds with one stone – the listless economy and the War. Scowling like a disappointed professor at the smirking President, Kerry said, "We had Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora. Instead of doing the job ourselves, we sent a bunch of Afghan Warlords to do it. We outsourced that job too."<br />
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To his credit, Bush went toe-to-toe with Kerry for the first half hour. He made the valid point that despotic dictators don't pay much attention to U.N. Resolutions, and that Kerry's campfire song vision of universal alliances between nations would wind up in ashes. Bush repeated that Kerry had access to the same military intelligence that he did and still voted for the War. The President reached out to millions watching in foreign lands when he promised freedom to "those who suffer in silence, yearning for liberty." And then, Bush tweaked the faithful with a reference to prayer that probably solidified, in just 45 seconds, as many votes as Kerry did in 90 minutes. <br />
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But at about the 35 minute mark in the debate, something extraordinary happened. Bush apparently ran out of original material. This was not a good thing as the debate still had an hour to go. Kerry was performing with the stamina of a porn star and looked like he could keep it up for another three hours. As Bush fidgeted and slouched and stammered, the world was finally treated to the kind of real human interaction that had been denied them after months of orchestrated campaigns. <br />
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The very same time-management compulsions that forced Kerry to rush to fit his acceptance speech at the DNC into a 59 minute and 55 second slot, worked in his favor this time. He delivered his answers on cue, beating the red light on the podium with ease while Bush continually asked for 30 second rebuttal time and then just stood there speechless, staring blankly at the camera, looking like Johnny Carson might if a small zoo animal was peeing on his head. <br />
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To fill the dead air, Bush repeated himself again and again and still again. You could almost feel the audience in the auditorium collectively gasp, half in embarrassment for the moment, half in amazement that something spontaneous was actually happening. The reaction shot cutaways, which the Bush camp had lobbied hard to avoid, did serious damage to Dubya. While many would argue that there's more to being a President than being a great debater, few could debate that George W. Bush did not look very Presidential whenever Kerry was digging in for the kill.<br />
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Kerry was in the zone from the get-go. When Bush asked him how he could support our troops and still vote against 87 billion dollars in military improvements, Kerry countered with the admission that, "I made a mistake in how I talk about the War. But the President made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?"<br />
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Time and again, Kerry fleshed out his points with effective and stinging examples. After both candidates agreed that nuclear proliferation was their chief concern, Kerry, ever the shrewd lawyer and prosecutor, provided a brilliant summation of Bush's bungled diplomacy. Several years ago, after Colin Powell invited the president of North Korea to talks limiting nuclear weapons, Bush reversed Powell in public and sent the embarrassed North Koreans home. Kerry said, "For two years this administration didn't talk at all to North Korea. During that time, our inspectors were kicked out, our television cameras were kicked out and today they have four to seven nuclear weapons and we have one of the most serious reversals or mixed messages that you could send."<br />
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As the first debate wound to a close, you clearly felt that Kerry had the audience in the palm of his ski glove. It was a magical night, like one of those solar phenomenons where all the planets line up a certain way and a giant tidal wave is created that lays waste to an oligarchy. <br />
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Bush found no mercy from his opponent and certainly no mercy in the beady, black eyes of moderator Jim Lehrer. The PBS anchor presided over the evening with the stiff, humorless air of a Dean of Admissions warily interviewing two prep school candidates. When the debate ended, Bush and Kerry met center stage and were joined by their families. It's hard not to like the Bush clan. Stepford Wife Laura and her two Girls Gone Wild daughters have approachable appeal, while folks are still trying to figure out what's up with Teresa Heinz Kerry. The would-be First Lady wandered onto the stage like a tipsy Liz Taylor in <i>Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</i><br />
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In retrospect, both candidates missed opportunities. Kerry should have hammered harder on hidden administration agendas. What does Bush have planned for North Korea and Iran, two countries that actually have WMDs? What priority will be given to our domestic agenda if we continue to franchise Freedom with the expansionist zeal of a fast-food chain? When Bush promised onstage that we would continue with the all-volunteer army, Kerry could have quoted the recent report that 622 of the 1,765 Individual Ready Reserve members who were supposed to report on September 28th for additional tours of duty, failed to show up and many are considered AWOL. Can you spell D-R-A-F-T?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJIi9jR9uQn35wYwVUNOBY3YiyHS2g5NpkiN9-E0Hs7bBWfXaufLKduR1q-hy4t1C0B2UEASpGmlkIEGRqT9R6MhlGo-Xl0mftEVBuUtsIG65r4_u5_TBCglDPivmFW3BIyx4zD5K-mw/s1600/Draft+Burner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="318" width="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJIi9jR9uQn35wYwVUNOBY3YiyHS2g5NpkiN9-E0Hs7bBWfXaufLKduR1q-hy4t1C0B2UEASpGmlkIEGRqT9R6MhlGo-Xl0mftEVBuUtsIG65r4_u5_TBCglDPivmFW3BIyx4zD5K-mw/s400/Draft+Burner.jpg" alt="Draft cards, like politicians, can get burned" title="Draft cards, like politicians, can get burned" /></a></div><br />
While the Kerry team missed a priceless opportunity to drop the D word, the Bush speechwriters flubbed by not defining the G.O.P.'s positive influence on Libya. The argument could be made that when a country as dangerous as Libya decides to disarm at the same time that we are invading their next door neighbors, the reason is likely to be military, not political, pressure.<br />
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As we look forward to Debate 2, those in search of a history lesson can learn much from the mistakes and flawed logic of George W. Bush. His warped view of diplomacy and lack of understanding of Imperialist-style aggression is rooted in the belief that when you've got the other guy outgunned, it doesn't really matter what he thinks. His team swears by the notion that you can force and intimidate countries into seeing things your way. This works in the short term, but taken long range, it's a philosophy that plants seeds of resistance that eventually sprout into a virulent form of hate. <br />
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In the eyes of many in the Third World, the U.S. and not Al Qaeda, is the most serious threat to all that is sacred. This is a War we cannot win with our present strategy and this is why the situation has now digressed to the point that average Joes – the Iraqi butchers, bakers and candlestick makers – are willing to blow themselves up for a cause far mightier than any Bradley armored vehicle. Sadly George W. has never understood the difference between winning a military battle and losing a war for the will of the people. <br />
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This is the reason the world needs John Kerry just as much as we do. He believes that if you have a small army of rats in an otherwise healthy building, you lay traps to catch the rats one by one; you don't blow up the entire building. Bush's greatest success in Iraq – the capture of Saddam Hussein in a spider hole – was just the kind of low casualty, intelligence-based operation that John Kerry so espouses.<br />
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Success for George W. Bush comes whenever he is able to manipulate millions of Americans into adopting his black and white view of the world, an ideology without shades of gray. Bush wants us to believe that if you're against the War, you aren't supporting our troops. You're not a religious person who cherishes life if you believe that a woman has the right to choose what happens inside her own body. And if you don't vote for his re-election, you are inviting disaster. <br />
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Fear of the unknown continues to be the fuel that drives this propaganda machine. In poll after poll, people bemoan the country's direction. But out in Bushland, in that vast Midwest and Southern state disconnect, folks are too scared and confused to shake things up. How many of these voters, so terrified of change, are looking towards the future with hope, or running from the past in fear?<br />
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Still there is much to be excited about. If John Kerry can maintain his debate advantage when the topics turn to domestic issues (Bush's obvious weak point) the momentum will stay on his side. With his performance Thursday night, Kerry achieved the credibility needed to get out the Democrat and progressive vote, to actually make people visualize this guy as President. <br />
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Can John Kerry really change voter's minds? With roughly 95% of the country supposedly already decided, this is the harder question. The impact of the debates won't be decided for sure until Election Day. Don't be surprised if the country suffers a massive deja-vu flashback to 2000: Nader making the ballot in both Florida and Wisconsin and siphoning away precious votes, Florida casting the deciding Electoral College and a disturbing number of people arriving at the conclusion that Bush won the debates, even though they never actually saw them. <br />
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But the good news is what John Kerry did NOT do in Debate 1. He did not salute the camera, nor did he windsurf his way into a gale of numbing statistics and boring minutiae. This was John Kerry Version 9.0 Optimized. He was clear, simple and easy to access. If just 4% of the voters have bounced Kerry's way, the contest is on again. Back in 2000, Al Gore led by 8% going into the debates. Before Thursday, the pundits said that the 2004 election was all up to George W. Bush. It was his to lose. If John Kerry keeps this up, it will be his race to win.<br />
