Archive for May, 2015
21 May 2015

That Asshole Zevon

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Zevon
Warren William Zevon, 1947 – 2003.

Wiliam L. Repsher reacts to Crystal Zevon’s, the musician’s widow’s, bio: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

I, and lots of other “bespectacled guys in knit shirts and khakis” have a thing for Zevon.

[M]ost of it seems brutally honest, underlining Zevon’s years of alcoholism, resulting in strained familial relations, spousal abuse, a blown marriage, dozens of affairs, etc. The usual rock-star stuff, only this time it’s presented in a “this is simply how the guy was” light as opposed to either glorifying or condemning his behavior. Even after he got sober, he could be assholic: self-centered, argumentative, problematic, etc. It was made clear that his goodness, which is also noted many times over in terms of his humor, intelligence and flashes of generosity, was counter-balanced with a very dark side.

What I felt reading the book was virtually no different from the vibe I get around many musicians, whether or not they’re anywhere near the level of success Zevon had. Danny Fields had a great quote in the Legs McNeill oral history of the punk scene, which boiled down to: “All musicians are assholes.”…

It seems to me Warren Zevon’s life was what happened to a stereotypical musician who hit “the big time” in some respect and spent the rest of his days leading a relatively pampered rock-star life. Good work if you can get it, but I suspect your average person with zero contact with musicians doesn’t understand what that implies, which is never as alluring as the image.

From what little I’ve seen, a successful recording artist or band functions in its own little snow-globe world, especially on the road. Since the artist tends to be the center of attention much of the time, he doesn’t fully develop an adult sense of the world. In Zevon’s case, he just took money out of the bank whenever he felt like it, had very little understanding of his finances, and assumed money would always be there for him. Luckily, it was, although it got tight from time to time as his success boiled down to a few 70s hits he either recorded on his own or wrote for others (like Linda Rondstadt, who was hugely successful back in the 70s). After 1978’s Excitable Boy, his albums were much more critical than commercial successes, and aside from “Werewolves of London,” he never had any huge hit singles. He often toured solo in theaters and small clubs, most likely to reduce costs and make as much money as possible.

The artist also tends to populate his world with people who either support or depend on his ongoing success. Imagine a large family where a father is encouraged to be both infantile and patriarchal, and you have your average rock star. Reading the book, that’s how Zevon came off to me. I suspect that’s how many famous entertainers conduct their private lives, save they’ll be lucky not to receive the same sober scrutiny Zevon’s life receives in this book. (And not to worry if you don’t like the concept of rock stars being ambiguous and hard to accept beneath the image: there won’t be too many more rock stars. And just about everyone I know comes with strings attached, sooner or later.)

That’s also how a lot of his songs come off to me. With this renewed interest in Zevon, I doubled back and listened to his songs (of which I have just about all thanks to a returned MP3 favor from a friend). The first few albums, I was struck by how rigid his work was – either a slow ballad or stomping rocker, with little in between. And most of the rock songs I can live without. For years I’ve noted how “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner” has got to be the most retarded song I’ve ever heard, from the clunky martial beat to the silly mercenary story line. (I recall cringing the first time I heard it on my brother’s basement stereo in 1978.) I’ve always favored his ballads, and those early ones, like “Mohammed’s Radio” and “Carmelita,” still sound great.

Even when he lost his way a bit production-wise in the 80s, he had roughly the same formula that worked for him. What struck me most was how much his later work loosened up, to the extent I found myself more drawn to that material. He experimented with different styles (even incorporated a few celtic numbers), and there was a sense of artistic freedom I picked up on that wasn’t in his earlier, more popular work. The harder-rocking songs, like “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” and “Factory,” swung more than they stomped. In his case, I’d say the lack of pressure to write and record a Top 40 hit did him a world of good. I should also note sobriety agreed with him creatively, which is sometimes not the case for recording artists.

His lyrics? Always excellent, even on musically awful songs. Another reason I never warmed up to Zevon over the years was this odd effect his songs have on writers, and not just the famous ones he knew. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been around newspaper or magazine types in bars in New York, whom I know personally to have very little taste in music, but the one thing they can all agree on is a deep, abiding Warren Zevon appreciation. And while these guys are often great writers, they’re dicks when it comes to music, jam-band types who own about five CDs. Thus, I pictured Zevon concerts being a bunch of bespectacled guys in knit shirts and khakis, rocking out to that awful headless gunner song, and recalling their crazy nights copy editing while stoned after midnight at the campus newspaper.

