Behind the Times

Early morning I listened to this sociological philosopher commenting on internet culture--- our habits, our lifestyle.  It used to be, via any Industrial Revolution, that the usefulness of technology was to relieve humans of the burden of constant work, to free us so that we could have the time to create, self-educate, invent-- and enhance our connection with the world around us.  Currently, people are ‘working’ more hours than ever—technology and web activity literally eat leisure time and blur boundaries between work and play.  It used to be considered rude not to look into the face of someone with whom you have a serious conversation: it was part of the process of face-to-face communication which had a place in the hierarchy of exchange.  Now, nearly everyone has their face perpetually in their mobile device—emailing, texting, image-capturing and posting, facebooking, comparing, researching... connecting, disconnecting...and it is not just socially but on-the-job acceptable behaviour.

I watched people on Sunday browsing an art auction--- they data-search each painting and judge its quality based on comparable values.  They pass on, they do not look; like a carefully built resume, there is so much competition, and so little time--- everything and everyone is now a kind of advertisement, a 'deal'.  It used to be, we received a telephone call--- it was a rather obvious event for anyone present--- they even left the room, to give the speaker privacy.  Your husband could call from anywhere and lie—no caller ID… just an opaque mysterious plastic that sat in its own corner, attached to a wall, and had the power to change your life with one ring. 

Last night a guitarist friend emailed me a plea from some fan who had apparently been to 60 of his shows, now has his own band, has played for 25 years, is even receiving some kind of award--- and wants to come ‘sit in’ with the guitarist's band.  It would be ‘meaningful’.  Does it matter that the guy is an absolute clueless internet-educated musician who feels entitled to play with Cream because he memorized the tab versions of all their songs?  But wasn’t it the current Metallica bassist who came from a tribute band and had played note for note each of their albums for years?  Does anyone know the difference?  Does anyone decipher ‘I read it on the internet’ from actual truth, actual history as it was lived by some old World War II vet whose version has undoubtedly been diluted or distorted as well?  How many versions--real or photoshopped-- of ‘me and Elvis’ or ‘me and the Beatles’ do we see now on the internet?  How many combinations of romantically involved people, celebrity bikini romps,  public displays of violence, black eyes, smashed cars, emergency room entrances and exits… whatever?

You can literally have the world in your phone now…you can get the accurate population to the minute of Auckland, or see if your make-up is smeared on facetime, without anyone knowing what you are doing. You can, as one of our mayoral candidates has shown, be sending photos of your penis and obscene messages while you are in meetings, running for office, or having dinner with your lovely wife who for the life of me I cannot fathom why persists in humiliating her lovely self by appearing with this creep of a version of husband.  Is that the message?  She is smart and dignified and lives with a mistake so we all should follow suit?  I don’t get it.

I’ve always, on the other hand, been a Spitzer-ite.  So what if he’s narcissistic and obnoxious?  He’s smart enough to know that any woman you consort with is going to cause a scandal in your life, so why not keep it purely business—no pregnancies, no blackmail, no policy leaks, no expensive dinners without happy bedtime endings, no trips to Harry Winston or whining--- just in and out.  Why was it all so newsworthy… because every heterosexual middle aged man was salivating?  And because Wall Street was trembling?  Steve Cohen is an innocent baby compared to the crimes being perpetrated by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and our own fed.  Like disqualifying an athlete for an allergy pill—making it front page news when half the MLB is PED’d out of their minds and original bodies. 

100,000 now dead in the Syrian violence--- catastrophes all over the world… I can understand the fairytale appeal of the Royal baby--- but all this Drake vs. Chris Brown, Kanye and Kim (not easy to find a baby-Daddy with the right initial and a huge penis),  and goddamn Anthony Weiner all over it like rancid icing.  He needs to be—the ultimate punishment in this culture—‘ignored’. 

Back to music.  I’m not a huge Clapton fan, but admittedly Eric has paid some dues.  Still… I watched an amazing video of a Count Basie performance…man, these guys could play.  Every single one of them—with technique and style and precision and swing—and originality.  Do more than 800 people know all of their names? Did the guitarist get 600,000 for just one instrument at auction while he still has 400 at home and unlimited freebies?  These guys scarcely paid the basic bills.   Then the 60’s came, and there was for a brief moment some correlation between quality and success—even in jazz.  Now that concept is nearly extinct. 

But at least Eric Clapton doesn’t have to call up some asshole on craigslist and explain to him that his $300 guitar is not worth $800 because it has a badass bridge and heavy strings. In fact, because he is an asshole, it is worth maybe $270, but because yours needs a fret job that costs more than replacement, you need this and you need it now, and you may have to pay $350 which means no groceries, and he is comparing it on his iphone to all 30 which have come up on ebay in just the past 9 hours and none of them have actually sold except maybe one which was vintage—a prototype in beautiful wood, and untouched by human hands for 40 years… but he is an asshole—a Weiner, and you are without a mobile device and without the will to even speak to this guy who now says---‘okay. $400 if I can sit in with your band’ and you are absolutely going to walk out that door no matter how much you need this guitar for tomorrow.  

In the end it’s not about politics it’s about music and where does that leave the undead, impoverished, IT-deficient, IQ-endowed minority-even-in-my-own-home?  Without a working guitar while at any given moment about 766,000 are listed on ebay.  Another million or so on craigslist.  Another cool million in vaults and storage of billionaires (the good ones), another million smashed and burned on and offstage (the real ‘Guitar Heros’), another billion being misused and misplayed by assholes, and a few thousand singing in the hands of real players who do not look at a mobile device and really play at the same time.  Or write worthwhile music, and not the cut and paste kind we mostly hear these days.

