Telling Stories

Not "My Generation" . . .

But pretty cool too:

I hope I'm this cool when I get old.

Reaping What You Sow

I wish I could tackle a meaningful topic today but I've had all sorts of upheaval in my personal life - good upheaval, but upheaval nonetheless - and I'm not in the mood to deal with any serious subject today.  As it is, I'm sort of expecting Fred Thompson to open his mouth any day and scream "I . . . AM . . . IRON MAN!!!"  But I digress.

So, today I come across this article posing the age-old question: "But what about the nastiest comments of all those about [Britney Spears'] body? 'Lard and Clear,' read Monday's headline in the New York Post. 'The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot, wrote E! Online. And so on."

I'm sorry.  I'm not a Spears fan.  Never was.  And never will be.  And although I like women with meat on their bones, and I think she looks better now than before (like Rosie O'Donnell said in one of her stand-up routines, "bones are for the dogs.  Meat is for the man."), she's earned all the critizism coming her way.  She made her sexuality and her looks an integral part of the "Britney Spears" product.  It's only to be expected that if she doesn't live up to her previous standards, she's going to catch some flack.

She wouldn't have much problem with the negative feedback if, you know, she actually had any real talent - think Mama Cass, those of you who are old enough - but she doesn't.  So, if you're 90% sex appeal and 10% musical skill, and you lose your sex appeal . . .

On the bright side, she would make one heck of a roomie in MTV's "The Surreal Life."

Thanks for the Clarification, Keith!

In response to rumors that he snorted some of his father's ashes with cocaine, Keith Richards came out to set the record straight.

WHEN Keith Richards retracted claims that he had snorted his father’s ashes with a generous sprinkling of cocaine, he put the kibosh on one of the greatest Rolling Stones anecdotes.

But now the 63-year-old rocker has admitted he did inhale his father Bert’s remains – just not with class-A narcotics.

“I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with. I’d opened his box up and said, ‘Jesus, I’ve got to do something with dad, y’know, plant the oak tree.’

Emphasis added.  Well, I feel better now.  Because, you know, a little bit of dad goes a long way and there's no need to contaminate him with lesser stuff like cocaine.

“I pulled the lid off and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I’m going, ‘I can’t use the brush and dustpan for this’. So you just gotta like, put it together.

“What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of… y’know, he went down a treat.”

I'm sorry, but when my mom dies, if there's any kind of "spillage," I'm getting the Dust Devil out.  She won't know anyhow.

“Hey, when I’m gone, I’m done. Everybody else can decide what to do with me. My folks know what’s what. Mind you, it’s a long way off. I’m looking to be a good 150 before I think about croaking.”

Well, he may not be 150 yet, but he sure looks the part, though.

When More is Less

Via CNN.com:

Half brothers Julian and Sean Lennon have begun speaking to each other again.
Their reconciliation follows Julian's eight-year feud with Sean and Sean's mother, Yoko Ono, the widow of the men's father, Beatle John Lennon, the New York Post reported in Sunday's editions.

The rift stemmed from comments Julian made about Yoko Ono, he told the Post. Julian's mother is John's first wife, Cynthia.

"I thought it time to make big changes in my own life," Julian, 44, told the Post in what the paper said was his first interview since 1999. "Part of that has been to get Sean back into my life, because I love him so much."

After contacting Sean's tour manager this year, Julian surprised his half brother backstage after a show in Prague. "We just hugged and held each other," Julian recalled.

Julian joined Sean, 31, on the tour bus, sleeping on the floor and traveling through Croatia and Slovenia, he said.

And together they don't have one-hundredth of their father's musical and creative genius.  But that's just my opinion.

Tags: Music

The Hold Steady

It's been a long, long time since I've come across an artist or group that blows me away.  A music group that the more I listen to it the more it makes me want to listen to it.  I guess the last group I was this intrigued about was Nirvana back in the early '90s.

It's 15-some years later and I've come across The Hold Steady.

The funny thing is how it all started.  I receive Blender magazine and a few months ago they had an article on The Hold Steady.  Colin Finn, its lead singer,

(yeah, the guy with glasses) looks an awful lot like one of my friends (but I'm not posting his photo because he likes the anonymity).  So there was a photo in Blender of Colin Finn with his guitar, playing and singing away.  Wife and I cut it out, framed it, and gave it to our friend and his wife, who had a good laugh.

