The Revolving Room

Archaeologists in Rome recently unearthed a revolving banquet hall of the Emperor Nero's legendary Golden Palace, which Nero built to symbolize his belief that Rome revolved around . . . him.

The room, fifty feet in diameter, was designed to impress his guests. It rested on a pillar thirteen feet wide and featured four spherical mechanisms, most likely powered by a steady flow of water, that moved the room.

So, Nero built the first revolving restaurant. And the food was probably underdone and overpriced.

The revolving banquet hall was meant to simulate the rotation of the earth. This shoes how clever and inventive the Romans were with what little technology they had. . . and proves once and for all that people knew the world was round long before Columbus.

Nero also liked to entertain his guests with his own poetry and singing. Wonder if he played the fiddle for them? :-D

News Brief

Catching up on the news:

Iran tested several missiles in the past few days, and Americans are nervous about the possibilities of a foreign country perpetrating a strike . . . Israel. Iran has been developing its missile technology for some time, and its nuclear program is hardly a secret. It seems to play more for the benefit of the media to scare people than to produce anything constructive. Except for one thing: the Russians were alarmed enough to consider sanctions against Iran. The Iranians have largely been seen as rattling their sabers to simply scare the United States, but with new missiles that could theoretically reach Europe, other nations are taking notice.

Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee, a group of bipartisan bean counters, voted down the public insurance option despite the arguments in favor of its effectiveness in keeping insurance companies on their toes, as well as its own cost-effectiveness. Republicans argued against it, saying it could lead to single-payer system, as if that were a bad thing, and they trumpeted the ruthless efficiency of the free market, as if that were a good thing. The only thing keeping this proposal alive is the wide public support it has, along with strong support from Senate Democrats such as Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Charles Schumer of New York. There's another Senate committee with another bill, but it seems perverse that a policy proposal that's supported two to one by the American people was defeated in committee by practically the same margin.

Repulsion

Two recent celebrity stories in the news were almost enough to turn me into a right-wing Republican.

First, of course, is the Mackenzie Phillips story. The former "One Day At a Time" star - the one who did not marry Eddie Van Halen - is rock royalty herself, having been sired by the late Mamas and Papas leader John Phillips. Now , she tells is, he slept with her as well - just before her her own wedding day!

It gives a whole new meaning to the title of the Mamas and the Papas's debut album, If You Could Believe Your Eyes and Ears.

The other big story was the arrest of director Roman Polanski in Switzerland for having had sex with a minor in the United States in 1977. Polanski was going to Zurich to attend a film festival and Swiss authorities, working in tandem with the American counterparts, were ready to apprehend him and possibly have him extradited. Poland and France - Polanski, of Polish decent and having lived in Poland as a boy, was born in France and lives in Paris today and holds dual citizenship in both countries - have called for his release. They see American authorities as the villains throwing their weight around as we Yanks tend to do, and they insist that Polanski has paid his debt to society.

Because he was forced to live in Paris and marry a gorgeous blonde?

They also said the he paid a heavy price by not being able to work in Hollywood.

Gosh, they act like that's a bad thing!

The minor he slept with, Samantha Geimer - now 45 and long since having identified herself as the girl in question - settled with Polanski long ago and wants the case dropped. Serious misconduct has been charged in the way the case was handled by a Los Angeles judge who is no longer alive. Well, if Polanski was treated wrongly by the American judicial system, why not bring him back here and see if the case can stand up to scrutiny?

Arresting Polanski may be the only way to do that. Earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza in Los Angeles dismissed Polanski's bid to have the case itself dismisses because the director did not appear in court to press his request. Espinoza did agree, though, there was "substantial misconduct" in the handling of the original case.

Well, then, Polanski should come back and face whatever music he has to and have his case go through proper channels under standard procedure. Because fleeing the country and escaping to Paris doesn't seem like the proper way to go about it somehow. Anyone else accused of doing what Polanski did wouldn't be living it up on the Left Bank - he'd be getting down with the peeps in San Quentin.

Don't get me wrong. I like Polanski's movies, even though there's sometimes an undercurrent of dread to them (Repulsion, anyone?) But he was a guest of this country, and he violated the law. Maybe the case was conducted improperly, but he should have dealt with the original charges and tried to have whatever misconduct was applied by the authorities remedied, not just become a fugitive.

