Dunsmuir

My weekly Friday writer’s block was resolved when I listened to this album, a self-titled deal by yet another side project by Clutch vocalist Neil Fallon, featuring Vinnie Appice (Black Sabbath) on drums, Dave Bone on guitar, and Brad Davis (Fu Manchu) on bass.   Bone was previously with Fallon and Davis in The Company Band.  No word if this band will tour, as Fallon seems locked solid touring and recording with Clutch – I’m surprised he had time to do this album.

I suppose after listening to rock music and going to concerts since 1984, I’m going to be a bit jaded.  I lose patience more easily with bands that regurgitate old material or copy others yet pretend to be original.  It’s egregious for PROG bands, who seem to think that if they’re slavishly copying Yes, Rush, or Pink Floyd that they should be considered PROG as well; fewer bands try to copy King Crimson or Frank Zappa.  Anyhow.

Enough already, does it suck?  Does it rock?  I’ll tell you. 

Obviously any Fallon-fronted band will sound something like Clutch, but this is heavier and nastier.  I liked it.  It has a raw groove, a thick and heavy guitar tone, overall exactly what I expect from Fallon and whoever is backing him up.  We’ll see if he actually tours this.  Since Bone & Davis were also in The Company Band, any tour could include that material as well.  I’m puzzled that Dave Bone doesn’t have a full-time job in a band. 

Format.  Here’s the weird thing.  Earlier I got two 7” vinyl singles, then the final package, which included a standard 12” vinyl record, plus a small card – oh, by the way – with a code which allowed me to download the MP3s, add them to iTunes and sync with the iPod, and make a CD-R I could play in the car.  With my stereo receiver acting up these days, I’m not listening to vinyl, but the CD-R sounds fine in the car.  Use Waze, even if you know the way, because this is the type of awesome tunage that makes your right foot slam down hard, and with 370 HP on tap from a Hemi V8, I’m in danger of receiving more invitations from the Fairfax County Police to appear at court. 

At home?  Alcohol & high volume might be a better mix.  :D 

Halls of Fame

We had occasion to meet up with an old friend of ours from high school – the American School of Paris – in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was good to see John/Jean again, and remarkably the Trumpers due to invade the RNC that Monday were mercifully absent from our adventure.  Instead, it was two Halls of Fame which provided the bulk of the entertainment for our meeting.  PLEASE:  if you have occasion to meet an old friend who lives on the other side of the planet – and will likely continue living there until all of you are dead – seize it with both hands and drive 6 hours if you have to.  Life bends us over without a condom all too often, so return the favor whenever possible.  Life, that is, not John/Jean.

Rock’n’Roll.   Cleveland, Ohio, right up on the Lake Erie waterfront, within walking distance of the Fist Energy Area where the Cleveland Browns lose 1-8 games per season.   It’s in a big pyramid shape, with the bulk of the exhibits in the basement, getting progressively smaller as you go up.  The top two floors are a mishmash of tributes to rockers who thought they could tell us what to do (i.e. politics), though I didn’t mind the shots of Peter Frampton with Gerald Ford or Gregg Allman and “Ask President Carter”.  Hell, they even showed Bono with GWB. 

            Anyhow. The main exhibits feature lots of this “vinyl in the window”, Angus’ outfit, ticket stubs, some guitars, and the multitude of “exhibits” you might expect from a museum about rock stars.   A few major issues:

            A.   Deep Purple is finally getting in, long after they were eligible.  Black Sabbath got in back in 2006, and Led Zeppelin much earlier (1995).  This is glacial. 

            B.   Prince, Madonna, etc.  The majority of bands could qualify as “rock’n’roll” by some generous definition.  But when it comes to very popular musicians, the RNRHOF can’t seem to resist. The clear bias is in favor of popular musicians and less so for heavier bands.  This turns it into the Popular Music Hall of Fame. 

            C.   Beatles & Rolling Stones.  Each got its own section of equal size facing each other.  I don’t dispute the Stones’ legacy as belonging here – they are clearly rock’n’roll and are one of the best rock bands around.  What I dispute is ANYONE claiming they are as good as – much less better – than the Beatles.  That’s like the NFL HOF giving equal credit to the Vikings as the Steelers.  Try the Bills instead.  Actually, given their talent and stature, the Beatles deserve a museum of their own, but I suspect if one were to be established, it would be in Liverpool, far away from anywhere I’m likely to go in a 6 hour drive.  Then again, I suppose any true Beatles fan has a duty to make a Mecca-like pilgrimage to Liverpool.  “Strawberry Fields” on the west side of Central Park, across Central Park West from the Dakota, doesn’t cut it. 

            D.   The gift shop.  We’d have preferred artist-specific merchandise aside from vinyl and CDs, though I was pleasantly surprised to see a good selection of vinyl.  Moreover, they carried music by non-HOF members, e.g. King Crimson. 

            Notwithstanding these faults, if you consider yourself a “rock fan”, by all means check it out if you are in Cleveland.  Then go to Liverpool.

National Football League (NFL).  In Canton, Ohio, about an hour south of Cleveland on I77.  This is somewhat shaped like a football and has an extremely confusing interior pattern.  PEOPLE!   The Marine museum near Quantico has it right:  a linear progression from start to finish.  You start at the beginning, and when you get to the end….STOP.  