I decided to sample their most recent album, Boys and Girls in America

at a record store - they don't pay me so they don't get any free advertisement.  And I was intrigued.  I sampled it at iTunes - i like Apple, so they get advertised for free - and a couple more times at the record store.  Sometimes I sample an album once and I like it and then the next time I don't like it as much, or not at all, so I sample stuff more than once on different days just to make sure I really like it.

And I did like it and I bought it.  And I liked it so much I sampled their previous album, Separation Sunday.

And I liked it too.

So, what do they sound like?  Some describe them as "garage punk."  Others as "bar-room rock."  Yet others say they are somewhat evocative of, among others, early Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Whether you call it "garage punk" or "bar-room rock" may be debatable.  I definitely notice the resemblance with some of Springsteen's stuff.  But what makes The Hold Steady stand out from your average garage-punk/bar-room-rock/Bruce-Springsteen sound-alikes is the lyrics.  The best way to describe it is by using a cooking analogy: it takes a chef to put together a memorable meal out of mundane and ordinary food.  Same with Craig Finn.  He puts together awesome songs using the most obvious and unremarkable material available: teenage - and early adulthood - wasteland.

His delivery is pretty unusual too.  He doesn't really sing.  He hits the right notes - most times - but it's more of a spoken-singing kind of stuff.  It's difficult to put into words.

The next time you're at the mall and you go to "that" record store, check out The Hold Steady.  From "Boys and Girls in America," check out Stuck Between Stations or Chips Ahoy!  From "Separation Sunday"  check out Cattle and the Creeping Things or Your Little Hoodrat Friend.

And if you sample their first album, "Almost Killed Me," check out The Swish.  I've only listened to samples of it, but it sounds pretty cool.

Tags: Music

One More Reason to Hate "American Idol"

I don't like "American Idol."  Never did.  I always thought the whole thing to be based on narrow, stereotypical ideals of what popular music should sound like and what singers should sound and look like.  And I think it's shallow and just plain lame.

Now I have even more reasons to dislike the show.  Everyone knows Simon Cowell, you know, the meanie, smart-ass foreigner in the show, right?  Well, here's what Mr. Cowell had to say about Bob Dylan:

Don't expect to see Bob Dylan joining the celebrities on "American Idol" anytime soon.
One of the show's judges, Simon Cowell, says he has never bought a Dylan record because he "bores me to tears."

The British pop impresario says in the February issue of Playboy that he would "plug my ears and run in the other direction" if he were to see a 21-year-old Dylan singing "Blowin' in the Wind.

Emphasis added.  You know, I'm not a Bob Dylan fan.  His voice is just too annoying to listen to for long periods of time.  Regardless, I have three Bob Dylan CDs: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol I, Time Out of Mind, and Modern Times.  All of them, and I do mean ALL of them, are awesome, his singing notwithstanding.

Dylan was innovative enough to realize the limits of acoustic folk music and to push its limits by adding electric guitars to the mix.  His music has endured the test of time as well.  His old stuff sounds more inspiring and fresh today than 95% of everything "new" out there.

I'm not old enough to say that Bob Dylan is the voice of my generation (for better or worse, the Bee Gees are the voice of my generation, but that's a different story).  But what he has to say and the way he says it is transcends generations.

Which brings me back to Cowell.  Any self-proclaimed music expert who does not realize how remarkable Dylan has been, and continues to be, and his contributions to pop, rock, folk, and even country music, is nothing but an idiot.  And if you want to have an idiot on the show, then get Paula Abdul and two other hot-looking women to judge the show.  At least they are easy on the eyes.

Tags: Music, Television

Islam and Freedom of Expression

A while back, when a Danish newspaper published the infamous "Mohammed cartoons" (I think it was before "Telling Stories" came into being), I commented in a few blogs that Muslims had a right to be offended and to demand an apology since there appeared to be no useful purpose to publishing the cartoons other than to prove that the newspaper could publish it.  I also said that the non-violent protests and the Danish boycott were also "free speech" that should not be criticized, but rather, embraced and discussed by the Western world.