Kirk Will Work

With the path in Massachusetts cleared for an interim U.S. Senator to be allowed to serve in the late Edward Kennedy's seat until a special election is held in January, Governor Deval Patrick chose Paul Kirk, a close Kennedy friend, for the post. Kirk is a respected party elder and a former Democratic National Committee chairman, serving from 1985 to 1989.

Speculation has begun on who might run in the special election, with the most obvious Democratic candidates - Joseph Kennedy II, Edward Markey, and Martin Meehan - having ruled themselves out. Also subject to speculation is Governor Patrick's decision to pass over Michael Dukakis, the last Democratic governor of Massachusetts before Patrick, as a possible appointee for the interim Senate appointment.

Dukakis was a public servant in the truest sense of the term, having gotten into politics to improve government and and make it work for ordinary people, and he accomplished much in his own governorship, but he still, twenty years and change after his bid for the Presidency, remains a punch line for his emotionless, charismatically challenged persona. Not to mention the fact that his impressive economic record - the Massachusetts Miracle - went up in smoke in the final two years of his governorship.

Serving out part of Ted Kennedy's term would have been a wonderful and honorable way for Dukakis to cap his political career, but it looks like he'll be remembered as fondly as he was at the end of his last job - which means, not fondly at all, if even remembered.

I may have reported this before, but Dukakis recently accepted the blame for George Walker Bush. If he had defeated the father in 1988, he reasoned, no one would have heard of the son.

Displeasurable Dressing

One of the weirdest stories to come out of New Jersey is the controversy over Dressing for Pleasure, a sex shop in Montclair. The store, which has sold fetish material and bondage wear for people who like to be, uh, creative in their sexual relations, was in violation of municipal code and forced the owners, a husband and wife (family values?) to stop holding S&M parties in their basement, or "dungeon."

Business sagged, and the husband had a life-threatening illness, and now Dressing for Pleasure is closing altogether.

I, for one, am happy to see it go. I'm very sorry that one of the owners has been very ill, but that doesn't change my opinion of the very idea of fetish stores. They are an embarrassment to the communities in which they are located and they are uncomfortable to even go past. Especially this one, with its kinky window displays.

It's not much of a secret that many people have some sort of sexual quirk, some more outrageous than others. Do I have one? That's none of your business. That's my point. Fetishes are private affairs, and bringing them out into the open with stores like these is vulgar and tasteless. We live in a world where everything private is publicized and everything public is privatized. Putting bondage and S&M culture out in the open is about as senseless as putting Blackwater in charge of military combat.

If one must have fetish stores, it is far better to have them on an inconspicuous street, out of sight and out of mind. The couple who ran Dressing for Pleasure in Montclair had their store on Bloomfield Avenue, the town's main street. Even more unsettling is that this lower-middle class, mostly black neighborhood. The couple involved are white. So, while it may be conveniently out of the way of the posher area of Montclair Center (Montclair's name for its downtown), it's all right to have it in a less affluent, nonwhite area?

Oh yeah, there happen to be a few churches within walking distance of Dressing for Pleasure.

I don't think this couple looked down on the locals. I don't think they're bigots. But putting their store in this particular section of town smacked of insensitivity.

The couple plan to continue to sell their wares online, and they say they will continue to fight for the civil rights of "the bondage community."

The idea of S&M participants forming a "community," like a neighborhood block or a professional guild, seems rather ridiculous.

And as for their rights . . . they can do what they want. They should just keep into themselves.

Please note that I never revealed the names of these people, although they're publicly on record. I've preferred to be consistent in referring to fetishes as private affairs.

The Boss At Sixty

What is it about Bruce Springsteen, who turns sixty today, that keeps people coming back for more?

It's likely the way he's been able to articulate our hopes and desires, along with our disillusionment and worries, so well. He's always had and uncanny ability to turn desolation into some kind of dramatic grandeur and find majesty in the smallest positive gestures.

It helps that Springsteen is from New Jersey. As a resident of a state with everything from romanticized seashore towns and expansive pine forests to ruined cities and horrific chemical refinery scenes, a state neither rural nor urban, with wealthy townscapes and working-class neighborhoods, Springsteen has seen the best and worst of America, in all its messy diversity. He's seen it along this long, narrow corridor between the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean and he's been able to put it in a context that anyone can understand. Springsteen's America is our America, and vice versa. And it's New Jersey. Even if you've never been to New Jersey, you can learn a great deal about this state simply by listening to Springsteen.