I wish I could rest my case, but tonight I’m a trainwreck—yes, a terrible and inappropriate analogy today for which I apologize, but sometimes you crash and burn by failing to reach even the minimum speed limit.  

Pass

Finally committing to 2013 here, and going to bypass my seething angst and obsidian heart for the latest  football drama.  Since my son is here, not by choice, taking a forced 'gap-year' between college and independence, I've been seeing the Ravens as a sports version of Bad Brains and getting into the play-offs.  So this little made-for-2013 story about Manti Te'o piqued my interest especially. The operative phrase seems to be 'perpetrated against'.  I mean, my son is certainly the victim of a hoax perpetrated by an ex-girlfriend/drama queen who torments him on facebook with sexy little quips about her activities when they're hundreds of miles apart, and posts photos of herself looking considerably more playboy-friendly than when she sits around on my sofa.  Men do set themselves up for these things.  They are bewitched and e-enticed by all kinds of minx-ness.  Every day I get friended by some Russian pin-up photo who has exclusively male (dumb) names in her friend-list.  Six months ago I read 83 million facebook pages are dupes.  Seem like a valid way to find your spouse, especially when you are a Heisman Trophy candidate and set to earn 8 figures for maybe the rest of your life?

But maybe the operative phrase here is 'perpetrated by'.  I mean, how dumb can guys be (rhetorical!) re: women?  Despite all the TV pseudo-reality shows and Lifetime movies, people seem to fail to proceed with emotional caution when pheromones and egos are involved.  Something definitely smells bad here... the pity factor, the pageant-worthy bs, the whole story.  No one loves a tragedy more than sports fans.  No one loves a stellar performance on the field right after a family loss or illness.  We are sensationalists and voyeurs; the more icing on the cake, the more takers.  We tweet and gossip and indulge in our broken-hero stories.  What I want to know is which came first-- -the hoax or the death?  Was he trying to cover up his mortifying gullibility with a story he thought no one would question?  And the big question here:  does his online-dating IQ, his lack of judgment, his possibly perjurious action affect his performance on the field?

The whole world is a hoax.  Airbrushed photos, fake Facebook posts, botox and plastic surgery faces, altered bodies, clothes that don't fit, bodies that have been trained into shapes that were never genetically intended, athletes breaking natural records with drug-enhanced ability, spell-check, corn flakes, pitch-correction, ridiculous dog-breeds and talking monkeys, perfume and deodorant, ultra-white  teeth and spray tan.  So of course we wag our pointed fingers even more furiously because we hold these athletes to higher standards?  Like politicians?  I mean, the guy wasn't advertising his genitals on youtube.  He wasn't even breeding vicious dogs.  So he's a fame-mongering creep.  We've got Ron World Peace Artest.  We've got Lance(d) Armstrong (was his name even real?).  We've got deflated homerun champions and Allstars who beat their wives.  He's got to perform in front of millions and millions.  Perform.  What's the deal?  The deal is: can he play or can't he?  Michael Vicks, what's your take on this?  I'll let you pass judgment for me.

On the lighter side, I need to get some gym-issues off my chest.  We all work out, but there should be a rule against tiny shorts for people over 35.  Especially men.  The girls who can pull it off-- -well, they don't.  But I cannot fathom what possesses these middle-aged women to wear a sports bra and bicycle pants--- or a midriff-baring outfit... I mean, we all have flesh, but no one wants to look at the true confessions of a 50-year old.  I work out at odd hours; the trendy crowd has better things on their agenda, so you get the genuine weirdos and smelly eccentrics.  The old lefty 60-something psychologist women who have finished their evening appointments and need to vent (fun) and the left-over undateables who whine and complain and watch Law and Order reruns. The anorexics and bulimics who watch the food channel, and some bona-fide artists who have lost all sense of time and schedule.  I am sometimes among them, days when I am reclusive and writing and solitary and I go to insert some semblance of routine and human contact into my dark life.  The lights alone are an assault.   I can watch    
Anderson Cooper getting old or Joan Rivers nailing the fashion bs or the Kardashians.

So maybe Manti Te'o wanted to be something he isn't-- maybe he doesn't see his pathetic image-manipulating is as ridiculous as that woman in my Latin Dance class with her wheels of fishy flesh hanging over the spandex shorts, in the front row, flubbing all the steps with attitude like she's Shakira's dance instructor.  He wanted to be Tom Brady, or even Reggie Bush or some five-minute hero.  He wanted not just the football trophy but the Mr. Congeniality Award, the Most Obstacles Overcome, the guy that gets the ovation, with the teary crowds.  He could taste it.  Or maybe he's just a kid who fell for a face and wanted that face to represent not just passionate romance but values, and it was just a face.  You don't get to the NFL by making a facebook page with fake statistics; the guy obviously worked for some years, and with all the sports-doping, pederasty, bank crookery, Federal reserve swindling and plagiarism going on these days, realize we are all hoaxed by the hoax, and people are being massacred in Syria--- maybe incredibly talented football players who will never get to hold a ball in front of any crowd or their loved-ones who have all been brutally murdered--- and no one is crying.  So this guy is just a guy.  Let him go to confession on Sunday and leave it at the door.  Draft him for his skills not his fairy-tale potential because the real joke is on us for watching and listening and binging on all the excessive media fluff and stuff.  Let the game begin.