LA Weekly

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Back in January I wrote about how the Dems have an innate knack for losing what would appear to be impossible elections to lose.

Seems that others, in this case the New York Times' Bob Hebert, are now picking up on that theme.

Sorry, you have to cut and paste the urls. I'm the least techno savvy blogger in the world. Anyway, this is a case in which I'd really hate to say I told you so -- there will be no joy in being right about this. As Hebert says, though, it's not too late to fix this mess. The issues do favor the Democrats, if only they'd get back to focusing on them, and by they I mean Senator Obama. The Clintons are going to be the Clntons, which means ruthless and flame throwing in their pursuit of power, even if that means tearing the party down to get it. It's up to Obama to do what he had been doing earlier in this incessantly long, and now boring and degrading, campaign -- rise above and challenge the electorate to go with him.

This country is at a frightening time in its history. We are legitimately bankrupt. The debt we've accrued by fighting this senseless war, coupled with disastrous, short-sighted, greed-driven economics have ensured that we're decades away from righting things without dramatic, even radical (only in the sense that they'd go so far against current thinking) changes in policy. Priorities drive policy and our priorities have been so fucked up for so long we do need real change, the kind of change that Obama talks about generally, but has been slow to articulate specifically. We were swept up in the symbolism he embodied for awhile, but now, as the veneer comes off the symbolism a little and the metaphor becomes a man, we need him to articulate a real vision for the future. To do this, he's going to have to do a better job of transcending the muck of modern day (read: Karl Rove-ish) campaign politics that the Clintons are bogging this primary down in. They fight well in the muck - Obama's got to get himself out of it and get back on message. Change and hope, change and hope. But tell us what change, and dare us to hope for it. We want to.

And while I'm thinking of it, why does George Hannitty, er Stephanopoulos, still have a job after his shameful pandering during the last debate? And while I'm still at it, why does the media treat the Pope's visit like it's some tour by the British royal family, gawking at the pomp and circumstance? Gross.

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Why don't people go see George Clooney movies? First the great Michael Clayton, last year's best American flick and now Leatherheads? I saw Leatherheads yesterday and have trouble understanding why anyone would dislike this film (it got mixed reviews at best). It's fun, funny, witty, styled well and endearing. Plus, if you ever wanted to know what my dad looked like, and I know you do, Clooney is an eerie doppelganger, right down the playing football with a leather helmet. Maybe that's part of the pleasure I get from seeing his movies. They have the same wit and look almost exactly alike. Go see Leatherheads, it's a great date movie. Ladies, don't be afraid of the football subject matter, it's really just the vehicle for an old-school romantic comedy.

While I'm on the subject of under-appreciated talents, a few words about Adam Carolla. I've been listening to his morning show on 97.1 a lot lately. Now that the colossally unfunny Danny Bonaduce is off the show, it's really taken off. Here's a chance to see free-form, improved comedy/talk in a way that only radio can do. It's a perfect vehicle for Carolla's improvisational skills and his sidekick, Theresa Strasser is a perfect co-host, every bit as funny and sharp as Carolla. I highly recommend.

As for the Dems, this primary has jumped the shark. It's no longer interesting, exciting, illuminating or anything else. It's just a bummer now and, unfortunately, further proof of a previous piece I wrote for the Weekly about how only the Dems could blow this election. Please, Howard Dean, or whomever, do something to end this debacle as soon as possible or we might as well inaugurate John McCain now. There's nothing left now but further wreckage to the Dems chances in the general election. We're over it.

Sorry that's all I have time for. Be back soon.

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That's not how long they've been around, though it seems that way, but, rather, Mick Jagger's age when Martin Scorsese filmed the recently released concert film Shine A Light, filmed at New York's fabulous Beacon Theater in front of about 2000 fans. The film was reviewed by our own Scott Foundas and can be found somewhere on this sight.
I saw it last Friday. It wasn't my idea, nor would it have been. I last saw the Stones on their Steel Wheels tour decades ago and thought they were pretty washed up money-grubbing old farts then. I pretty much wrote them off as no longer being relevant and I remember even that show as a nostalgia fest for Baby Boomers, a sort of Disneyification of the band that had once meant so much to me. Raised on the Beatles, I turned to the Stones in my very early teens as the embodiment of what I wanted rock and roll to be: mostly danger and sex with a heavy dose of insouciance. By the time I saw them in concert, they were well past embodying any of that.