Only Bob Seger, who's had more worldly experience than the Boss - Seger actually worked in a factory - rivals him as the all-American rock and roller. But while Seger has advantages over Springsteen, the Boss has his own personality and his own mystique that lends a quality to his music that no one can match. maybe that's why Springsteen felt a need to musically respond to 9/11 . . . and responded.

So what's my favorite Springsteen album? Nebraska, perhaps, because it's such a deeply personal album, with an intimacy that illuminates loneliness to an art form. Born In the U.S.A. always sounded bombastic to me, though I can listen to Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and Born To Run repeatedly.

Older, By George

Jason Alexander turns fifty today.

No Control?

Barack Obama went on five television news shows - including one on Univision - to explain his health care reform goals and other items on his agenda, and media pundits have been having a field day analyzing the President's gambit. After he laid low for much of the summer, President Obama is trying to regain control of the health care debate. Instead of being accused of not speaking up enough, though, he's now being accused of saying too much and making himself too available -as if an alternative to the imperial presidency of George Walker Bush (patterned after Richard Nixon's) is somehow bad for our democracy.

Maybe the pundits could have spent more time looking into the arrest of an Afghanistan-born U.S. resident, Najibullah Zazi, who may have been involved in a plot to bomb subway stations and perhaps Grand Central Terminal in New York. The New York Police Department and the federal Bureau of Investigation were both investigating An NYPD informant, a New York imam, may have been involved in alerting Zazi after surveillance on Zazi was somehow uncovered, although the details of how this could have happened are sketchy. Either this is a major coup by the NYPD and FBI are just another phony plot thought up by a gang of incompetents who couldn't shoot straight. But for the time being, the quickness in which the case was prosecuted may have averted a possible terrorist attack.

In the meantime, mass transit systems are on a higher state of alert as a precaution.

The ACORN Doesn't Fall Far . . .

You have to give the right credit. They know how to create a scandal that wasn't there before.

The Republican tirades against the liberal activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) took an unexpected turn when a conservative activist from New Jersey committed a series of Abscam-style sting operations against ACORN offices. He and a woman, respectively disguised as pimp and as a prostitute, visited these offices and asked for - and got - advice on setting up a brothel.

And he got it all on video.

With the release of these tapes, ACORN - known for helping and organizing the less fortunate to stand up for their rights and a better quality of life - is suddenly a pariah in Washington. Congressional Republicans have demanded that ACORN be denied federal funding. even as ACORN's leaders have promised to investigate the matter and fire anyone who did anything improper. Meanwhile, some ACORN leaders have suggested the conservative activists that produced this scandal have even made the charge - a plausible one - that the audio may have been overdubbed later and the ACORN staffers may have duped into being put in a compromising position. As anyone who remembers the great HBO eighties comedy series "Not Necessarily the News" can tell you, it's a plausible charge that should be considered.

So where are the Democrats? Wimping out, as usual, joining Republicans in Congress to deny funding to ACORN and the White House severing its ties with the organization and canceling a deal to work with them to get an accurate count of poor people in the census next year. So much for giving ACORN the benefit of doubt, eh, guys? Not only have you abdicated that principle, you've surrendered your responsibility to help the little guy.

Even when the Democrats do get soft at the appropriate time, they can't win. Nancy Pelosi - the one Italian-American woman not named Madonna who lacks warmth - was uncharacteristically emotional and upset when she suggested that the heated, bigoted rhetoric against President Obama could lead to the kind of violence that rocked her hometown of San Francisco in 1978 when Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. And she had good reason to be upset. House Republican leader John Boehner shrugged it off in interviews, insisting instead that his constituents are justifiably afraid of America becoming a different country than it is now (i.e., one with fewer white people), while Fox News have suggested that Pelosi's comments could - get this - incite violence and give people ideas for assassination.

I don't need to tell you how Orwellian that is.

Blowin' In the Wind

Mary Travers, the heart of Peter, Paul and Mary, died the other day of leukemia. To call her the woman who sang with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey is an understatement. It's because she was a woman, and had a perspective neither Yarrow nor Stookey could completely (or perhaps even partially) share, that gave Peter, Paul and Mary their own depth and humanity. Artificially assembled by folk music mogul Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's original manager), the trio was made authentic by that same humanity.

