ELO + Olivia Newton-John + Roller Skates = The Most 70s Thing Ever?

Some Of My Favorite Creations From McCovey Chronicles

The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant!

Yes, a baseball post. Although I would like to point out that for the last couple years or so, I've successfully refrained from writing long and involved posts about baseball - and lord knows I've been tempted. But allow me this one indulgence. Actually, this post isn't really going to be very long. Mainly I just wanted to say:

THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!

If you honestly care to read more, I would recommend a terrific Giants blog called McCovey Chronicles. Their main writer, a fellow named Grant, has produced some of the sharpest, funniest writing I've seen anywhere on the internet, sports or otherwise. The fans who post comments all share the same goofy, sarcastic attitude, and I must have spent at least several eons of my life simply reading those long, crazy threads and smiling (their skill with Photoshop alone never ceases to amaze me). It also helps when your local baseball team features players with nicknames such as The Freak, B-Wheezy, Kung-Fu Panda, Huff Daddy, Jazz Hands, and Dirty Sanchez. And no Barry Bonds. I didn't think I could like a team more than I liked the 2008 Milwaukee Brewers. I was wrong.

Rangers in 4.

Rock Formations That Resemble Human Beings

I was reading about New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain (an anthropomorphic rock formation that crumbled several years ago and no longer exists) on Wikipedia when my eye wandered toward a link titled "List of rock formations that resemble human beings." "Well," I said to myself, "clearly I must click on this." It was thus how I discovered Hong Kong's Amah Rock, Scotland's Old Man of Hoy, and Israel's Lot's Wife. The article lists a number of mountains in the United States which are said to "resemble a reclining man." Resemble a reclining man? Can you say "Lame"? At least Massachusetts' Mother Ann is said to "resemble a reclining woman." Much better is Thailand's Ko Samui, "a rock pillar and a nearby cleft that resemble male and female human genitalia." Along those same lines, Oregon's Rooster Rock "resembles erect human male genitalia." Sadly it has not retained its original name of Cock Rock, a term now more commonly used to refer to musical artists such as AC/DC or Guns 'N' Roses. And finally, who can forget The Grand Tetons?

Dear God, Not China-Norway Relations!

From Slate:

The Nobel committee has awarded the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese writer and dissident who's currently serving an 11-year jail term for "inciting the subversion of state power." Liu has spent the past two decades in and out of jail for his opposition to China's authoritarian government, negotiating the peaceful withdrawal of students during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and helping pen a reformist manifesto that most recently landed him behind bars in 2008 ... As of Friday, the prize earned only a brief mention on the English version of Xinhua, China's state news agency: "Awarding Liu Xiaobo Nobel peace prize may harm China-Norway relations, says FM spokesman."

My God! Not China-Norway relations! How will we be able to solve the most pressing issues of our time without a harmonious Chinese-Norwegian alliance? Where is Norway going to get its toys? Where is China going to get its ... Norwegian wood?

I Know Who "Anonymous" Was!

So remember how I was talking about reading that article in Rolling Stone (about Roger Waters' upcoming tour of The Wall) in a store for free? And apparently that makes me a useless prick? Well guess what. I did read that article for free, but not in a store. Oh no. I read it in a library. You ever heard of a library? That's right, I read an article in a library for free, and I'm destroying culture as we know it.

Anyway. In that very same issue of Rolling Stone, there was an article by U2's manager, Paul McGuinness, called "How To Save The Music Industry" (Here's the slightly expanded version from GQ magazine). Ladies and gentlemen, I think I know who "Anonymous" was: U2's manager! He was searching the web, looking for comments about his article, and BOOM!, he stumbled upon Cosmic American Blog and thought he'd give me a piece of his mind.

Well, I don't know what to tell you Mr. McGuinness. You're frustrated. I understand. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm just a random insignificant blogger.

At any rate, your comments got me thinking. You ask me, "Do you expect to get paid for whatever it is you do for a living?" The irony of this statement may not have been intended. In order to make a living, I need to get paid. It's not actually possible to do something 'for a living' and not receive monetary compensation for it, essentially by definition. But I'm just being a smart-ass here. The question is: do people deserve to 'make a living' as artists?