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<center><span style="font-size:180%;">The Last Supper</span><br />
June 11, 2007</center><br />
</strong><span style="font-size:130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<span style="font-size:100%;"><br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXeusxu-C9jKAi5ZNe-2CXltbIyEUK3_wKjE-RYk2WeAD9LQCAO7_rEMQCzS1IW9seQmtKGJWT9OR9Em1F8j25tpr8nNEjRwPhPIFBoht5613htOO5gbZAm3BXm48_uKzZPxKIM9eaD-c/s1600-h/The+Sopranos.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXeusxu-C9jKAi5ZNe-2CXltbIyEUK3_wKjE-RYk2WeAD9LQCAO7_rEMQCzS1IW9seQmtKGJWT9OR9Em1F8j25tpr8nNEjRwPhPIFBoht5613htOO5gbZAm3BXm48_uKzZPxKIM9eaD-c/s400/The+Sopranos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359673592600651682" alt="Tony Soprano and his family sit down for dinner in the final scene of The Sopranos" title="Tony Soprano and his family sit down for dinner in the final scene of The Sopranos" /></a></center></p><br />
<i>The Sopranos</i> final episode, “Made in America,” has come and gone, and it left millions of viewers in the dark. Of course, I’m talking about the last ten seconds of the show, where the screen went silent and black. There was nothing wrong with your TV. After six and half seasons of the best television show in history, the producers decided to wind it up a few heartbeats short of completion.<br />
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Showrunner David Chase has continually demonstrated a sadistic streak toward his audience. Cast favorites are butchered without the slightest regard to humanity (witness the manipulative and gruesome execution of sweet Adriana La Cerva). So, if twelve million loyal viewers crave something epic to close out a series that has built HBO into a powerhouse (giving the network the means to foist up mean-spirited, forgettable shit like <i>John from Cincinnati</I>), then Chase is going to confound expectation, be an asshole and disappoint. <br />
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Close monitoring of previous seasons demonstrates that Chase and co-producer Terence Winter usually pack the next-to-last episode with the best material. Season six and a half was no different. The action-packed hour that preceded the show’s finale was called “The Blue Comet” and it finds Tony and the remainder of his decimated crew in ruins. The man of a thousand appetites has descended from the opulence of a Las Vegas penthouse to the coffin of a safe house in just three viewing weeks. The New Jersey and New York families are at war. As the credits roll, Tony lays down on a bare mattress to sleep the fitful sleep of the doomed, holding not his faithful wife Carmela, or the hooker du jour, but an automatic weapon he may soon put to his head.<br />
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Somewhere in the bowels of the Tri-State area, Tony’s mob-boss rival and nemesis Phil Leotardo, he of the simian hairline and withering quips, is in hiding after the Sopranos tried to kill him and settled instead for the look-alike father of his mistress. Bobby Bacala, Tony’s brother-in-law, the sweet man-boy who never really fit in, is gunned down in a hobby store while shopping for a vintage train set. Silvio Dante, the consigliere in Tony’s outfit, eternally damned for his cold-blooded execution of poor Adriana, lies in a coma after a shooting in the Bada Bing nightclub parking lot.<br />
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Everything in Tony’s world is falling down. After numerous threats to quit therapy, he has the shoe jammed up his own ass when he’s suddenly fired by his lady shrink. It’s an ignoble and personal betrayal. His interplay with Dr. Melfi is a window into the Tony Soprano we can connect with – an anxiety-wracked human filled with doubt, concerned about playing fair with his own family and his crew, agonizing about the same decisions all business managers worry about. <br />
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But where Tony’s going, he’ll need more than psychiatric help. He currently has, as Phil would say, “a couple of three options.” He could be killed, go to jail, pull a Ray Liotta from <i>Goodfellas</i> and turn state’s evidence, or commit suicide. Option five might feature Tony leaving town to create a new posse in another state. But that would lie in the realm of impossible-to-process, about the same odds of Edie Falco ringing my doorbell tonight with a steaming plate of her baked zitti.<br />
<br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_7ZIBrSxl7gZPHAYPDedogOU0pb0SqDB7xreScAoM6fr6zaw4LElHXWgsz-L9Y7q7-6egPYfg4YO2uiKRziQdf7acaJ3Wt48x3CmUp9i9JjqCEmKWWGr01hdWs8lRJLc6_Cxz-Kfw1E/s1600/Tony+Soprano+Cigar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="265" width="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_7ZIBrSxl7gZPHAYPDedogOU0pb0SqDB7xreScAoM6fr6zaw4LElHXWgsz-L9Y7q7-6egPYfg4YO2uiKRziQdf7acaJ3Wt48x3CmUp9i9JjqCEmKWWGr01hdWs8lRJLc6_Cxz-Kfw1E/s400/Tony+Soprano+Cigar.jpg" alt="Tony Soprano is the best gangster character since Al Pacino in Scarface" title="Tony Soprano is the best gangster character since Al Pacino in Scarface" /></a></center><center><span style="font-size: 79%;">James Gandolfini plays New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano</span></center><br />
<br />
With a build-up like that, the final episode, “Made in America,” had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, <i>The Sopranos</i> season-ending shows are often a disappointing and confusing post-script. So why change things up? With 60 minutes left in the lives of America’s first Family, Chase opted to spend his time meandering back and forth between the same redundant, flat subplots that have prompted bathroom breaks for years.<br />
<br />
Will it be law or medicine for Meadow (which makes more dough)? Terminally out-of-step A.J. is determined to enlist in the Army and head for Afghanistan. Displaced housewife/whore Carmela wrings her hands in typical babbling denial, complaining about unsanitary conditions in the new safe house. Senile old fart Uncle Junior burns up five precious screen minutes trying to remember who his nephew Tony is, and why we should care. TIME TIME TIME, that the final episode didn’t have, is wasted. <br />
<br />
Paulie Gualtieri, as usual, gets the best material. When a stray cat spends hours staring at the wall photo of dead Christopher Moltisanti, it drives the superstitious Paulie nuts, so he picks up a broom to swat the kitty. Tony walks into the room and Paulie pretends to be sweeping up. Priceless moments like these are proof that in between the mob hits and tiring, New Age psychological meanderings, <i>The Sopranos</i> was a hell of a funny show.<br />
<br />
Phil Leotardo finally does get whacked and has his head run over by an SUV, which I guess is payback for the disfigurements of Vito, the gay guy, and Bobby. But the too-easy tip from Tony’s federal agent/snitch on Phil’s location that prompted the hit? I bet that suspense-cheating concept took hours to figure out in story meetings. The other holes in logic are simply mind-numbing. With Phil dead and the New York crew possibly seeking revenge, Tony visits his sister Janice, Bobby’s widow, in the last place anyone would think to stake out – her house. <br />
<br />
As the body count rises in the midst of a major mob war, there’s no sign of the Feds. It has always seemed like the Soprano gang exists in an alternate universe where murder and mayhem prompt none of the crushing real-world responses from the authorities or the media. Major figures are killed off and the following week it’s like nothing happened. Is Chase saying that life moves in unexpected ways, or is he telling us his fantasies are everyone else’s incomprehensible bullshit? Maybe it was all just a dream and Tony really is a traveling salesman who sees lights at the end of the world outside his hotel room window.<br />
<br />
I’ll spare you the rest of the forgettable details of final episode #86, since all anybody talks about is the ending. With time about up, Tony, A.J. and Carmela sit down for their last supper at Holsten’s restaurant. The eatery is the kind of drab dump that precious Carm wouldn’t usually be caught dead in. Meadow is clumsily trying to parallel park her car and arrives late, or maybe just in time, to be riddled with bullets. A predatory thug in a Members Only jacket is lurking inside the joint. The thug passes the Soprano table and goes into the bathroom, presumably to retrieve a handgun taped to the toilet a la Michael Corleone in <i>The Godfather</i>. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” is on the jukebox. Tony looks up one more time from his onion rings and just as Steve Perry sings the words ‘Don’t Stop,’ the screen smash-cuts to black, like someone shot your TV through the head. Three million viewers check to see if they paid their cable bill.<br />
<br />
So what can we presume really “happened” in this monumental cop-out to cinematic closure? Let’s toss out some theories and see what sticks to the wall besides Tony’s brains. If the entire clan was to be killed, it runs contrary to previous hits where bystanders and wives are spared. In a past episode, Tony assured Carmela, “Don’t worry, they never hit the family.” Sure, Tony had Phil whacked, but the lizard-like <i>istigatore</i> was getting on everyone’s nerves anyway.<br />
<br />
Tony is about to be indicted by a grand jury. Prison would remove him from substantial leadership and leave the territory wide open. With Phil gone, there wasn’t a single hood with the clout to order a contract. Why bother? Phil’s weasel lieutenant, Butch, has the grudge, but hardly the balls. Maybe the guy in the Members Only jacket is a Fed on stakeout, reminding Tony that either the net of justice is going to drop, or he'll be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life. Since when do shooters openly eyeball the mark for five minutes before taking care of business? For a guy of Tony’s stature, it would likely be several gunmen on the job, and the less face-time the better.<br />
<br />