I have to say, this film was a revelation. The Stones seem to have gone so far around the clock they've come back again to what they used to be — they're raging again. Everything about them in this footage seemed real — their love of music and their belief in the transgressive possibilities of rock and roll seemed all anew. What the hell was happening? At one point, in a close-up of Mick Jagger, I was sure he must have genuinely sold his soul to the devil and was the better for it. Looking like a rock and roll version of Nosferatu, Mick was sucking blood again. No longer with anything corporeal to rail against, he and the boys were fighting again. Not, this time, against an uptight establishment, against old people, like they did when they were rock and roll at its most primal, but against age itself. Against what we've become conditioned to thinking being older should mean. I felt like they were declaring, with every ounce of their still-formidable energy, that they would not go softly into the night, but would rather against its coming.

I had come to feel like Jagger embodied the worst, corporate aspects of rock, that he was about the business, and that Keith Richards was left carrying whatever soul the band might still have, but even he, it seemed, had been defeated by business of the Rolling Stones, and incredibly lucrative business that had become little more than a highly remunerative exercise in nostalgia. But seeing this, it was clear that Mick is simply a rock and roll animal. He seemed a prisoner of not just the music, but of what the Stones have symbolized — defiance. Check his blues harp playing in the cameo by Buddy Guy on "Champagne and Reefer." He's in an absolute rock 'n' roll animal zone — it's dirty, nasty and really good. And that's how he is for the entire show. As for Keith, he's simply a being from another planet. Far from a pirate or a devil, he's like an angelic, old man-boy, ageless and ancient, loving every note from every player. The most beautiful moment of all might have been his crooning of "You Got The Silver."

Some reviews have been less than kind, but I think they miss the point and have taken the easy view, the one I had during the Steel Wheels performance. This wasn't lazy or nostalgic, this was rock and roll as it should be, a rage against the machine of life that says you should be humble in the face of mortality. Humble? These guys? Hell fucking no, they seem to be saying, we're the fucking Rolling Stones. God bless them. Or, if not god, then the devil himself.

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One of the questions of our day, at least in this field, is whether or not anybody reads anymore. Apparently it's not a rhetorical question. I read an interesting piece, I think it was in the New Yorker, not long ago that said humans aren't genetically predisposed towards reading. It's a learned behavior, and we could be coming upon a post-reading era. V.S. Naipaul has said much about the death of the novel. Newspapers are increasingly becoming incubators for online content, under which the imperative is shorter, shorter. Life is increasingly busy, or so it seems, and the energy and attention for reading is becoming harder and harder to come by, etc.

Lately, though, I've found a real solace and enjoyment in reading. So much so that I barely watch TV anymore. In the past half year I've read more than I have in a long, long time. I can't even recall all the novels I've read, but here are a few: Dirty Work by Larry Brown; Solo Faces and Light Years by James Salter, Rhythm of the Road by Allbyn Leah Hall, LA Rex by Will Beal, an LAPD cop, and most recently Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. I'm currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Each of these books has been an experience unto itself. I've lost myself, at a time when I need to, in every one. James Salter and Johnson's latest have been particular revelations. In fact, DJ's book is enough to revive one's faith in the novel as a vital form all by itself. It's sprawling, complicated, vivid and transcendent all at once. If you ever thought you had nothing left to read about our Vietnam experience, please do yourself a favor and read this book. Of course, the themes are applicable to current times.

I'm not sure what I mean by sharing this, except I'd like to know how you out there feel about such things and what you're into if you are actively engaged in this supposed anachronism. Either way, I hope you make time for it in your lives.

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I don't mean in general, but specifically yesterday's show (March 27). Jonesy's guests were Justin Long (the guy from the Apple commercials), Har Mar Superstar and some other dude whose name I forget.

Listen, do anything you can to download this show. It was the funniest fucking thing I've heard on radio in ... maybe my life. Sometimes, when the right combo of people, mood, topics, riffs gets going, radio can be magic and that's what happened yesterday. It doesn't happen that often, not even on Jonesy's Jukebox, where it is more likely to happen than in other places, but where just as often the show can be almost arrogantly bland. Yesterday's show, though, was an example of how and why Jonesy's Jukebox can transcend the rest of bullshit, canned/contrived programs.

The magic came from spontaneity and a lack of self-consciousness and some amazingly hilarious riffs on There Will Be Blood sung to the tune of Anarchy In The UK and other ditties. I didn't think there could be legs left parodying that fairly ridiculous performance by Daniel Day-Lewis and the stilted dialogue that makes it so ripe to begin with, but I was wrong. New heights here. Tears of laughter type stuff.

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Bush commemorated the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq by vowing that as long as he's president he'll make sure "those lives were not lost in vain."