I'm not sure. In our society we essentially pay people to do the things they would not otherwise want to do. People don't want to ride around in a garbage truck and collect everybody's garbage for fun. So we pay people to do that. People don't want to prepare dead corpses for burial. So we pay people to do that. Creating art is a very fun thing to do. Should we be paying people to do that?

Let's use this blog as an example. Would I like to get paid for writing a blog? Sure. Do I deserve to get paid for writing a blog? Probably not. It depends on what kind of blog. If it was a really good and really popular blog, maybe so. But for me, writing is not a question of money so much as it is a question of time. If I were able to make a living doing something other than writing, and I still had time to do all the writing I wanted to do, and I was able to find a large audience for that writing, then I'm not sure I would have a problem with that. But if society as a whole deemed my writing interesting, but because I had to make my living in another fashion I was not able to find the time to write, then that might be a problem. The question is: how badly would people want to read my writing? If society would suffer as a result of me not being able to write, then somebody with money would have to come along and say, "Hey, Little Earl, here's some money so you can write." Otherwise, who cares?

The title of your article "How To Save The Music Industry" raises an interesting question in itself: does the music industry need "saving"? To ask "how to save the music industry" might be a bit like someone in 1900 asking "how to save the telegraph industry."

Once upon a time, there was no music industry. Then there developed a need for a music industry, because there was a certain amount of technology that was needed in order to make a record, and ordinary people could not afford such equipment on their own. You needed money for a studio, for a recording console, for microphones, and ultimately for the physical pressing of the records themselves. All this is cheap now. Any college kid in his dorm room can record a song onto his computer and turn it into a music file. Should he make money doing it?

See, you've got me all wrong Mr McGuinness. Not that I really care what you think of me, but I definitely take the moral quandaries of downloading seriously. For example, see here, here, and here. Allow me to describe some further examples to you.

I wanted to download a copy of The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, but I realized that if I did so, Stephen Merritt would not receive any of my money and would not receive any of my support, which I felt he deserved. I went to Amoeba and, although there were actually several used copies of 69 Love Songs in the store, I purchased a brand new copy, because I knew that even if I bought a used copy, Merritt would not receive any of the proceeds. The Magnetic Fields were a currently active band that wasn't about to hit platinum status - exactly the kind of band that stands to suffer from free downloading. I paid more than I had to pay in order to make sure they received some monetary compensation. But apparently, I'm a prick.

When the White Stripes released Icky Thump in 2007, I wanted to hear it, but I didn't feel right about simply downloading it for free. Instead, I didn't listen to it at all, and now it's three years later and I still haven't listened to it. Do you see a problem here? Either I listen to the album for free, or I feel so awkward about it that I don't even listen to the album at all. Sure, if you're the White Stripes, you'd rather I listen to the album and pay for it. But if the choice was between your audience listening to the album for free, or your audience not listening to it at all, which would you prefer?

You tell me I'm "stealing." I'll tell you what stealing is. Stealing is walking into a store which sells merchandise and has a cash register. You grab a CD from the store, you stuff it into your jacket and you run past the cash register and out the door. That's stealing. When I download music files from the internet, what am I stealing? Not an actual "thing" like a CD. I'm downloading a low-quality copy of a file from someone else's computer. I'm not saying it's ideal. I would agree that it's similar enough to an actual commercial CD to prevent me from buying the CD copy. But it's not stealing. It's something in between. I don't think I'm "cool" because I do it. My intention is not to "brag." But I do it. I do it because it's over.

It's over people. If you want to make a living by releasing recorded music, it's over. Am I "destroying culture as we know it"? Maybe culture just ebbs and flows and no one is really to blame. Maybe the period of creation is over, but the period of appreciation has begun.

I was chatting with Yoggoth on this topic. We were talking about the original purpose of copyright law. Copyright law was designed to give artists the incentive to create, so that their work would benefit society. Copyright law was not designed for 60-year-old rock stars so that they could continue making money off their 40-year-old recordings. Ultimately copyright law was meant to serve society. He said, "I really don't see how it serves society and encourages creativity to have Bob Dylan making money off recordings that are 40 years old."