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21 May 2015

Want to Work on Hillary’s Campaign?

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EvilGenius

Hat tip to George Takei.

20 May 2015

Ancient “Atlantean” Metal Found Off Sicily

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OricalcumSestersius
Antoninus Pius AE32 Orichalcum Sestertius, 138-161 A.D.

Discovery News:

Gleaming cast metal called orichalcum, which was said by Ancient Greeks to be found in Atlantis, has been recovered from a ship that sunk 2,600 years ago off the coast of Sicily.

The lumps of metal were arriving to Gela in southern Sicily, possibly coming from Greece or Asia Minor. The ship that was carrying them was likely caught in a storm and sunk just when it was about to enter the port.

“The wreck dates to the first half of the sixth century,” Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily’s superintendent of the Sea Office, told Discovery News. “It was found about 1,000 feet from Gela’s coast at a depth of 10 feet.”

He noted that the 39 ingots found on the sandy sea floor represent a unique finding.

“Nothing similar has ever been found,” Tusa said. “We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects.”

Indeed orichalcum has long been considered a mysterious metal, its composition and origin widely debated.

According to the ancient Greeks, it was invented by Cadmus, a Greek-Phoenician mythological character. The fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher Plato made orichalcum a legendary metal when he mentioned it in the Critias dialogue.

Describing Atlantis as flashing “with the red light of orichalcum,” he wrote that the metal, second only in value to gold, was mined in the mythical island and was used to cover Poseidon’s temple interior walls, columns and floors.

Today most scholars agree orichalcum is a brass-like alloy, which was made in antiquity by cementation. This process was achieved with the reaction of zinc ore, charcoal and copper metal in a crucible.

Analyzed with X-ray fluorescence by Dario Panetta, of TQ – Tecnologies for Quality, the 39 ingots turned to be an alloy made with 75-80 percent copper, 15-20 percent zinc and small percentages of nickel, lead and iron.

Via Fred Lapides.

20 May 2015

Why Liberals Treat Islam as a Sacred Cow

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Leftwingers

Robert Tracinski, in The Federalist, points to the changes in the course of the last century in the ideology of Progressivism to explain why lefties refuse to recognize the aggression and intolerance inherent in Islam.

The left seeks to gain moral authority, not from what they are for, but from what they are against. If you look at the history of the left, you find that they have frequently changed their favorite causes and their vision of the ideal society, often in ways that are wildly contradictory. But the one thing that remains constant is what they oppose.

The left used to present themselves as hyper-industrial and super-technological. In H.G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come, the ideal future society was going to be ruled by a technological elite of airplane pilots, while the Soviets projected a grandiose vision of industrial giantism, with huge hydroelectric dams, steel mills, railroads, and chunky Bakelite telephones. Then the left flipped, and now they’re anti-industrial and their central crusades are to shut down power plants and to eat locally grown organic kale. You can frequently catch them making this flip in mid-conversation, as with an acquaintance I was talking to recently who expressed his concern for the plight of the poor under capitalism—and then a few minutes later, after I argued that hundreds of millions of people across the world have been lifted out of poverty by capitalism, he told me that Western affluence is overrated and destroys the environment. Everyone on the right has, at some point, had a conversation exactly like this, and it is maddening.

Or: if you go back and look at early 20th-century Progressivism, you will find it shot through with racism of the pseudo-scientific sort—Progressive icon Woodrow Wilson introduced segregation in the federal government—along with schemes for eugenics and a generally uncomplimentary view of homosexuals. Yet today’s Progressives claim the opposite position on these issues as one of their central virtues. Or: the left will champion insults to Christianity as so essential to free speech that they must be funded by the government—then regard insults to Islam as so inflammatory that they must be banned as “fighting words.”

So everything changes, but one thing stays the same. Capitalism is bad, the West is bad, America is vicious and corrupt and needs to be fundamentally transformed. Transformed into what? That’s always vague and subject to change without notice, and ultimately it doesn’t matter.