Then came the Pope's speech and, as I noted here, the speech wasn't about Islam at all, but rather about faith and reason.  Moreover, the Catholic Church's position no longer holds the views expressed by Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus in that excerpt.  As noted in that letter,

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions.  She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.   Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ, "the way the truth, and the life" (John 14, 6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.  

The Church therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems.  They adore  the one God, living and subsisting in Himself, merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes great pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.  Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.  They also honor Mary, His virgin mother; at times they even call on her with devotion.  In addition, they await the day of judgement when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead.  Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Emphasis added.  Why the Pope didn't make reference to this document is beyond me.

But now, at the other extreme, comes news that a German Opera company canceled a production that included a depiction of Mohammed's severed head because of security concerns

Officials with the world-renowned Deutsche Oper decided late Monday that the show -- an avant-garde remake of Mozart's "Idomeneo" -- could not go on after police warned that it could result in a violent backlash from Muslim fundamentalists. Opera officials said they were worried about a repeat of the worldwide protests that erupted this year after a Danish newspaper published cartoons satirizing Muhammad.

The show premiered at the Deutsche Oper in March 2003 and drew some jeers -- but no violence -- for a scene in which Idomeneo, the king of Crete, balks at making sacrifices to the gods and instead produces the severed heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon, god of the sea. Set in ancient Greece, the opera is considered a forceful critique of theological dogma and wars conducted in the name of religion. Neuenfels's three-act, Italian-language production was last at the Deutsche Oper in 2004.

Emphasis added.  As the NY Times noted,

The severed heads of the religious figures, Mr. Raue said, was meant by Mr. Neuenfels to make a point that “all the founders of religions were figures that didn’t bring peace to the world.”

In this case, this is not criticism directed at Islam, but rather at religion.  Not at "a" religion, but at the concept or what a religion is or isn't.

It's one thing to insult a group - religious, ethnic, or other - for no reason.  It's quite another to condemn someone like the Pope who, although insensitive, was not attacking a group per se.  However, what are Westerners supposed to do?  Shut up?  Not say anything about Islam or Muslims?

Some actually believe that's the "solution:"

Non-Muslims should practise selfcensorship to avoid triggering violent reactions, a prominent Perth Muslim says.  Perth academic Samina Yasmeen said religious and community leaders should stop speaking about Islamic icons to avoid causing offence.

Emphasis added.  And why does professor Yasmeen thinks so?

Associate Professor Yasmeen, director of the University of WA’s centre for Muslim states and societies, accused the Pope of deliberately provoking the aggression by inviting criticism of Mohammed. She said the Pope and other religious leaders had the same responsibility as Islamic clerics to avoid encouraging violence by followers. Previous emotive reactions, such as the violence following the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed and Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, should have warned people not to criticise Islam. Professor Yasmeen denied that the first reaction of many Muslims to perceived insults was violence, despite calls by some clerics to kill those who insult Islam and the murder of an Italian nun in Somalia.   “I am not supportive of people killing and blowing things up, but people need to start looking at selfcensorship,” she said.

Emphasis added.  Now, citing a quote from a text to make a point that has nothing to do with Islam is "inviting criticism of Mohammed."  And "inviting criticism of Mohammed" is enough to cause an extreme backlash against the Pope. 

Anyone who has read this blog knows I'm neither conservative -yeeeeeck- nor nativist.  In fact, I've always said that I'm a believer in live and let live.  So, I look at Professor Yasmeen's comments and I can only say one thing.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE F***ING KIDDING ME!  Self-censorship?  In my own country?  THAT is not happening.  If I went to a predominantly Muslim country, I would follow local custom because it's the respectful thing to do.  You don't go to someone else's house and tell them what they can or cannot do.

We live in an open society where free speech is a vehicle to explore ideas, debate differences, and increase knowledge.  With free speech comes the responsibility to own up to the consequences of that speech.  That's the way it is here.

This reaction reminds me of all those old sodomy laws, which are still in the books in some states, barring certain sexual acts even when they occur in the intimacy of a person's home.  Those acts were forbidden because just the thought of two consenting adults engaging in those acts was deemed to be offensive.  Or the reaction of so-called family groups concerned about sex and/or violence on TV.

What Muslims who live in the Western world need to understand is that here, "Let Live" is just as important as "Live."

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Tags: Current Affairs, Free Speech, Music,  Religion, Politics