Some of Peter, Paul and Mary's critics suggested that they were a bland aspect of the folk music scene whose biggest if not only contribution to the genre was popularizing it for a wider audience. This assessment misses the point. Because they were more mainstream, they were able to bring the best elements of folk - its social consciousness and its musical economy - to a wider audience and make it acceptable. They did so at a time when Americans were coming out of the complacency of the Eisenhower years and when rock and roll was in a period of irrelevance (much like today). Mary Travers made that possible with her own Middle American sensibilities (she grew up in Kentucky) and her nurturing personality. She later became a mother and a grandmother, two roles she obviously considered more important than her role as a folk icon.

It was a lonely road for the trio in the era of Reaganesque conservatism, but the values Peter, Paul and Mary espoused have slowly been creeping back and Mary Travers certainly lived long enough to see it. She most likely knew that more is needed to be done. There is, as Peter Paul and Mary once sang, no easy walk for freedom.

Least of all for Mary Travers. RIP. :-(

To The Max

Going over the proposals in the health care reform bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, I'm convinced that this has to be some kind of joke.

A tax of 35 percent on premiums paid on insurance plans plans held by middle-class individuals and families?

No public option? Member-owned co-operatives to "compete" with private insurance companies?

Employers aren't required to offer coverage? Companies with more than fifty full-time workers would pay a fee if - and only if - the government subsidizes employees' coverage through tax credits? 

And we're supposed to take the word of a guy that took nearly four million dollars from the heath care industry that this is going to work?

Even when Republicans opposed it it because they think it goes to far and prominent Senate Democrats like Jay Rockefeller oppose it because it doesn't go far enough?

Those Big Sky pols - what a sense of humor.

Unlike Anthony Weiner in the House, who supports a public option, Baucus might have enough clout to get the final bill from Congress to fall in line with his vision of health care reform. After all, when Baucus joined the Senate, Anthony Weiner was still in the eighth grade.

Welcome Back, My Friends, To the War That Never Ends

A brief explanation of the five civil wars of Afghanistan:

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to shore up the Communist government that had taken over the country a year earlier by installing their own chosen Afghan leaders and helping the local Communist Party keep the populace in line. The Mujahideen Islamic rebels took up arms - many supplied by the United States - to defeat the Afghan Communists and the Soviet invaders who supported them, forcing the Red Army out after nearly a decade. Once the war was over, a new one began two minutes later to oust the Communist president, Mohammed Najibullah.

The second civil war lasted three years, from 1989 to 1992 until President Najibullah was overthrown and executed. Two minutes later another civil war started among factions of the Mujahideen for control of the country.

The third civil war found Islamic factions trying to start an interim government and getting a quorum of Mujahideen supporter on one side. This went on for some time until the Taliban formed and gained strength, eventually taking Kabul in 1996 and establishing themselves as the new Afghan government. The third civil war was over.

Two minutes later, anti-Taliban factions and the Northern Alliance started a new civil war to retake Kabul and the countryside. This went on for five years. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden took up residence in Afghanistan, and, because of the "scandal" involving President Clinton's private sexual affairs, no one paid attention. Except President Clinton himself, who was trying to get bin Laden. No one cared, least of all the next President, George Walker Bush. Then, on September 9, 2001, Ahmad Shah Mas'ud, the one anti-Taliban leader in Afghanistan who could unite much of the country behind him, was assassinated. Two days later the same people who assassinated Mas'ud blew the World Trade Center in New York to kingdom come. The United States entered the fourth civil war in Afghanistan and won a huge victory by helping the anti-Taliban forces take over Kabul. The Taliban fell, and the war was over.

Two minutes later, the Taliban started a counterrevolution, beginning the fifth civil war that has lasted to this very day.

So, we're in Afghanistan to bring a lasting peace and a solid, stable government to a country that has only had eight minutes of peace in thirty years.

And oh yes, when the Soviets invaded in 1979, they had the previous prime minister executed, who had had his own predecessor executed after taking over in a coup.

We boycotted the Moscow Olympics for these people?

The Last Dirty Dance

Patrick Swayze, who died yesterday at 57, was one of those rare performers with star quality that many talented actors have had to work to achieve. For Swayze, though, it came naturally. He had an undeniable charisma that allowed him to charm moviegoers in many a diverting movie. Bear in mind that he was a dancer before he became an actor, and it seems appropriate that Dirty Dancing would be his biggest hit. He made a couple of noteworthy movies after that, but more often than not he had to struggle through tough times even after he became famous. He never stopped trying, and he never stopped working, at least until his pancreatic cancer finally caught up with him.