Can anyone tell me what that means? How will those lives not be lost in vain? What of the 30,000 U.S. military men wounded, thousands upon thousands of them gruesomely? How will their sacrifice not be in vain? What of the estimated 90,000 (conservatively) Iraqi citizens who have died in this debacle. What did they die for?

In order to answer that question, you have to ask yourself another simple one, one which defies an answer: What is this war about?

Can you answer that?

Now try this: What was it ever about? What does victory or loss in this war mean?

Unfortunately, these lives Bush spoke of are dangerously close to being lost in vain. Iraq is a mess of almost irredeemable chaos and probably the best way for these soldiers' lives to not have been lost in vain would be for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the other liars who callously and arrogantly played with these lives to be held accountable for their crimes. Then, this debacle could serve as a lesson as to what should happen in a true democracy — the rule of law and truth prevails, even at the highest levels. But, lives lost in vain is what happens when you cook up an illegitimate war under illegitimate pretexts. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Haditha — these things are almost sadly inevitable when the whole thing is bound together by lies and corruption, moral and otherwise, and painted over with stubbornness and pride, with the absolute deficit of the most heroic trait a man can have: admitting a mistake and making amends.

Lives lost in vain is what happens when our elected officials and our citizens cower before bullies and demagogues. Lives lost in vain is what happens when lives are played with by those demagogues and autocrats.

So, it comes apart. Continually. You can't patch it back together with a revolving door of new generals and commanders as those bound by honesty and integrity resign in succession (U.S. Central Command commander Adm. Fallon being the latest).

Currently four cities in Iraq are at war with hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr's militiamen. This following a rise in suicide bombings over the past few days that has left scores of civilians, Iraqi soldiers and a handful of U.S. servicemen dead. The so-called Surge is, as it always has been, a smokescreen. Just like the second battle of Fallujah — remember, the one that broke the back of the insurgency?

The dark truth of this abominable war lurks behind these periodic smoke screens: there can't be a victory or even a good end to a war for which there never was a true or valid point to begin with.

I reserve most of my outrage over this for the spineless Democrats we elected in 2006 to end this terrible nonsense. The Bush administration are simply morally bankrupt criminals. The Democrats are something worse altogether: cowards.

Indeed, let's not let the lives of these brave men and women be lost in vain.

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Not long ago, I wrote about how I was going to miss Bill Richardson after he dropped out of the Democratic primary race. Man, it was good to see him this morning as he endorsed Barack Obama. This guy is fantastic. Everything from his style -- love that goatee thing -- to his self-deprecating sense of humor, to his realness. The guy is a gem. The best part was when he plainly and convincing said that above all else he came to see what a good guy Obama is while they were both on the circuit. Most endearing was the story he related about how during one of the debates he was engaged in conversation with Obaman and missed a question directed to him and Obama whispered the topic, Katrina, in his ear, allowing Richardson to answer the question and save face. That's one of the things that rings true about Obama, he seems like a good guy. Richardson, too. This is a plain-sense, man-in-full, who doesn't take himself too seriously while taking the challenges that we face entirely seriously. I'm not sure his endorsement amounts to much with the voters, but it's still refreshing to see two real people involved in trying to change the direction of our politics from the bogus direction its taken (the passport breaches are the latest example of the kind of politicization of governmental agencies that is more symptomatic of fascism than democracy) to something meaningful and true.

I hope whoever wins the Democratic nomination, and, please God, wins the presidential race, finds a place for Richardson high up in the cabinet. Secretary of State, or even Veep would be nice.

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I'm a bit shocked and awed by Obama's speech this morning in the wake of the trumped-up "controversy" over highly selected, out-of-context past remarks by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., comments that dare to suggest Black Americans might be a little pissed off.

What I'm shocked and awed about is how brave Obama's speech was. While distancing himself from the more incendiary incantations of the right Rev., he didn't back down a bit and said he'd no sooner disown his pastor than he would his sometimes bigoted, white grandmother. Then he went on to give one of the most engaging, heartfelt, rational and learned speeches about the real issues of race I've ever heard. There was no grandstanding or demagoguery, but calm and considerate truth. It was the ballsiest display by a politician I've seen in my lifetime and if you take the time to really listen to this speech, you'll learn more about the real burdens of our racist past and present than you ever had before (my post of last night touches on many of the themes Obama addressed in his speech:)

Obama made a big gamble with this speech. He trusted you to be able to accept a black man who isn't going to assuage your secret fears and prejudices, but will trust you enough to handle the truth. You liked him when you felt there was enough cream in his coffee. Now that you know he's not only beautiful, but black, too, how do you feel?

Here it is for those of you who missed it.

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