But it would be wise to remember, that in the world of David Chase, metaphor and not conventional logic, often prevails. Under those criteria, Tony really was killed in the diner by a gunshot to the back of the head when the stalker guy came out of the bathroom. As Chase said in a recent interview regarding clues to Tony’s fate, “Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.” Remember the conversation when Bobby tells the Boss, “You probably won’t even hear it when it happens, right?” Then there was the rotten karma left over from the suicide of tossed-aside Soprano henchman Eugene Pontecorvo. To free himself from the grip of The Family, Eugene’s wife implores him to “put a bullet in (Tony’s) fucking head.” Can anyone forget that the first episode of <i>The Sopranos</i> sixth season, where Tony is shot by Uncle Junior, was titled “Members Only?”<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5u27N_O6ms6pIXWPApK2f8tFr85CcQmTDpckhyphenhyphenWH2Moa8t8ELhlRDYuxGVmgb0GoPnxQiqPyO_MGWGcxutc2hsUsmdnVJ3bv2i4Uecar1iqY862YnG4-LWEd-4PgTWJeTsl8O12c4C8/s1600/Tony+and+Adriana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="285" width="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5u27N_O6ms6pIXWPApK2f8tFr85CcQmTDpckhyphenhyphenWH2Moa8t8ELhlRDYuxGVmgb0GoPnxQiqPyO_MGWGcxutc2hsUsmdnVJ3bv2i4Uecar1iqY862YnG4-LWEd-4PgTWJeTsl8O12c4C8/s400/Tony+and+Adriana.jpg" alt="Adriana and Tony Soprano in a lighter moment before he had her killed for cooperating with the Feds" title="Adriana and Tony Soprano in a lighter moment before he had her killed for cooperating with the Feds" /></a></div><br />
Way back in the second season finale, “Funhouse,” Tony has a dream where he has been diagnosed with a terminal disease and decides to kill himself. He pours gasoline over his head and lights a match. At the exact moment he explodes, and presumably dies, he wakes up crying and says “Everything’s black!” Speaking of black, more than a few websites have had great fun with the POV shots inside Holsten’s. Each begins with a close-up of Tony as he eyes every person entering the restaurant. The viewer sees what he is seeing. On the final POV shot, he looks up and we see nothing. I guess that means what Tony sees is also nothing – his death, the big blank TV screen in the sky.<br />
<br />
You have to hand it to David Chase. The guy knew how to go out with a bang. To ensure secrecy, he removed the last pages of the script for “Made in America” before he gave it to his crew, and the very last scene shot was inside Holsten’s. So while the final episode was generally superfluous, the ending is a nifty bit of filmmaking – even though the audience was gypped out of seeing T get the payback he deserved for all the lives he ruined. <br />
<br />
Chase had reasons for leaving the ending ambiguous. He has complained that fans demanded to see Tony’s blood, and he wasn’t going to give them what they wanted. It’s safe to say that the moral awakening which followed Tony’s shooting and near-death experience had run its course, and he was worse than ever, becoming a compulsive gambler and treating those closest to him like captured prisoners. His gift for blankness when he kills Christopher is not unlike the bloodless gaze of Michael Corleone at the end of <i>Godfather Part II</i>, when he orders his own brother executed for weakness in the line of fire. Tony’s once big heart for others in need had shrunk to the size of a .45 caliber slug. In the end, there were a thousand people/victims with the desire to see him dead and any one of them could have figuratively pulled the trigger. Prison would have perverted Tony’s enormous appetitive for wringing every dime out of life, so maybe someone was doing him a favor.<br />
<br />
If the show had a unifying theme, it was that you reap the seeds you sow. Not just society’s judgment, but the brutal discipline of organized crime. Every character in <i>The Sopranos</i> is given a chance to measure up. Those who don’t, pay the price – not just the wrath of The Family, but the damnation of karma. Tony murders Christopher, his own “nephew,” because the drugged loser is a liability who has run out of chances to fuck up. Gay Vito flees from an old-world culture that kills independents who disgrace it. He should have stayed “living free” with his boyfriend, the fry cook. Vito returns home because he can’t survive outside The Life, and that decision brings the end of his. Bobby’s spirit was clean until Tony pushed him into his first murder – where Bobby lost his soul. Tony Blundetto is headed for a straight career and a real life, until his uncontrollable self-destructive urges lead him to shoot Phil's brother and seal his own oblivion.<br />
<br />
Any ending of a series like <i>The Sopranos</i> could never expect to satisfy more than 51 percent of the viewers anyway. One thing is certain. A show with its infinite attention to plot detail will not pass our way again. Like innocence, we have lost something that cannot be restored. The communal experience of sitting down at a designated hour, with millions of other viewers, to share the expectations and joys of something new, dark and revelatory is over. The actors who became extended family to us must now suffer diminished expectations for the rest of their careers. In our minds, they will always be Tony, Carmela, A.J., Meadow, Christopher and Paulie. If half the soil in New Jersey was turned over, you couldn’t dig up characters like these again and I’m not sure anyone would want to.<br />
<br />
</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.gobblerhosting.com" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000">Cheap Web Site Hosting</a>Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-48992073097119387922011-10-27T22:45:00.000-07:002012-11-25T17:18:22.613-08:00Visiting The Ghost Of Kurt Cobain<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Love, Loss and the<br />
Greenhouse Effect</span><br />
September 1, 1995</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYr9VEDYLsnhBVtRbU8gFjDmGzIIhpBD1vWJLgqenSxmkhMAB6cWD_aC8wlArqBKLXVCHIdhxRpOoAzXYQlWXrwcgWckLV3sdmwySoeZn7-ShH7VD2zOUUEXh1zYjB2foLBML-9fV49c/s1600/Kurt%2527s+House+300+DPI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="257" width="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYr9VEDYLsnhBVtRbU8gFjDmGzIIhpBD1vWJLgqenSxmkhMAB6cWD_aC8wlArqBKLXVCHIdhxRpOoAzXYQlWXrwcgWckLV3sdmwySoeZn7-ShH7VD2zOUUEXh1zYjB2foLBML-9fV49c/s400/Kurt%2527s+House+300+DPI.jpg" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;">The greenhouse behind Cobain's residence outside Seattle</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 77%;">Photo by Brian Bentley</span></center><br />
<br />
Labor Day weekend is the official end of summer. As September arrives, families everywhere hit the road for one last vacation before it's back to school and work.<br />
<br />
It's twilight on a warm "getaway" Friday and I'm outside the house where Grunge God Kurt Cobain lived and died. The world wants to immortalize the legend and forget the person. It’s impossible to do that when you’re standing in his backyard.<br />
<br />
Thousands of people have gathered in this little green strip of land, a 100 by 150 foot "park" on East Lake Washington Drive in the upscale Seattle suburb of Madrona. I know. I saw them – puzzled fans huddled in the rain for MTV's <i>Week in Rock</i> reports.<br />
<br />
Nobody is around but me right now. It's green and lush and quiet like a cemetery. You can hear the crickets chirp down by the lake, about 150 yards away. After all the crowds that amassed here, it feels strange to be alone in such a notorious place.<br />
<br />
I stare at the landmark to a fallen idol, the garage/greenhouse where Kurt Cobain blew his brains out with a shotgun. It perches so close, so open and vulnerable, just like the man, spitting distance from the edge of public property. It looks smaller, less significant than I imagined.<br />
<br />
The garage sits behind the main house, up a 100 foot winding driveway, totally obscured on all sides by foliage, except from the park side. And these bushes have grown six feet since the pictures taken just 18 months ago. Soon, the house next to Madrona Park will be sealed from public view.<br />
<br />
Then I notice the curtains in the second story bedroom window. Vintage Victorian they are, all frilly and doily patterns perfectly suited for Courtney Love, the queen of Baby Doll punk. How long have they been there I wonder? She probably put them up when Kurt was still alive, when Francis still had a dad, when Courtney and her "knight in shining armor" enjoyed the only real family they'd ever known. Now the curtains just looked kind of sad and clichéd, the way Courtney looks these days when she's not making music.<br />
<br />
I walk up the steep concrete steps at the rear of the park. Every square inch of undeveloped land in Seattle is covered with trees. It's dark and spooky in here. I emerge onto a winding, hilly street that would not look out of place in Laurel Canyon, California. Approaching the back fence of the property, I can hear the jingling of guard dog choke collars and the muffled voices of two men far away. Like a paparazzi shooting Hugh Grant, I lift my camera and muttering that I don't have a wide angle lens, snap a quick shot of the garage and the newly mounted security camera. Immediately, as if on cue, the dogs come running, too late.<br />
<br />
So I head back to the lone bench that sits like a monument at a state park. Fans have scratched into it their reasons for forgiving and never forgetting the man who didn’t know when to quit. "Even in his youth he was something," quotes one of Kurt's best lyrics, not coincidentally about another dysfunctional American family. Some of the inscriptions sound really lost.<br />
<br />
All by yourself in this vibe-heavy place, one almost feels a strange tinge of possession, like you’re channeling the dude in his sacred burial ground. But in contradiction, the scene is also completely ordinary. A big empty house owned by a rock widow who lost her husband way too soon – sad and not romantic in the least. In real life, Selena and Elvis are dead too, dust and dirt, nowhere near immortality and huge merchandising profits.<br />
<br />
It was time to find my way back to wherever I had come from and bid so long to the Nowhere Man of 90's rock. But he was more than a media label. Kurt had it all. As a songwriter he was in the same league as Neil Young or Bob Dylan. Both those cats knew it too, as did Michael Stipe. Music Gods always seem to appreciate it the most when someone new has earned admission to their private club.<br />
<br />
I take a few last photos. The twilight is fading, the bugs are taking over, and Graceland West is shutting down for the night. Suddenly, I hear the hum of a Mercedes as a car enters the gates. Is it Courtney, stopping to pick up some things before heading off to that Labor Day rock festival at the North Pole?<br />
<br />
On my way down the grassy knoll, two boys outfitted with crash helmets, the kind a kid from the 60's wouldn't be caught dead with, pull up on their bicycles. "Isn't that Eddie Vedder's house?" one asks. "Yeah...it is," I say. Just then a car full of teenagers passes by and one of them shouts "COURRRTNEEEY” into the distance of the still, lakefront air. <br />
<br />