Swayze may not have been a huge talent who could make anyone forget DeNiro - and truth be told, Robert DeNiro has made movies far less dignified than Swayze would have allowed himself to appear in - but he was someone who appreciated what talents he did have and used them very well. RIP. :-(

"Ima Let You Finish"

I don't normally care for or about the MTV Music Video Awards, which is really the musical equivalent of the Clios. That is, promotional music videos are commercials. But even a musical curmudgeon like myself would have to feel compelled to comment on Kanye West's interruption of country singer Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for her award at the MTV shindig this past Sunday. West ruined what should have been a wonderful experience for Taylor Swift by interrupting her acceptance speech to declare his opinion that Beyoncé Knowles should have won that same award. Knowles herself expressed a look that was a combination of surprise and bewilderment, looking like she was laughing at West more than with him.

I don't profess to know what prompted West to pull such a stunt. After all, Taylor Swift winning an award instead of Beyoncé Knowles is not like poor people in New Orleans losing their homes to flooding. West was right to call out George Walker Bush four years ago, but expressing displeasure over an award recipient in the same manner was neither justified nor called for.

Knowles, to her credit, had Swift share the stage with her later in the ceremony, and even President Obama weighed in calling him a "jackass," which many found offensive. (So did I; he should have dropped the "jack.")

If you really wanted to find jackasses this past weekend, you only needed to look at Washington, where sixty thousand of them - although Glenn Beck insists there were over a million of them - demonstrated against Obama's health care reform proposals, virulently denouncing him as a fascist and accusing him of spending too much money and letting the government take over health care. Many of the signs and slogans were vicious and nasty, making clear references to Obama's race and national origin, continuously claiming he was born in Kenya. This is the culmination of numerous town hall meetings and public speeches (some of them Obama's) in which people carried guns.

This is all pretty unsettling. Because just as it was implied that Kayne West found it objectionable that a country and western singer would beat out a hip-hop/R&B diva for an award (Kanye West doesn't care about white people?), it's more than implied that these protesters really don't like the idea of a black man in the White House.

Kanye West is a clown. But these tea-party conservatives, egged on by folks like schizophrenic, egocentric paranoiac prima donna Glenn Beck are downright scary.

Downsizing

Perhaps the most interesting news story I came across in the paper this morning was a brief article reporting that Americans are losing interest in large houses, with the median size of a single-family new house decreasing from 2,277 square feet in 2007 to 2,215 last year. Not by much, but it could be the start of a steep drop.

Trends are changing due to the economy. The real estate market has virtually collapsed. Mortgage and maintenance costs are soaring. For some people, energy usage is another big deal. Even if and when the economy recovers - and no one expects a return to the supply-side-fueled boom that began in the early eighties and interrupted by two recessions before abruptly ending two years ago - more Americans are looking at houses as places to live rather than investments. That means no more luxury features, no walk-in linen closets the size of a guest room, and no more fancy bathrooms. People are expected to live more simply. Maybe we'll even pay more attention to our towns and neighborhoods as more people cut back on spending on private, indoor entertainments like flat-screen television sets.

The same rule applies for cars. Another article I found on the Internet reported on how Americans are trading down from big cars and sport-utility vehicles to small family sedans, which close less to insure and maintain. Some folks are keeping their cars longer rather than buy new ones. Those who insist on luxury cars are buying less prestigious premium models; one car buyer reportedly opted for a Hyundai Genesis over a BMW. Guess Hyundais really are cars that make sense. (If you remember the eighties, you remember that Hyundai slogan. You also remember that Hyundai started out selling basic, small economy cars only.)

And if we buy minivans, we're less likely to get them with video entertainment systems.

So Americans will not only have smaller houses with smaller garages, they'll have smaller cars to fit them in as the economy contracts more and China and India buy more oil at our expense to fuel their own economies, with less energy for us to run our houses and cars. Especially cars. We can still heat out houses with natural gas, but natural gas-powered vehicles are a way off, no matter what T. Boone Pickens says. We're about to (re)discover the joys of little cars and think small, as that classic Volkswagen ad asked us to. We'll demand more practicality and versatility in our cars as well.

One thing will likely not change - we won't buy hatchbacks.