The left is fundamentally reactionary. It is a reaction against capitalism and against America. The left are defined by what they are against, or more accurately who they hate. So they are drawn to sympathy toward Islam because it is not-us: non-Western, non-American, neither Christian nor a product of the Enlightenment. And I guess that’s what the two ideologies have in common: they are both reactions against the supposed evils of the West. Which explains why leftists tend to find themselves uncomfortable and look for excuses to retreat when they are called upon to defend the West against this rival group of reactionaries.

Read the whole thing.

20 May 2015

Waco Shootout

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WacoBikes

20 May 2015

Boycott the Palestinians!

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BoycottPalestinians

18 May 2015

Woodcock Chicks

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(photo: Karen L. Myers) click on pictures for larger versions.

A few days ago, my neighbor who does my mowing was cutting in the neglected field above the cabin when he flushed a woodcock, who was obviously a mother woodcock because she landed nearby and began performing the old “I’m-a-poor-injured-woodcock-with-a-broken-wing.-I’m-delicious-and-easy-to-catch.- Come,-follow-me!” routine.

So Bud turned off the mower, looked around, and spotted her four chicks. He then ran down to the house to tell us of his discovery, and Karen went up there with her camera and photographed the brood.

The four young woodcock were admirably camouflaged and Karen reports that they followed mother’s instructions and remained perfectly frozen, with the exception of all the little bright brown eyes which followed Karen’s every movement.

Naturally, mowing operations were suspended and the nosy humans all withdrew to allow Mother Woodcock to retrieve her brood and escort them back into the nearby woods.

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I was quite surprised to learn that woodcock bred on our Central Pennsylvania farm. I can’t recall ever seeing a woodcock outside of hunting season in the Fall. I always thought they bred up in Maritime Canada and only migrated to Pennsylvania.

But the Wikipedia entry says that they breed all the way down to Northern Virginia, and in some cases as far south as Florida and Texas. (!) “Most hens lay four eggs,” the entry reports.


(photo: Karen L. Myers)

18 May 2015

What Really Happened in Garland, Texas

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18 May 2015

Not Camels

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Camels

18 May 2015

SNL Nails Hillary Again

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17 May 2015

Tweet of the Day

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Tweet84

17 May 2015

Coal Region Ghost Towns

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GhostShenandoah
An elderly woman walks past the ruins of the former high school in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

WNEP 16 reports that several once-thriving communities in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region, including my own boyhood hometown, all one-time mining boom towns, are discovering that, after their economic raison d’être has disappeared, the population vanishes as well.

[S]ome communities in our region are fast becoming virtual ghost towns.

The proof comes from the 2010 U.S. Census which found in three area communities more than 25 percent of the homes and businesses sit vacant.

The three communities are in the heart of the coal region. All experienced population and employment losses in recent years that left hundreds of vacant houses and storefronts.

In Mahanoy City, Schuykill County, according to the U.S. Census, 26.3 percent of its homes sit vacant.

Just a block from the main street a home is selling for less than a price of a used car.

Shamokin, Northumberland County also has a vacancy rate of 26.3 percent. Afternoon traffic rarely stops on downtown blocks that increasingly see buildings for rent or for sale.

Shenandoah has the region’s highest vacancy rate at 28.9 percent. …

Empty lots. Empty businesses that closed years ago.

“It’s a great little town, but it has an image problem,” said realtor Erica Ramus. She has a hard time selling property in Shenandoah. “I’ve brought people up here to show them downtown properties as far as commercial, and the comment I’ve heard is, ‘Why would I want to move my business to a dying old coal town?'”

A typical Shenandoah block consists of an empty building, another vacant storefront, a doctor’s office, another vacant storefront, then a bank branch. People downtown said the neighborhoods are even bleaker. …

A drive through Shenandoah’s east side finds abandoned, unlivable homes. Others sit vacant for years, with little hope of finding a buyer.

A rowhome for sale is covered with newspapers from the year 2000.

“They’re not dead, but they’re certainly ill,” said Wilkes University economics professor Tony Liuzzo. He said the communities spiraling downward where jobs and people leave and vacant homes stay vacant.

“There’s an increase in pressure on the individuals who are remaining there and, of course, you don’t want to be the last one left holding the bag, so to speak,” Liuzzo added.

John Dopkin calls his east side Shenandoah block the loneliest place imaginable.

“I have no friends, all my friends are gone. I just lost my wife a year ago, and I’m waiting to go myself,” Dopkin added.

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