Consider the paranoia that can come with fame and the constant intrusion from people who think they know you. As for the rock widow, I've always believed in her music, figured it was coming from the heart. Everyone can relate to shitty parents, the sense that you must somehow recreate a family of your own. Courtney failed so bitterly to pull that off. I admire her for showing respect and not selling the house off overnight, like it was diseased. I would not want her as a houseguest, but she does tackle everything head on, stares it in the face and has a drink with it. She doesn’t run.<br />
<br />
I walk back to the car with a weird sense of self-fulfillment, of finally making the trip and paying respects. And I realize how glad I am to have seen this place, not in the carpal tunnel of TV, but in the three-dimensional reality of smell and sound, color and shape. It’s true. You can find anything you really want to find in this world. Sometimes that includes peace.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Man in the Box</span><br />
April 23, 2002</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4DUkx90FWGmBcVjE_8PxrligGlJxcpru5N4UVOJpLZh7K7xyC0cVttBgUYt7dVJ7IxUkGsgSqJRKscl2hFJ05E_WortkRf1cfzpx_OnXosCgdbFfL0fg-dhSJR5PeTW3x4Tgnx8RLNU/s1600/Layne+Staley+Unplugged.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="276" width="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4DUkx90FWGmBcVjE_8PxrligGlJxcpru5N4UVOJpLZh7K7xyC0cVttBgUYt7dVJ7IxUkGsgSqJRKscl2hFJ05E_WortkRf1cfzpx_OnXosCgdbFfL0fg-dhSJR5PeTW3x4Tgnx8RLNU/s400/Layne+Staley+Unplugged.jpg" /></a></center><br />
<br />
On April 19th, Layne Staley, the 34 year-old lead singer of Alice in Chains and the most influential rock vocalist of his generation, was found dead in his Seattle apartment. Judging by the decomposition of the body, Staley may have been dead as long as two weeks. Kurt Cobain took his own life on, or about, April 5th, 1994. Was the timing just a macabre coincidence? <br />
<br />
Even though it was made official last week, Layne Staley really died a long time ago. He didn't do it in dramatic public fashion, with a single shot, like Cobain. Rather, he wasted away, a la Elvis, in a hermitic, drug-induced stupor, his spirit and then his body destroyed piece by piece. Pending the outcome of toxicology tests, no one will be surprised if heroin was involved.<br />
<br />
Besides a love for drugs, Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain shared much in common. Their lives and their music intersected across a multitude of landscapes – some personal, many professional. Both natives of Washington State, they found themselves, in 1991, at the forefront of a Seattle music scene that exploded across the world. Cobain's band, Nirvana, played punk rock with heavy metal overtones. Staley's group, Alice in Chains, delivered heavy metal with a liberal dose of punk. Suddenly, everywhere you looked, it was cool for metalers to mosh and for hard core punks to bang their heads – converting new fans to each genre and adding credibility to both. This wonderful new hybrid was labeled Grunge and it was a concept the world was ready to embrace faster than you could say, "Axl Who?" <br />
<br />
At the turn of the 90's, much like today, mindless pop ruled the airwaves and a bored, record-buying public was hungry for substance, for a sense that music, especially rock, still mattered. Like any powerful new religion, Grunge had larger-than-life icons ready to supply instant soundbites of self-promotion. The Holy Trinity, in effect, was Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder and they blessed this new punk rock, making it easier for deserving bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Tad, Screaming Trees and Afghan Whigs to follow in their wake. <br />
<br />
Alice in Chains never quite fit the purist's mold but they sold the music to the average Metallica fan and this just heightened the cross-pollination of the species. AIC's 1990 debut album, <i>Facelift</i> was the first certified Grunge hit – powerfully dark and unrelenting Dirge rock with cheery titles like "Man in The Box" and "We Die Young." Their follow up, <i>Dirt</i>, sold 4 million copies. <br />
<br />
<i>Dirt</i> was Staley's tour de force masterpiece. It seemed to crystallize everything Alice in Chains had been trying to achieve thematically and it did so in commanding fashion. Heavily injected with musical and lyrical hooks, <i>Dirt</i> was a documentary of sorts, a day-in-the-life of a disturbingly content junkie. In the hands of lesser talent, the album's one-note tales of gloom and despair might have seemed calculated. But Staley pulled it off with blunt conviction and an absence of self pity, mixing art with his real life in a potent recipe for oblivion. <br />
<br />
In "Junkhead" he brags, "What's my drug of choice? Well, what have you got? I don't go broke and I do it a lot." The album's title track was even more to the point. "I want you to kill me and dig me under. I want to live no more." While Staley plumbed the lyrical depths, guitarist Jerry Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Starr elevated the music with majestic metal riffs and tight, glassine production – songs like "Would?" and "Rooster" became instant anthems for a new generation of disaffected slackers. <br />
<br />
Like many of his contemporaries, Staley always labored in the shadows of Kurt Cobain's brilliance. Much has been written about how Nirvana's <i>Nevermind</i> changed the face of music, making Cobain the most influential artist of his time. But, when you turn on the radio today, it's Layne Staley who has become the common voice and the most copied rock vocalist since Michael Stipe or Mick Jagger. His diaphragm-driven growl laid the foundation for modern metal – from Stone Temple Pilots to Queens of the Stone Age to Staind to (gasp) Creed to all things Ozzfest. STP's 1992 breakthrough hit, "Sex Type Thing" sounded more like Alice in Chains than Alice in Chains did. Was it Weiland or Staley singing, "I know you want what's on my mind?" <br />
<br />
To their credit, Staley and Cantrell continued to evolve and by the time of their perfecto 1996 appearance on <i>MTV Unplugged</i>, the band had developed a rich catalogue of material. The live performance was one of the group's finest moments. Listening to their voices seamlessly harmonize on "No Excuses" and "Brother" was to rediscover vintage power trio crooning – shades of Clapton and Jack Bruce in Cream.<br />
<br />
This high water mark signaled the beginning of the end for Layne Staley. His remaining years were spent in a mute, self-imposed exile, getting high and watching TV. Many of his peers had become ghosts in a career field with no retirement plan. Depressed souls can suffer up here in the pines where the sun don't ever shine. The dark clouds that perpetually smother Seattle hovered over the short lives of precious native sons like Jimi Hendrix, Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone and Kurt Cobain. Mia Zapata of the Gits was brutally murdered in a 1993 case that remains unsolved. <br />
<br />
One of the sadder aspects of Staley's slow capitulation was how he got written off. Many people presumed he died long ago. Such is the fate suffered by terminally-minded rock stars who choose not to burn out, but to fade away. Had Layne nodded off the night after his 1996 <i>Unplugged</i> rebirth, he might have theoretically been chiseled into a Seattle rock n' roll Mount Rushmore, along with Hendrix, Wood and Cobain. <br />
<br />
Instead, his body lay unclaimed for two weeks in his University District apartment as those who might have presumed to care about him never bothered to check on their desperately ill friend. Perhaps this says more about the pain of being Layne Staley than all the lost opportunities and grave robbers ever could.<br />
<br />
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-41506010888810031362011-10-25T22:09:00.000-07:002012-11-25T18:07:13.431-08:00Booze, Betrayal and Broken Gin Blossoms<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">The Gift of the <br />
Homemade Mix Tape</span><br />
December 22, 2002</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiaCVUcEbJjeJjgR_WWZV3aloioaw5KR3wiyUiAUJK7f3r0tVrNcptNUsSrGIezkVBw8PR2DXZbZBBiWTSCJh0PE2KX4mANn7MuKXgFUarA_KyAmx8wuDHk6W7VHCP3Uj74H4IhO3DoE/s1600/Gin+Blossoms+Cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="315" width="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiaCVUcEbJjeJjgR_WWZV3aloioaw5KR3wiyUiAUJK7f3r0tVrNcptNUsSrGIezkVBw8PR2DXZbZBBiWTSCJh0PE2KX4mANn7MuKXgFUarA_KyAmx8wuDHk6W7VHCP3Uj74H4IhO3DoE/s400/Gin+Blossoms+Cropped.jpg" alt="Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience was the best alternative country rock album of the 90’s" title="Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience was the best alternative country rock album of the 90’s" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 79%;">Gin Blossoms with Doug Hopkins (right, front)</span></center><br />
<br />
It's a few days before Christmas. As usual, I find myself in the familiar holiday position of being financially strapped, so spending much money is out of the question. Better to give a present that money can't buy, namely some exceptional songs cued in a particularly creative order. There's nothing like a mix tape. That's right, it may be 2002, but mix tapes will always be cool. Digital can't beat the heart and soul of a 90 minute Hi-bias, Dolby B audiocassette. <br />
<br />
But first, I want to talk about 3 CD’s I’ve got in constant rotation right now. <br />
<br />
First up, is the soundtrack to the extremely underrated film, <i>Jackie Brown.</i> Director Quentin Tarantino one-ups his legendary soundtrack to <i>Pulp Fiction</i> (no easy task). Where else could you find the ghetto grandeur of Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" on the same slab with the bubblegum howitzer that is the Grass Roots' "Midnight Confession?" <br />
<br />
Next, is the Gin Blossoms first full-length CD, <i>New Miserable Experience,</i> the best folk and country rock album of the 90's, which is saying a helluva lot. It is everything that critically-acclaimed efforts from boring and bombastic bands like Wilco are not – unself-conscious, pure, simple, optimistic, devastated and shot full with the kind of undeniable musical hooks and lyrical profundities that remind the listener of instant classics like <i>Pet Sounds</i> and <i>Rubber Soul.</i> Who cares if the group's catalog wound up on KOST 102? <br />
<br />
The story of the Gin Blossoms begins and ends with its founder, Doug Hopkins, an unrepentant melancholic and doomed alcoholic who managed to write one of the 10 greatest songs ever about lost love ("Hey Jealousy") and get kicked out of the band he started the day the album he conceived from the ashes of a broken love affair went gold. <br />