Americans simply like trunks better than hatches. For all of its unorthodox features - a rear engine, air cooling - the Volkswagen Beetle was still a huge hit in America because, like the modern Jetta, it still had a trunk.

Hatchback doors are considered even weirder here than aircooled engines.

Transitions

Charles Gibson is out and Diane Sawyer is in. It seems ironic, but Gibson, who gave Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin an opportunity to show how ill-prepared she was for the office, has been replaced as the anchor of ABC's nightly newscast by a woman who got her first break working in a Republican White House (Nixon's). The 63-year-old Sawyer's promotion to the top news spot at the Disney Channel makes Brian Williams at NBC - whose ratings are so low the initials now stand for NoBody Cares - as the only male anchor on any of the three nightly newscasts on the major broadcast networks. Watch your back, Brian; Ann Curry may be looking at getting your job! :-D

Meanwhile, I just learned that Larry Gelbart, a writer on Sid Caesar's show "Caesar's Hour" and the chief screenwriter behind the first four seasons of the iconic situation comedy "M*A*S*H," has died. This is sad news, as he was one of my idols. He elevated sitcom writing to a high art form with his clever, acerbic dialogue and wry wit. Whenever Hawkeye Pierce had a perfect comeback or back-whacking zinger, you can bet Gelbart was behind it. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1982 Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie with Murray Schisgal, which offered the classic line, "I don't believe in hell; I only believe in unemployment!"

Larry David and his ilk could not have had the careers they had without Gelbart. RIP. :-(

Uh-Uh, Mr. Wilson!

President Obama not only spelled out his views - rather concrete views at that - on how to reform the health care system in his speech to Congress, he got more people on his side , according to the latest polls. He's now emphasizing the moral need to cover more people and aim for universal coverage, and the Republicans remain unmoved.

Obama's proposals would require everyone to obtain health insurance while creating a subsidy those who currently can't afford it. His proposals also include banning insurance companies from refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions or cancelling their coverage and taxing insurance companies that offer premium plans to wealthier individuals. All of this would costs $90 billion a year over a decade.

But - get this - Obama also wants to see a public option, even though he stopped short of demanding it.

Obama offered a lot of good ideas and a couple of mediocre ones - anything to keep single-payer proposals of the table - but his biggest boost may have come from South Carolina House member Joe Wilson, when the Republican called him a liar right in the middle of the speech. The charge was over Obama's insistence that his plan would not cover illegal immigrants. And even though Wilson apologized, many Republican leaders and right-wing talk radio hosts compounding the disaster by insisting the Wilson was correct about this. He isn't, but he's not as wrong as John Boehner or Sean Hannity will be if they think they've done harm to Obama's efforts to get a health care reform bill passed.

They've only hurt themselves.

Some people must wonder what folks in other countries must think of this lack of decorum. Well, based on the raucous question-and-answer sessions in the British Parliament with the prime minister, the Brits might want to see more of it here!

Beatles Remasters

The Beatles's entire catalog was finally released in newly remastered form for the first time since their records appeared in compact disc form in 1987. The ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of this century was an appropriate release date (albeit a Wednesday, bypassing the usual Tuesday standard),as it was John Lennon's lucky number.

Monophonic versions of each LP through the Yellow Submarine soundtrack (the last Beatles album released in mono) and stereo versions of their first four LPs are available for the first time on CD in history, resulting in previously rare variations of the original masters. On the stereo version of "Please Please Me" from the album of the same name, John Lennon gets a line wrong (he incorrectly sings "Why do I never even try, girl?") toward the end of the song and thus sings the words "Come on" with a chuckle. Paradoxically, a mono remix of "Helter Skelter" from the White Album fades out but doesn't fade back in so you don't hear Ringo's scream about blisters on his fingers.

It seems ironic that the Beatles were among the last recording artists to have their work issued on CD, yet Apple Corps has since used the compact disc format to re-present the group's work in fresh and exciting ways, from the BBC Radio discs and Anthology series to a reworked variations of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack and the Let It Be LP. And that's not to mention the CD versions of the repackaged albums Capitol compiled before 1967 (so I won't).

Also out today is the video game "The Beatles : Rock Band." I'm not into gaming, so i can't comment on that much. But I can't wait to hear the new CDs.

The Past Masters collections compiling the Beatles's nonalbum tracks, as noted earlier on this blog, are being reissued as a single package rather than as two separate releases.

I'll comment on President Obama's speech later.