Besides, is downloading genuinely preventing musicians from making a living? Yoggoth was skeptical. "If you want to make a living as a musician, you can still tour and you'll be fine. You won't be able to afford a limo and a mansion, but you'll be able to pay the bills." The day a talented musician writes a post on his blog that says, "I'm glad you guys like my music, but I can't afford my instruments, so I'm going to be a substitute teacher now and I'm not going to be able to make music anymore," is the day I might actually be concerned.

Maybe rich rock stars are not something we really need anymore - or even semi-rich rock stars. My point is that we shouldn't try to create a system where a certain group of people make lots of money just because they "used to." It's got to make sense in the here and now. Sure, the internet has destroyed the music industry. It's also destroyed newspapers, the postal service, and a million other industries I can't even name. But it's also created a million other brand new industries. If you're smart and entrepreneurial, you'll figure out a way to make money by providing something that people can't otherwise find for free. The world changes.

Sorry.

It's About Time, Germany

Germany To Settle Outstanding WWI Debt - San Francisco Chronicle

Outstanding, Germany. Simply Outstanding.

Interesting Interview with French Writer Michel Houellebecq

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq

Perfect name for a French writer, eh? He's well known in France for his anti-Muslim comments and graphic sex scenes. The interview made me want to read his stuff.

"INTERVIEWER

So what made you write your first novel, Whatever, about a computer
programmer and his sexually frustrated friend?

HOUELLEBECQ

I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don’t just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don’t have a sex life, it’s not for some moral reason, it’s just because they’re ugly. Once you’ve said it,
it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it."

Hippo Licks Croc

Fun With Rolling Stone

Back To The Wall

Sadly, we are only given an excerpt on the website, but soon, in a store near you, I will be reading the rest of this, and not giving Rolling Stone my money:

The former Pink Floyd leader has just ducked his still-gangly six-foot-three-inch frame into a town car for a ride to a midtown Manhattan restaurant, and it is immediately clear that the driver is way too excited to see him. Waters braces himself. "Been a fan all my life, man," says the driver, a baseball-capped, middle-aged dude named Fred, with a broad New York accent. " 'Wish You Were Here' — I was backpacking in Europe when I got turned on to it. I was like, 'This is the best album evvuh!' It must be an unbelievable feeling to know what an impact you made on my generation."

"Normally, we don't know until we get in your car," Waters replies in his crisply British tones, buckling his seat belt. As usual, it's hard to read his chilly blue-gray eyes — color-coordinated these days with his longish, silvery hair and professorial beard — but it seems he's decided to be amused. It helps that Waters just shared an excellent bottle of Montrachet, in celebration of the end of a long workday: After driving into Manhattan this morning from his house in the Hamptons, he endured a biceps, triceps and abdominal core workout ("It nearly kills me, but I need to get a little stronger"), sang scales with the vocal coach who's been helping him reclaim the high notes of his youth, met with a stylist to select stage clothes in various shades of black (rejecting one pair of leather boots as "very Bruce" and another as "too Pete Townshend") and spent hours in a downtown production studio, making minute tweaks to lighting and digital animation.

"The high notes of his youth"? What, you mean "If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat"? It must be interesting to wake up in the morning and be Roger Waters. You've made your contribution to the human race and there are no expectations of you contributing any more. You can just sit around and bask in your impact - and money. I'm glad he's doing these Wall shows, but I don't think I'll be attending. However, I would have liked to have been in the audience to see Waters and Gilmour's impromptu appearance at an English fundraiser for Palestinian refugees:

Gilmour and Waters were originally planning to play three songs. But one attendee, British financier Arpad Busson, was so taken with the performance, he donated £50,000 to get them to play "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2." "Some other people were also saying they'd give £200,000 for them to play one more song," Freud adds. "People were crying — really! I know it sounds corny, but it was magic. David and Roger — they looked so happy up there and they made something so beautiful happen."

So, are they like charity whores or something? "Here's another 100,000 pounds - play 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene" - immediately!"