<br />
Four months before Kurt Cobain killed himself, Hopkins put a .38 caliber slug into his head. But these days, few speak with reverence about "Doug," like they do, "Kurt," which is unfortunate, since Hopkins was Cobain's equal as a songwriter in every way. He was betrayed by his own brothers in the Gin Blossoms, who forced him to sign away royalties and spitefully removed some of his credits and his photo from the album. But in the end, Hopkins made his point. Without his enormous manic energy and musical spark, the band languished, milking the formula he created until eventually it was an enterprise running entirely on fumes. <br />
<br />
Hopkins created a jingle jangle musical landscape of lightness that was a lyrical minefield for darkened, broken hearts. From "Lost Horizon." "I'll drink enough of anything to make this world look new again..." "There was nothing left to say. So she said she loved me. I just stood there, grateful for the lie." This is music that sounds like someone literally poured their life into it. <br />
<br />
Another CD I can’t stop playing is DGC RARITIES. One of the most popular compilations of its time, it signaled a record label (Geffen) at the height of its grunge dominance. With seldom-before-heard songs by Nirvana, Hole, Beck, That Dog, The Posies and more. <br />
<br />
THE MIX TAPE (Selected Excerpts)<br />
<br />
BEAUMONT'S LAMENT (from <i>Jackie Brown</i>) In this 30-second audio clip, a righteously lethal Samuel L. Jackson opens the trunk of his Caddy to reveal the very-dead Chris Tucker, while explaining his early employee retirement plan to a cow-eyed Robert DeNiro. <br />
<br />
LOW First with Indie legends Camper Van Beethoven, and later, with Cracker, David Lowery kept buffing up his dust bowl folk/punk until it shined like California studio gold. <br />
<br />
I'M TAKING EUROPE WITH ME College honeys that even riot girrrls could love, Veruca Salt teamed with famed Nirvana producer, Steve Albini to chop off this slice of jagged velveteen. A favorite among Eurorail slackers. <br />
<br />
SOMEONE TO PULL THE TRIGGER It's doubtful that even vintage-era Fleetwood Mac could have pulled off a more catchy and irresistible ode to self-loathing than this soulful refrain by Matthew Sweet. How's this for getting to the point? "I'm ready and willing, the clarity is chilling, but I'm not asking you to save my life. I need someone ... to pull the trigger. Cause this hole in my heart is getting bigger. And everything I'll ever be, I've been. And I need someone to pull the trigger. So if you're who I think you'll be, if you're who I think I see .. Then shoot." <br />
<br />
WILLING TO WAIT Lou Barlow split acrimoniously from Dinosaur Jr. and formed Sebadoh, releasing a series of lo-fi home-produced albums that contained some of the most exquisite vocal arrangements ever to waft from a dorm room speaker. On this plaintive, sensitive-guy tune, Barlow gently asks an ex-girlfriend to dump that jerk she left him for.<br />
<br />
TALLAHASSEE As immortalized in Nick Broomfield's drugopic <i>Kurt and Courtney,</i> Earth is a band fronted by the marginally talented, majorly slimy Dylan Carlson, ex best-friend of Kurt Cobain. Carlson wanted to help his insanely depressed buddy, so he bought him the shotgun that ended his life. Or maybe he just gave it to Courtney ... Here, Earth do a decent job of evoking the swirling moodiness of early Pink Floyd. <br />
<br />
YOU KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT In this freshly-exhumed Nirvana nugget, Kurt basically lets you know who he had grown to hate in the end (along with himself). With sheet metal vocals that alternate with Stipe-like nasal mumblings, it's apparent that Cobain's perfection of the soft/loud dynamic had reached truly frightening proportions.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Digging a Hole with <br />
The Chemical Brothers</span><br />
May 21, 1997</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLZFEQDMQ7eTa7G71FAq4Oj5taWuyJ1f3j9MoNHPh6EsYYHSKydtPRbaVhR23am3XI17tIwPXAckKuAoNQJHo5219l9ABdaDJ5nGgaErIyULiITVrPEjEcgYwvSrDRF-0y6m9jkMGUpo/s1600/Chemical+Brothers+in+Concert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="314" width="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLZFEQDMQ7eTa7G71FAq4Oj5taWuyJ1f3j9MoNHPh6EsYYHSKydtPRbaVhR23am3XI17tIwPXAckKuAoNQJHo5219l9ABdaDJ5nGgaErIyULiITVrPEjEcgYwvSrDRF-0y6m9jkMGUpo/s400/Chemical+Brothers+in+Concert.jpg" alt="Electronic music was the most influential sound of the late 90’s" title="Electronic music was the most influential sound of the late 90’s" /></a></center><br />
<br />
It's 1997. For those who wondered when Techno would finally be swallowed whole by the mainstream, this is your year. Whether you prefer ambient, trip-hop, trance or acid jazz, Electronica has a lot of people dancing in the streets. Critics and the music press are hungry for a movement that can rival the energy and right-nowness of early Grunge. There are a lot of intriguing new acts out there (details to follow), but The Chemical Brothers are Electronica's rock stars, and this has made them the object of great expectation. <br />
<br />
Media overkill has panicked record labels. Nervous executives with visions of a Nirvana-like feeding frenzy, scramble about in search of the next Chemical Brothers. TV commercials feature techno and house as musical beds. Just ask Kennedy, the former host of MTV's recently-cancelled, <i>Alternative Nation</i>. Break-beat is the new rock for burned-out metal/punks who've decided it's better to join the universal party than bang your head.<br />
<br />
Electronica may have exploded this year, but it's been with us, in one form or another, since the first synthesizer. Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" was a dance hall staple in 1967. Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes and King Crimson founded prog-rock. By the mid 70's, artists like Brian Eno were sculpting ethereal soundscapes that paved the way for all things ambient. Tangerine Dream scored major film soundtracks. New Order made ridiculously catchy new wave dance music, and industrial acts like KMFDM injected churning goth/metal into the mix. By the early 90's, Astralwerks had emerged as the record label that represented the meat of the genre, much like Sub Pop had done for Seattle's music scene a few years earlier.<br />
<br />
So what does this mean to punk rock and indie music lovers? Need we feel threatened by the glow sticks and jazz-like dispensing of concrete lyrical themes? Epitaph Records Prez Brett Gurewitz recently lost his precious sense of humor when he dismissed Electronica as "a lot of garbage." This thinking seems beside the point and very 1994. The better move might be to collect your significant other and any recreational substance you enjoy and take a break from verse-chorus-verse, three minutes and out, whiny post-punk rock. Who really needs The Muffs, anyway?<br />
<br />
A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Shrine Expo Hall in L.A. to see The Chemical Brothers show with Vegas openers, The Crystal Method. Something about the night felt surprisingly substantial, like a breath of very fresh air. There was a lot of tie-dye going on, but it wasn't the indulgent hippie, smelly Deadhead kind. The crowd was a mix of "normal" people: Industrial Siouxie girls, Manchester types sporting hats, college students and assorted ravers. Everyone was dancing with their neighbor and the pot smoke hung in the air as perfectly as the block rockin' beats.<br />
<br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kqO3E1X358zNK0hJ9qv6UGOeU1xqGbW8vy77NKAOw7YBbDCQtV9JbzVAbFFgLxwRqQqWaCSg1gDPSYhE1JHJMzy5TUBIc9WGSupA55r95Qc6FDoY8yQLTMdmQYimz2Lokf_ToYFzHr4/s1600/Chemical+Brothers+2+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="294" width="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kqO3E1X358zNK0hJ9qv6UGOeU1xqGbW8vy77NKAOw7YBbDCQtV9JbzVAbFFgLxwRqQqWaCSg1gDPSYhE1JHJMzy5TUBIc9WGSupA55r95Qc6FDoY8yQLTMdmQYimz2Lokf_ToYFzHr4/s400/Chemical+Brothers+2+shot.jpg" alt="The Chemical Brothers represent the best of Electronica and Dance Music" title="The Chemical Brothers represent the best of Electronica and Dance Music" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 79%;">The Chemical Brothers</span></center><br />
<br />
The show's focus was obviously on the Chemical Brothers' new album, the mind-blowing, <i>Dig Your Own Hole</i>, which features a sound as thoroughly original and never-before-heard as Beck's <i>Mellow Gold</i>. Combine N.Y.C. Grand Royale vintage hip hop with psychedelic techno and elements of hard rock, and you get an idea why the Chemical Brothers have arrived at the perfect time. Like Nirvana, they bust genre stereotypes wide open and sell a lot of records. On their heels, expect an onslaught of keyboard-equipped wanna-be rock stars wielding computers and turntables. Whether the current Electronica craze will endure, is up to the same vagaries that created Grunge with Soundgarden and let it evolve into Seven Mary Three. One always hopes for the best.<br />
<br />
But the fact is, with a new millennium only 30 months away, it's time to open your mind and embrace something entirely different. Musical bigotry is counterproductive to growth. If you've got a hundred bucks and want to be entertained, pass on those two tickets to the Staind tour and head for your local record store. Be on the lookout for anything on Astralwerks or the Deconstruction labels. Take home the first Chemical Brothers album, <i>Exit Planet Dust</i>. Scour the bins for the latest from Orb, Orbital, Underworld, Daft Punk, The Future Sound of London, Kraftwelt, or try the compilation L.P. <i>Wipeout</i> (on Astralwerks), which features many of the before-mentioned groups.<br />
<br />
Remember, both Tim Leary and Heaven's Gate guru Marshall Applewhite believed that technology and mind-expansion could lead to higher consciousness. Look where it got them. Grunge is as tapped-out as an empty beer keg in a rainy backyard. Move with the flow and let the flow move you. Enjoy Electronica while you still can. Before you know it, Grunge will return in force as retro music and everyone knows punks can't dance.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.onlinecasinoadmin.com" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000">Online Casino Admin</a>Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-40779957287922802342011-10-22T20:39:00.000-07:002015-12-08T12:54:33.623-08:00Remembering John Lennon<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Twenty Five Years of Lost Memories</span><br />