Hard Times For Labor

Sometimes I wonder if anyone really understands the meaning of Labor Day anymore. All it appears to be these days is a day on which have one last summer fling before the kids go back to school. But in this severe recession, where two million jobs have been lost and more people are extremely nervous about the future than at any time in recent memory (I remember the 1990-91 recession, and it wasn't nearly this bad), it's worth pausing to think of everything the labor movement has given us - the five-day work week, paid vacation time, health benefits . . . even if labor has been diminished in recent decades.

Tax cuts for the wealthy and investment in luxuries instead of factories (what Ronald Reagan's supply-side tax code was supposed to encourage - yeah, right) have put a great deal of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, with the workers carrying the burden of paying for the upkeep of government. Meanwhile, CEOs usually make 866 times the salaries of workers, only seven percent of whom belong to unions and are one pink slip away from unemployment.

We may have turned a corner with President Obama's election, but the way out of this mess is going to be difficult. Now, more than ever, workers need to hold on and hang in there.

Whitney's Back!

For those of you too young to remember, Whitney Houston is the greatest eighties female R&B female vocalist whose name isn't Anita Baker. She sold millions of records back in the Reagan years, and she had the most astonishing voice most people had ever heard, and as long as she got the right material for it, she was entertaining.

When she didn't, though, she could produce something really annoying (the less said about her cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," the better). More often than not, she got middling material that was neither entertaining nor annoying. It just . . . was. Houston's biggest flaw as an artist (as opposed to being a performer) was that she was more into showing off her voice than saying anything with it. (That's why Anita Baker gets my vote between the two.) Some of the blame for this went to Clive Davis, the legendary Arista Records founder who discovered her and signed her to his label, who watered down her sound and her proficiency for gospel singing and had her records aimed at a mainstream audience.

Alas, Houston didn't merely almost have it all - she had too much of it. Her downward spiral into drug addiction and her disastrous marriage to Bobby Brown ruined her career, but having finally rid herself of Brown - the welcome first step in her twelve-step program to recovery - she's been working her way back up to the charts and she's released her new album I Look to You, which critics say is her finest work in ages. I've heard one track from the record, "Million Dollar Bill," and it's an astonishing revelation. It shows you what she can do with her voice when she does have something to say.

Ironically, Clive Davis, the man accused of keeping her from saying anything back in the eighties, is engineering her comeback today. It's really great to see Davis having taken such a personal interest in Houston when the rest of the world was ready to write her off . . . and did just that.

I really hope Houston makes it back to the top. (Whitney, from one New Jerseyan to another - you go, girl!) I just hope she doesn't employ her trademark melismatic phrasing too much. Melisma only sounds great when it's really dirty.

Which is why I love Roger Chapman. :-D

Yes We Can! (Except For the Public Option!)

News leaked out last night that President Obama is going to tell his liberal base to "be good soldiers" and abandon the public medical insurance option to allow health care reform to pass. Aside from the fact that Americans will remain at the mercy of greedy (and merciless) health insurance companies without a public option and that health care reform without it will be no reform at all, Obama can't be serious when he asks Democrats to put up or shut up and fall in line. If Democrats did that, they'd be Republicans.

I will reserve judgment until I hear his speech Wednesday night. Maybe, though, just maybe, Obama let this news leak out to make his supporters and any Americans who support a public option (i.e. 77 percent of them) pressure him and the Democratic Congress to include it in the bill. Maybe, just maybe, Obama is scheming to get people angry and force this public option plan to became part of the final bill, which is what he really wants.

Nah. Democrats aren't that clever. :-O

A Grave Act

The foul stench was very strange, the funk of fifty years and change, a grizzly ghoul inside his tomb, all closed up to seal his doom . . ..

Yeah, they finally buried Michael Jackson. I don't understand what the heck took so long, I didn't think the autopsy could have been all that complicated.

Anyway, Jackson was interred in a vault in a mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery, which includes the remains of several other deceased entertainers. Access to this mausoleum is severely restricted, meaning that fans won't get to leave any mementos.

Incidentally, anyone notice that Ted Kennedy died two months to the day after Jackson, yet he was interred before Jackson was?

I know that it's not cool to make fun of the way Jackson's interment was handled, but his survivors didn't do anyone - least of all Jackson himself - any favors by begging to be lampooned.