Julian Lennon On His New Photos Of U2, Kate Hudson

Speaking of touchy British rock reconciliations, How about Julian Lennon and Yoko Ono:

Midway through the evening, Yoko Ono, Sean and Julian Lennon themselves emerged into the room for a tour, laughing together and pausing to look at intimate shots of U2...Julian's mother Cynthia Lennon, Patti Boyd, George Harrison’s first wife, and Sid Bernstein, 92, the promoter who first brought the Beatles to the U.S., also came to see the exhibit, Lennon’s first. May Pang, Lennon's girlfriend during his eighteen-month “Lost Weekend” between 1973 to 1975, also attended — making it the first time she, Cynthia Lennon, Yoko Ono, Sean and Julian have all been in the same room together.

Anyone have a knife? Because the tension in this room is so thick, I could cut it with one. All in all, Julian seems like a pretty cool guy, especially considering that the first thing anyone automatically thinks of when they see him is probably, "You're John Lennon's son!" and Julian barely knew his father and didn't really feel that close to him anyway. Recently I listened to some of Julian's music, and it's actually quite good, if you like well-crafted but somewhat lyrically generic Beatlesque pop. Let's say this: he's a better songwriter than Ringo. Here's a really interesting, but non-Rolling Stone interview from last year:

“If Dad was to walk through the door now, we’d hug and cry, and get rid of all that pent-up emotion and anger. I have nothing but love for him now.”

Over the past two decades Julian has himself bought John Lennon memorabilia, much of it to be displayed in the exhibition in Liverpool, which will run until the end of the year. It has been, as he accepts, his way of “re-connecting” with his father. Yet he has had to spend more than £1m of his own money to gain possession. “It is, in a way, horrendous and very sad that this is what I have needed to do. Yet I’m blessed too that I have had the money to be able to do this.”

Julian ‘lost’ his father when he was five at the time of the divorce though he did get back on reasonable terms with him in the mid 1970s when John split from Yoko Ono for a couple of years after meeting May Pang. It was she who encouraged a rapprochment. “Dad and I got on a great deal better than,” recalls Julian. “We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general when he was with May Pang.” This relationship was initially known as ‘the lost weekend’ though it lasted a good deal longer - 18 months in fact - before John and Yoko Ono were reconciled in 1975. “My memories of that time with Dad and May are very clear - they were the happiest time I can remember with them.”

His relationship with his step-mother is well documented. There has not been a lot of love lost on either side. But now, again with the passing of time, Julian and Yoko Ono are on better terms. He saw her earlier this year in New York for dinner while she was recording her latest album. “But it was no more than a brief dinner with her and Sean.” Sean, of course, is his half-brother, and, like Julian, has carved out a musical career. “The fault with Yoko is as much mine. I unleashed Hell on her. Now I’ve made my peace with her and put the past on the backburner. We talked over things at that dinner. There is no point in further animosity as I’ve had enough of anger. It is a waste of time and energy.” Julian makes it very clear though that his relationship with Sean could not be better even if he was clearly John’s favourite while he was alive. “We’ve got a fabulous friendship. The issue was never with him; it was with Yoko.”

Sacha Baron Cohen To Play Queen's Freddie Mercury

What do you think?

Springsteen Talks Darkness With Ed Norton

Although I may have outgrown my Springsteen phase, I always did like Darkness On The Edge Of Town and for the nice price of nothing, I might actually want to hear this upcoming box set, which includes "21 unused songs from the sessions" and a documentary with concert footage. Although I have to say, the following lyrical samples give me pause:

On the light, rollicking “Gotta Get That Feeling,” Springsteen sings, “Hey girl, won’t you come out tonight?” There’s also “Ain’t Good Enough For You” (“you criticize about me endlessly/Logic defies how you got stuck with me”); “Someday (We’ll Be Together),” which is a romantic ballad with a bit of a ‘50s feel; and “Talk To Me,” about a guy pining for a girl whose “dad won’t ever let me in.”

Oh my God! That girl's dad won't ever let him in! What's a poor working-class Jersey boy to do? This is the future of rock and roll!

The Best Record Stores In The U.S.A.

You guessed it: Amoeba is listed first. But that's probably because the list is in alphabetical order.