December 8, 2005</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2QCiSfaV3UyYgmiB9j-WiyL52l2KEOvCCffmFqLBCZnqisJng5SK5SSP6a6p9zzgMcBSxllQXU3quXFO2KblMVdEvUQwREvSdK5YYnL03XzX4A1S7Kp3dLHElM0DEVckS0YLVfVgNcw8/s1600/John+Lennon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="378" width="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2QCiSfaV3UyYgmiB9j-WiyL52l2KEOvCCffmFqLBCZnqisJng5SK5SSP6a6p9zzgMcBSxllQXU3quXFO2KblMVdEvUQwREvSdK5YYnL03XzX4A1S7Kp3dLHElM0DEVckS0YLVfVgNcw8/s400/John+Lennon.jpg" alt="John Lennon survived The Beatles and the 60’s, but was murdered by a crazed Mark David Chapman" title="John Lennon survived The Beatles and the 60’s, but was murdered by a crazed Mark David Chapman" /></a></center><br />
<br />
How fast can 25 years go by? In my mind, John Lennon's murder is still the single biggest ripoff/crime/tragedy in the history of rock misadventures. I remember watching <i>Monday Night Football</i> the evening Howard Cosell reported that Lennon had just been shot. After ten straight years of rock gods falling from the skies in planes, electrocuting themselves, choking on vomit, "accidentally" blowing their brains out, or just checking out in general, my first reaction upon hearing the news was complete disbelief. "Give me a break, no freakin way, he didn't go like THAT!"<br />
<br />
John Lennon was a guy who had survived the darkest recesses of his own self-destructive tendencies. He was an absent father and husband who had finally come to grips with so many addictions and expectations, the kind that would crush any random ten men. In a rock landscape littered with icons, Lennon was its single, most powerful conscience, committed to doing the right thing in the face of overwhelming odds. He was nobody's false idol. If Paul McCartney could hold up a mirror to a parallel universe, one where everything he represented was reflected back to him in opposite perspective, like a photographic negative, surely the image would be John's. <br />
<br />
Two famous videos that display Lennon's intimidating presence and cool come to mind. The first is the widely circulated clip from 1966 of Lennon and Bob Dylan in the backseat of a limo. At the time, Dylan was the single most important cultural figure going, a man whose every word was broken down into infinite analysis. But riding next to Lennon, dressed in impossibly natty Carnaby Street ware, a drunk and babbling Dylan comes off like some Midwest hick on a barstool, desperately trying to impress. As Dylan rambles on about nothing in particular, a blasé John stares at him the way Michael Caine might take in a schizophrenic tirade from Charles Manson. "Dear boy, go on with what you're saying, I'm still listening."<br />
<br />
The other defining Lennon moment, was on the London rooftop where the Beatles played their last gig, for the filming of <i>Let It Be</i>. The documentary captures the disintegration of the group, and even more amusingly, the final flailing of Paul McCartney as their paranoid bandleader. John has already moved on, and seems to be floating on a cloud of confidence and purpose above the rest. He even gets the best and final word in edgewise. "Thanks, and on behalf of the band, I hope we passed the audition."<br />
<br />
Last night, I was shopping at Amoeba in Hollywood, and the store was playing <i>The White Album</i>. I couldn't believe how vital and revolutionary it still is. At the end of "Helter Skelter," Ringo Starr's disembodied voice suddenly boomed from one speaker to the next in a surround-sound effect, startling the shopper next to me in The Strokes t-shirt and ringing the entire insides of the monolithic structure. "I got BLISTERS on my fingers!..." The words erupted violently, like multiple gunshots going off. <br />
<br />
"Nothing to kill or die for … and no religion too." Imagine everything we’ve missed in the past 25 years.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Campaign 2004: Bald Faced Lies and Frozen Deer</span><br />
September 8, 2004</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFT5wnmy9nuzBB73fpjyn9xT7BbNqQ6xgbQiKhG0BLgE8-smJCNIo5aFAKq95QuGZ2ub9h2tBazLp_E2j5leTVBpUssQugr_54Epe0o04QPxwpgU7576B_oWeLLuD7ooQ6tubgXbeWloI/s1600/Dick+Cheney+Angry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="360" width="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFT5wnmy9nuzBB73fpjyn9xT7BbNqQ6xgbQiKhG0BLgE8-smJCNIo5aFAKq95QuGZ2ub9h2tBazLp_E2j5leTVBpUssQugr_54Epe0o04QPxwpgU7576B_oWeLLuD7ooQ6tubgXbeWloI/s400/Dick+Cheney+Angry.jpg" alt="Vice President Dick Cheney was the brains behind the evil Bush empire" title="Vice President Dick Cheney was the brains behind the evil Bush empire" /></a></center><br />
<br />
The bloody War in Iraq paled in comparison to Tuesday's War of Words in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Vice President, Dick Cheney, veering off course like an errant Tomahawk cruise missile, suggested that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for weaker security, making it likely that we will be "hit again" with another U.S. mainland terrorist attack. In other words, if you want John Kerry for President, then you want to die.<br />
<br />
A brittle and weary George W. Bush had no comment when asked about Cheney's remarks, as Cheney was apparently in hiding and unable to brief the President on what to say. Surprisingly enough, John Kerry also had nothing to say, letting his defiantly-perky running mate, John Edwards, do all the talking. Edwards said it was "inappropriate" for Cheney to "threaten the American people." <br />
<br />
As the administration's deafening silence regarding this latest foray into the gutter of American politics leaves the Vice President to flap in the breeze, the usual assortment of right wing mouthpieces will soon be forced to unsay what Cheney said, because he didn't mean to say it so honestly. But that's what campaigns are all about today. Candidates hide behind the veil of "moderation" while subordinates are left to sling mud like chimpanzees. As cunning and ruthless a politician as they come, Cheney is hoping to raise the stakes even higher. MSNBC's Chris Matthews stated tonight, "This has become a one-issue campaign and if the American voters actually buy what Cheney is selling, then this election is over, now." <br />
<br />
To further confuse the splintered fence sitters in the swing states, Democratic forces have finally responded to all things Swift Boat with a fresh and particularly effective campaign questioning George W. Bush's military service in Alabama. None of the men interviewed in the new series of TV spots ever remembered serving with George W., or even seeing him on the premises. At this point, with their candidate having taken a severe public beating for a month, the Democrats are best advised to fight as dirty as they can to survive. The American public has never been more easily distracted or frightened – whether it's scrutinizing old war records, or voting for old liars they are too afraid to question. <br />
<br />
It is difficult to recollect a Presidential campaign in recent memory that has produced such polarity and raw vitriol. Zell Miller and Michael Moore are just opposite ends of the same one-sided coin. Their brand of Extreme politics isn’t exactly wooing that great American diva, the Undecided Voter. While good ol' Zell's fire and brimstone expansionist zeal drives Midwest moderates toward Kerry, Michael Moore's ill-advised, embarrassing appearance at the RNC was a self-indulgent, self-promoting misstep for the Party. As Pat Buchanan said recently, "Wow, you could not have gotten a better endorsement for Bush – this guy (Moore) as the sole representative for the Democrats at the other guy's convention."<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Kerry's camp denies that the next print campaign will feature their candidate on milk cartons and Kerry continues to impress the world as a numbingly sterile public speaker, flatter than Michael Dukakis at a pancake breakfast. Last week, he again issued conflicting opinions on the war, leaving the casual observer to wonder how he ever hopes to define himself. Does he have a strategy for anything? What was he thinking when he scheduled his first official speech in response to the Republican convention, for after midnight, in the middle of nowhere, when few reporters would bother covering it? <br />
<br />
It is no surprise that Kerry's boilerplate responses to Bush’s attacks are largely ignored by everyone in the media except <i>The Los Angeles Times</i>. While Bush is an unpredictable and quotable villain, Kerry is a press release, always on the defensive, using the same canned rhetoric. He suffers from a stubborn inability to switch gears when the situation demands stronger words and faster responses. This week, he has focused solely on economic and domestic issues because they are comfortable and safe topics, even when faced with the reality that those in the Midwest who have lost their jobs and livelihoods, still worry more about the War. With the air of an undertaker, Kerry appears stiff, robotic and dark, possessing more hair than passion. Never have the forces of good had a tougher sell.<br />
<br />
On the other side, Bush obviously believes history can repeat itself and that he can steal another election. That's why he's currently lobbying hard for two presidential debates instead of three. What candidate of integrity wants the voters to be exposed to him less, rather than more? <br />
<br />
John Kerry clearly has his work cut out for him. Bill Clinton is on injured reserve and cannot bail him out of the game. Kerry's unstable wife had a recent meltdown on the campaign trail and was hospitalized. Big John is also a Massachusetts Democrat. These are not good signs at the moment. Those who know Kerry, say he is best when the chips are down and his back is against the wall. Maybe he is luring Bush into overconfidence, a political rope-a-dope. Or maybe Kerry is just frozen, like a deer in headlights. At this point, his best chance is to pray that Dick Cheney keeps blurting out the truth, because truth is the one thing that George W. Bush can’t handle.<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Britney Takes on Melrose Ave</span><br />
June 26, 2001</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinTA9cNDQ_mlokXj7ZuapAFFiwie-qutSsph5_G7Y5A6P3ewuhU2Ph1iQsLSKMTdNbyiWPkxwT6mRiBvLcUUuTTOuudQ9E8ttBMOHfyl93h1FDH6BMoo4Aqa9ZfsVhLspJe5Us29VPOmk/s1600/Britney+Spears+Walking+Best.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="400" width="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinTA9cNDQ_mlokXj7ZuapAFFiwie-qutSsph5_G7Y5A6P3ewuhU2Ph1iQsLSKMTdNbyiWPkxwT6mRiBvLcUUuTTOuudQ9E8ttBMOHfyl93h1FDH6BMoo4Aqa9ZfsVhLspJe5Us29VPOmk/s400/Britney+Spears+Walking+Best.jpg" alt="Pop superstar Britney Spears needs to shop just like everyone else" title="Pop superstar Britney Spears needs to shop just like everyone else" /></a></center><br />
<br />