Town Hall Criers

Yesterday I attended one of those health care town hall meetings, this one at Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey hosted by Representative William Pascrell, Democrat of New Jersey's Eighth District. I don't live in his district, but do you think my Republican congressman would have had such a meeting?

It was an interesting experience. Yes, right-wing protesters out to derail the whole process were there, but they weren't as loud or as disruptive as television makes them out to be. Wendell Potter, a health insurance company spokesman, admitted his role in derailing President Clinton's health care plan with lies and apologized for it. A local businessman spoke in favor of the public option.

As for me, I supported Pascrell's advocacy for health care reform by cheering and applauding his statements of support. At one point, I yelled out to someone, "Let him talk!" But that was the extent of my own rowdiness. Most of the time I wandered around taking pictures of the meeting, and I got a picture of a local TV reporter - Cora-Ann Mihalik, of WWOR-TV. I even met one of my neighbors, who was also there to support Pascrell. The congressman comported himself well and handled some tough questions.

The whole experience was exhausting, and I left early to avoid the rush. It was so crowded that I had to park about half a mile from the auditorium and take a shuttle bus. I don't know what good my presence did, but I'll see.

President Obama hopes to get around the health care controversy, but even when he does something no one would deem as political - speaking to school students in a speech via C-SPAN - Republicans accuse him of brainwashing our kids. The Republicans know a thing a two, though, about brainwashing infantine minds.

The Green and the Greatest

I read two interesting stories in this morning's paper regarding Ireland. The country currently suffers from a 12.4 percent unemployment rate - the second-highest unemployment rate among the sixteen countries using the euro, after Spain. This is the result of a rather reckless and speculative period of prosperity in Ireland that came to a crashing halt when the global economy did.

The people of the Irish town of Ennis, anyway, got some good cheer from one of their favorite sons - Muhammad Ali. It has long since been proven that Ali had an Irish great-grandfather, Abe Grady, who emigrated from Ennis, in County Clare, to America just before the Civil War. Ali visited the town recently and received a hero's welcome, the residents happy to claim him as one of their own. A champion of human rights, Ali, I'm sure, expresses interest in and appreciates the nine hundred years of oppression the Irish had to go through. Heck, he's one of us!

Ireland continues to suffer under the weight of its history as well as under its current malaise, and I'm certainly happy that Ali's presence in his great-grandfather's hometown lightened the load and give a glimmer of possibility to the townspeople. Call him the Great Green Hope.

Kelly green, that is. :-)

California Nightmares

The numerous wildfires in California that have threatened the Los Angles area, San Bernardino County, and parts of the Sierra Nevada - including acreage near the border with Oregon - probably couldn't have been prevented, but they could certainly have been foreseen. Much of the state is naturally dry, with most of its water supply brought in from the Sierra Nevada range or diverted from the Colorado River. The Los Angeles region is overpopulated after more than a hundred years of hyperdevelopment started by the first aqueduct built for the area.

When the Spaniards first settled the little pueblo of Los Angeles in the late eighteenth century, they found few if any native peoples in the region. That's because the Indians learned right away that the basin Los Angeles was settled in was dry and prone to fire. Before the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, Los Angeles was a dusty little farm town, relying on what little water was available in the semi-desert area and sustaining a population in the tens of thousands. Now the Greater Los Angeles population is in the millions, and the challenge has been to keep enough water flowing for everyone, and in the face of a statewide drought (and a regional three-year drought) that has made the brush so tinder-dry in the first place. Winter rains along the coast have helped supply water in the past, but they have caused periodic mudslides in the hills. Even if southern California has managed to pull that off, they now have to deal with wildfires, along with earthquakes and the aforementioned mudslides, as an ongoing fact of life in the region.

This comes at a time when California is struggling under a $42 million deficit while its economy is in the loo. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gets my vote of confidence for tacking the fires head-on by diverting resources to contain the blazes and putting public safety ahead of budgetary concerns, but he sure isn't going to go in an put the fires himself single-handedly. This isn't a movie!

A hurricane affecting Baja California in Mexico is not expected to bring any beneficial rains to the area, and it may even bring winds to fan the flames. In the meantime, temperatures have dropped and humidity has risen, allowing the fires to be put under greater control. But firefighters are keeping a close eye on Mount Wilson near Los Angeles, which is the site for an historic observatory as well as TV and radio antennas.

It never rains in Southern California. . . .

It pours.

Man, it pours!

I Care, I Have To

 Lily Tomlin turns seventy today.