I had the unique privilege of walking down an almost deserted Melrose Ave. on Tuesday afternoon, suddenly in lock-step, right next to Britney Spears. As just another fellow pedestrian, Britney was sans bodyguards of any kind, store-trolling with a small entourage – her mother, three sisters and another girl who looked like her mirror image. It was weird, because it occurred to me that here's the biggest music star in the world, at this exact moment, just another 19 year-old, hanging with her mom in plain sight. <br />
<br />
The group had that "just stopped by from Universal City Walk" Midwest Geek-Chic look down pat. Britney was wearing black hotpants and heavily detailed make-up, resembling one of those porcelain, baby doll AVN girls who promote the porno conventions downtown. Out of nowhere, Dennis Woodruff (you know, the ubiquitous, self-promoting actor who drives around in those painted-up 70's jalopies?) joined the procession, babbling incoherently, completely unaware of who he was talking to. As they disappeared down the street, Dennis, the space cowboy cum minor celebrity, was earnestly soliciting Britney's mega-celebrity mom for donations to his motorcycle youth club. <br />
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As a perfect capper to an "Only in L.A." nightmare, a sarcastic group of Mohawked teenage punk panhandlers in leather got whiff of what was happening and started following Britney and her clones. I quickly realized that no typical 19 year-old has to put up with this. Before you could say, "Stalker Laws" – at the crosswalk of Curson and Melrose, the loudest punk, who looked kinda like Courtney Love at 16, raced up and pinched Britney's booty hard. Britney swung around in ass-kicking mode, mouthing the word "bitch," while her attacker ran off with her DNA souvenir, giggling manically like a sociopathic 12 year-old.<br />
<br />
Oh My God!<br />
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Brian Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17577187934725940621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006873403915004445.post-41940466082853215372011-10-07T19:41:00.000-07:002011-12-09T23:44:30.017-08:00Album Review Mudhoney Tomorrow Hit Today<strong></strong><br />
<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Mudhoney Survives Grunge</span><br />
November 5, 1998</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQFXBxaUpzj3oHqrf0abZ3k90oNPw7H_hb7KkmSXRVVpCJC7P6f5CD78PyaTRDAWWqCacK7safE-H60_btdk2JdQlWSyu3kE5y-gggN6zGqin6v8Pvn9jJX3YAhMQvA4dGCOjEhnstgQ/s1600/Mudhoney+-+Tomorrow+Hit+Today.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="260" width="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQFXBxaUpzj3oHqrf0abZ3k90oNPw7H_hb7KkmSXRVVpCJC7P6f5CD78PyaTRDAWWqCacK7safE-H60_btdk2JdQlWSyu3kE5y-gggN6zGqin6v8Pvn9jJX3YAhMQvA4dGCOjEhnstgQ/s400/Mudhoney+-+Tomorrow+Hit+Today.jpg" alt="Mudhoney’s new album Tomorrow Hit Today is an instant classic" title="Mudhoney’s new album Tomorrow Hit Today is an instant classic" /></a></center><br />
<br />
There are two things to admire about Mudhoney. The first is their tenacity. In 1998, two years after grunge officially crashed and burned, scattering the musical landscape with bits and pieces of once Godhead bands, the fact that Mudhoney remains intact and on a major label, is revolutionary. <br />
<br />
Purity is the other quality that defines this band. Determined to be the ultimate iconoclasts in the ultimate alternative scene, Mudhoney were too much the punk misfits to be caught up in the hype. Vocalist-songwriter, Mark Arm, arguably the most influential rock musician to emerge from Seattle since Jimi Hendrix, navigated his seminal 80's band, Green River, to a critical high-water mark. Yet, he had to stand by and watch while two of the group’s members later became superstars in Pearl Jam. Mark may have deserved better than his relative obscurity. But what's fame, money and recognition when respect and credibility are on the line?<br />
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<i>Tomorrow Hit Today</i> could have been released anytime in the 90's; it's the same mid-60's, psychedelic, garage-rock party that has become Mudhoney's trademark. Track #1, "A Thousand Forms of Mind,” hooks you from the first fuzz-drenched, Fender riff as Mark Arm's typically disembodied vocals float precariously over the eerie wails of a Vox organ. "Oblivion" plays to the band's strong suit – creepy Delta Blues guitars mixed with cynical punk-humor lyrics. In our Prozac age where pain is something to be numbed instead of dealt with, Arm's characters find oblivion through Karaoke or dropping out of the drug society for something far more sinister. "He left town because it could not get any worse/ Moved to Santa Fe and increased his girth/ Dropped a spoon and picked up a fork/ On a commune making pictures of the earth."<br />
<br />
The nitpickers among us might argue that Mudhoney has said all this before and more convincingly, but looking for musical "growth" is not what this band is about. The credo here, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," applies. After 10 years, Mudhoney has become the Energizer Bunnies of rock, still kicking out the jams while the rest of their grunge brethren ran out of gas some time ago.<br />
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<center><span style="font-size:180%;">Savior, or the Great White Dope?</span><br />
August 30, 2004</center><br />
</strong><span style="font-size:130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<span style="font-size:100%;"><br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMf4rbQt4WdOWTK9ohu26yG-z6_eD6SNqmTHton0uCu5_DHENZvA_85sdBEzyZ5rUOFZZcd1U-_Ho9RYawdmBDDfwBTIlUMb6Nh9jiqGAU7YSoOQ2dkPSSSigQQ1P6JSVraNxkqQH7uI/s1600/John+Kerry+Saluting+Convention.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="389" width="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMf4rbQt4WdOWTK9ohu26yG-z6_eD6SNqmTHton0uCu5_DHENZvA_85sdBEzyZ5rUOFZZcd1U-_Ho9RYawdmBDDfwBTIlUMb6Nh9jiqGAU7YSoOQ2dkPSSSigQQ1P6JSVraNxkqQH7uI/s320/John+Kerry+Saluting+Convention.jpg" alt="John Kerry salutes himself at the 2004 Democratic National Convention" title="John Kerry salutes himself at the 2004 Democratic National Convention" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"></span></center></p><br />
In the timeless film, <i>The Candidate</i>, Robert Redford portrays Bill McKay, an unknown grass roots activist who decides to run for the California Senate. Against impossible odds and facing a powerful conservative incumbent, McKay struggles to get his message out – a progressive platform of sharp and simple idealism that appears hopelessly at odds with the harsh realities of the political system. At one point, McKay’s campaign manager hands him a slip of paper with two words written on it: “You lose.” The words become a mantra and McKay’s guarantee that he can tell the truth, say what he wants and be his own man, because he has no chance to win. <br />
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Back in January of this year, John Kerry appeared as a modern day Bill McKay. He wasn’t given a housefly’s chance of survival in the bitter cold of the New Hampshire primary. Howard Dean had captured the imagination of the New Left and was preparing for his coronation as The Candidate to challenge George W. Bush in November. But from the back of the pack (or at least the middle), John Kerry burst forth and with military precision, conquered Dean on every front, becoming the party’s presumptive candidate for president in the space of three weeks. It almost seemed like a movie. <br />
<br />
Since then, Kerry has gone further and flown higher than anyone had a right to expect. He has accomplished the unthinkable, taking a wartime president all the way to the mat, turning what should have been a Republican blowout into one of the tightest Presidential contests in modern history. Kerry has become the Anti-Bush and along the way, harvested the deep and growing dissatisfaction that a majority of Americans feel about the country’s direction. <br />
<br />
So how, with a work record that would get you fired in most jobs, can President Bush be headed for an apparent contract extension? After the upcoming Republican Convention bounce, he should be ahead by 8-10% in the polls. It seems that even though a majority of voters agree that we are “headed in the wrong direction,” they seem content to crash, to re-elect the very same managerial team that has steered us into an un-winnable war, alienated our free world allies, plunged the country into a massive budget deficit, yielded the first net loss of jobs since the Hoover administration and set the stage for environmental disaster. <br />
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While pollsters scratch their heads in confusion, some of the answers can be found in studying George W. Bush’s continued war of psychological terror against his own people. Bush has appropriated many of the tools of classic Fascist dictatorships. He began with the initial misinformation regarding the Iraqi presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then, he sacrificed Colin Powell’s reputation in N.A.T.O. testimony that was so inaccurate as to be vaguely criminal. Bush followed up with the standard tactic employed by many Third World strongmen, the philosophy that exaggerates and promotes the notion of “Us Against Them.” In late 1930’s Germany, Adolph Hitler solidified his enormous power by launching a genocidal campaign against the Jewish people, portraying them as the very incarnate of evil. Hitler’s public rallied around their leader, ignoring his major blunders because the Fear kept them united. This lesson wasn’t lost on George W.<br />
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Bush has blundered and he has bungled and he has miscalculated and yet, he is still here and about to be re-elected because he is a master, one of the best ever, at harnessing the Fear. At critically-timed intervals, he has launched humorously color-coded terror alerts via his Frankensteinian mouthpiece, Tom Ridge. He's our Daddy Dubya, the only leader we can trust to defeat the enemy. Bush has had some luck on the way. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel markets and reinforces the Fear in masterful fashion. Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, would be envious.<br />
<br />
But we all know what George Bush is about. His growing lead in the polls has more to do with the fact that nobody knows anything about John Kerry. In times of trouble, change can be frightening and John Kerry’s campaign in recent weeks has been indeed frightening. I don’t know who is advising him, but unless he is simply ignoring their suggestions, he should fire the lot of them. Kerry is about to lose and perhaps even bigger than one might expect, think double digits. <br />
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This isn’t just negative thinking for argument’s sake. It’s about the desire to win and not just make a nice statement. Howard Dean made a statement and he was a loser. I want John Kerry and the American people to win. And Kerry’s not going to win unless he wakes up. It may already be too late to sway those overly wined-and-dined undecided voters, because Kerry has probably lost the swing states of Ohio and Missouri. Don’t even think about Florida. <br />
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Instead, think of the Presidential race as a 12 round fight. If I’m managing Kerry and he’s my boxer, I’m worried. Outside the ring, the Kerry faithful are praying for a miracle while Kerry believes he can still win the bout just on points and rebuttals. And I’m telling him, “Forget the points, John. It’s the 12th round of the fight and you're way behind. This guy is the champion, you’re the challenger. The only chance you’ve got is to knock the sonofabitch out, now. Don’t let the decision go to the cards or you have no chance.”<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE9WRaUg4CpuXMGWY79NT4BN9wYV9LjBnJChK07MdOQtqQgafnGtzQqBItmjNHzVhg8741gvvPjQUWNfpHXaflBjkqE26hghyphenhyphenoTsSjA2NAV34CE1a_5pQlQzNeKwKStKmY2WKs1WsLc3E/s1600/Copy+of+John+Kerry+Boxing+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="346" width="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE9WRaUg4CpuXMGWY79NT4BN9wYV9LjBnJChK07MdOQtqQgafnGtzQqBItmjNHzVhg8741gvvPjQUWNfpHXaflBjkqE26hghyphenhyphenoTsSjA2NAV34CE1a_5pQlQzNeKwKStKmY2WKs1WsLc3E/s400/Copy+of+John+Kerry+Boxing+Poster.jpg" alt="John Kerry needs a knockout like Rocky Balboa in November" title="John Kerry needs a knockout like Rocky Balboa in November" /></a></div><br />
For Kerry, the 12th round is the upcoming nationally televised Presidential debates. It is his last opportunity to finally articulate who he is and what he stands for. He has to score a knockout or it’s all over. Though Bush is assuredly the Anti-Christ, he has more courage of conviction than John Kerry. He is not afraid. He doesn’t worry if you like him or not. He doesn’t tailor his opinions to fit the latest poll. He says what he means and means what he says and whether he’s right or wrong, you know where he stands. George W. Bush believes in his heart that he is right. He believes that he has a mission to fulfill, whether it’s quashing terror, or at last, pleasing his own father by accomplishing the one thing that dear Ol’ Dad never could, which is to be elected to a second term. <br />
<br />
Despite the inherent wrongness of it, Bush’s launching of the war in Iraq required tremendous political cajones. By any stretch of the imagination, it was a move that most likely would backfire and certainly did. On the other hand, John Kerry does not even have the guts to officially admit that he is against the war, despite polls that show half or more of the country agrees. This is nothing short of incredible. Handed the mic at his own convention, with a golden opportunity to get down to specifics, Kerry dropped the ball. Instead, he droned on and on with the G.I. Joe monologues, relentlessly, interminably, reminding an already much-reminded audience of his war record and gunboat accomplishments, trying too hard to sound pro-military, losing sight of the objective. <br />
<br />
Kerry has two months, nine short weeks, to decide just how badly he wants to be President. His mission begins with defining just who he is and why he matters and how he can make a difference. This may prove difficult. Any second tier cable TV analyst can articulate the Democratic platform more clearly and passionately than the man currently running the party. And what’s the tagline Kerry needs to write? It’s simple. George W. Bush is a one-issue candidate. No one in the Kerry camp seems to understand just how little the American public realizes this. Remove the War on Terror from the picture and George W. has nothing, nada, zilch, to represent any true accomplishments in his four miserable years in office. <br />
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It is obvious Kerry has courage. To serve his country in Vietnam, he rushed headfirst, into a jungle, in hand-to-hand combat and killed a hostile soldier. A couple of years later, in another extremely hostile environment, he testified against his country before Congress, against a war that had clearly gone insane and needed to be stopped. By stepping forward, Kerry had little to gain and in hindsight, much to lose. <br />
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Now we all have much to lose if John Kerry cannot get his act together, if he can’t match George W., blow for blow in the 12th round. If Kerry does not find a way to reach Middle America and convince them that he is more than just a flip-floppy Ivy League bore, the country suffers his failure for the next four years. To stay on message, he must first have one. Somehow, he must convince the undecided that he is indeed more interesting than a plate of carrots. As Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and Al Gore can tell you, when you snooze you lose – no balls means no glory. On the flip side, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have demonstrated that true power starts somewhere south of the beltline. <br />
<br />
Of course, John Kerry may turn it all around in the upcoming debates. He could suddenly become JFK to Bush’s Nixon. Can anyone picture JK as a straight-shooting, Robert Redford in <i>All The President's Men</i>, or a desperately cool Harrison Ford in <i>The Fugitive</i>? Kerry might belly up to the hotel bar and instead of white wine, drink a half quart of Wild Turkey, put on the camouflage paint, grab Bush in an on-camera headlock and scream, “This is what war really feels like you draft dodging, baseball team owner!” He could come out swinging and tell the nation his Master Plan, hell any plan, as long as the masses, or the asses, will buy it. Now that would be a bold statement.<br />
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<strong><center><span style="font-size: 180%;">Remembering the King <br />
of Gonzo Rock</span><br />
September 8, 2003</center></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">By Brian Bentley</span><br />
<center><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigFEDDFcR_1Qp1z9XMl5WGejmsmj8Df1uZbUx7pJhFM2CFV2BbWAc3WiyJkaxjtNHHPKKMeGvNkN_vuCIciKjilXDqYk0dB3AYho5jDddh8OkQLWAQJKpjZ6rd-PikPnzmuOEDfZsw1Ls/s1600/Warren+Zevon+Final.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigFEDDFcR_1Qp1z9XMl5WGejmsmj8Df1uZbUx7pJhFM2CFV2BbWAc3WiyJkaxjtNHHPKKMeGvNkN_vuCIciKjilXDqYk0dB3AYho5jDddh8OkQLWAQJKpjZ6rd-PikPnzmuOEDfZsw1Ls/s400/Warren+Zevon+Final.jpg" width="400" alt="The cover of Zevon’s second album, Warren Zevon, 1976" title="The cover of Zevon’s second album, Warren Zevon, 1976" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 78%;"></span></center><br />
<br />
Warren Zevon died Sunday. He really had a dramatist's flair for milking every second of his final year and why not? It was his duty to do so. An artist writes about what he knows and Zevon certainly knew plenty about the Grin Reaper. He was arguably the most wickedly funny and intelligent writer to ever employ the pop song medium. Left in the shadows by his commercially successful, 70's L.A. peers like the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, Mr. Zevon found the shadows to be a far sunnier place to inhabit.<br />
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A former band leader for the Everly Brothers, Zevon’s first solo album, <i>Wanted Dead or Alive</i>, was produced by Kim Fowley. Almost from the get-go, his writing reflected the classic themes of hard-boiled fiction. Many of the songs stung from romantic loss – while violence, guns, lawyers and money shot through his worldview. The definitive record that Zevon never made could have been titled, “The Collaborator,” since there were few musicians in his genre that he did not make music with. His door was always open for a jam session and he nurtured working and personal ties with R.E.M., Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac. <br />
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Zevon shone brightest when facing the darkest elements of the human experience. He turned every three minute song into a rock noir novel. "Accidentally Like a Martyr" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," take depression and loss and celebrate their absurdity. "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," follows the exploits of an already dead mercenary betrayed by his own government. Headless and wandering the fields of war at night, Roland tracks down the man who blew his brains out. It was rich rock and roll and classic literature combined – a Topanga Canyon Raymond Chandler on peyote and Stolichnaya. <br />
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There were seldom happy endings to his stories, only darkly fitting ones: "The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night/ Now it's ten years later but he still keeps up the fight/ In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley/ Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun/ And bought it."<br />
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Death was Warren Zevon's friend and companion to the very end. Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given just three months to live, he stretched it to 12 of the most productive 30-day chapters a dying sonofabitch could ask for. On October 30, 2002, Zevon was featured on <i>The Late Show with David Letterman</i> as the only guest for the entire hour and spoke at length about his illness. With typical arched eyebrow, he dryly noted "I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." Gonzo to his final wheeze, Zevon's fierce and biting political incorrectness made him the musical misanthrope equivalent of lone wolf writers like Hunter S. Thompson (a close friend) and Charles Bukowski.<br />
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Warren’s recent poignant and grim video documentary about the making of his final album was a brittle, funny farewell to friends and fans and set rating records at VH-1. That album, <i>The Wind</i>, broke into the <i>Billboard</i> top 20, which suggests his legacy will outlast that of his mentor, Jackson Browne. Zevon was no great pretender. Far from being just another Dead Rock Guy, he stands for so much more. Even in his fatalistic, soul searching approach to his own end, the blunt honesty and sheer balls of Zevon's last music lifted him up from his hospital bed to a loftier height – to a place where life can no longer bring you down.<br />
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