            It has some great exhibits, and what I really like is older stuff from 1892-1922 and much about the era before 1958, when TV made the NFL competitive with college football, which is NFL Jr.  I also appreciated seeing Adrian Peterson featured – if only in passing – despite the Vikings’ 0-4 record in Super Bowls.  Moreover, OJ’s bust is still in the gallery despite his later mistakes.  Excellent and very worthwhile for anyone who considers themselves to be a fan of American football. 

            And because I know you’re all wondering:  yes, the gift shop rocks.  What I like is that it’s 25% “NFL Hall of Fame” stuff and 75% team-specific merchandise – including, but not limited to, jerseys.  Very well stocked and deserving of our money.  Again, If you like the NFL you will love this place.        

Even if your team sucks.

Odyssey Three (2061) and Final Odyssey (3001)

Winding up the tetralogy (?) which began with 2001 and followed up with 2010.   All were written by Arthur C. Clarke.  The first is obviously the most famous, due to the Stanley Kubrick film which came out at roughly the same time (“Summer ‘68”).  The second is less well known but also has a movie, fortunately NOT done by Stanley Kubrick, which actually makes sense.

 

2061.  Obviously takes place 50 years after 2010.  Two separate plotlines converge: a celebrity mission onboard the spaceship Universe lands on Halley’s Comet – with Heywood Floyd aboard – and a spaceship Galaxy crashlands on Europa, a former moon of Jupiter, now a planet of Lucifer, the Jupiter-turned-into-a-star.   There’s a spectacular theory about a diamond-shaped object on Europa.  Dave Bowman returns – in spirit.  Lots of fun stuff going on and very much worthwhile reading, especially if you enjoyed the prior two stories.  It was NOT made into a movie.

3001. Finishing up.   Recall on the Discovery, the original spaceship in 2001, two astronauts were awake when HAL went apes**t and killed the sleeping ones.  Poole was lost into space, while Bowman ventured to the monolith and said “It’s full of stars”.  As noted earlier, Bowman has some pretty weird experiences in the subsequent books and is indeed back again here.  But remarkably, Poole did NOT die.  In fact, he was recovered and revived, although in 3001 – and brought back to Earth.   Everyone he knew is dead, and he has to adjust to a life which is much different.  Due to his intimate familiarity not only with the Discovery mission but also life in the twentieth century, he’s actually sought out as a celebrity and valuable source of knowledge.  Even so, he’s not really happy on future Earth.  

Finally – out of frustration and boredom – he goes to Ganymede and decides to disobey the aliens and land on Europa.  He has a hunch – correct, as it is – that “Dave Bowman” will protect him.   Unfortunately, there’s some big bad news about the aliens who made those monoliths and turned Jupiter (gas giant planet) into Lucifer (mini-sun).   How do they resolve it?  Stay tuned.

I’m going to speculate that while the general population is generally aware of 2001, very few people actually read that book itself - probably put off by Kubrick’s inane treatment thereof, which is a shame, because the book itself MAKES SENSE.  Moreover, 2010 is also excellent – and its movie MAKES SENSE (Kubrick did not handle it) – as are these two novels.  Naturally 2001 is the starting point.  If you can bring yourself to read and enjoy that one, chances are you’ll enjoy the following three.  Do yourself a favor and use your brain. 

President Obama

President #44 is on his way out – and will be on January 20, 2017.   As it is, the most likely replacement will be either Hillary Clinton – who millions hate – or Donald Trump – who millions hate – and not Gary Johnson, whose libertarian supporters are split between “going to vote for him” (me), going to write in Austin Peterson, or going to write in Rand Paul…or maybe someone random for all I know.  I’d like to believe that for every so-called Libertarian who votes for Peterson or write-in – effectively wasting his/her vote far more than voting for Johnson himself would be – there’s a disgruntled Sanders, Republican or Democratic voter who knows that Johnson is much better than Hillary or Trump, and will vote for Gary Johnson.  We’ll see.   

I did NOT vote for Obama in 2008 (I voted Libertarian) or 2012 (I voted for Romney at my mom’s request).  But his Presidency has really brought out the crazy in America.   As idiocy offends and annoys me, here are a few items I’d like to address.  The majority of this will be de facto defense of him, though I’m by no means his biggest fan.

US Citizen.  He was born in Hawaii in 1961.   Since Hawaii became a state in 1959, that means he was born in the US.  His mother was a US citizen at the time of his birth.  The silly thing is, even if he was born in Kenya – which he wasn’t – he would STILL be a US citizen and eligible to be President.   Same deal with Ted Cruz, born in Canada to US citizen parents.  These are non-starter issues that only clueless people dwell upon.   By contrast, Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria to Austrian parents and became a naturalized US citizen by living here.  Notice how no one, including Arnold himself, ever talks about him running for President.  No one would have given Ted Cruz OR Barack Obama a dime had either been ineligible to be President.

He's Black!  Actually, half-black.  His mother was white, his father was black.  Despite this, no one calls him our first half-black president.  Physically he looks 100% black.  And it seems both his supporters and opponents treat him as such.   Strange as it may seem, not everyone is happy having a black president.  If there’s a really a problem it’s because he’s a liberal democrat, not a black.  Thomas Sowell is black, but I don’t hear many people complain about him.  Or Walter Williams.  In terms of politics, he is hardly any more liberal than Bill Clinton, yet he really brings out the crazy in a way Bill Clinton never did. 

Muslim?  This seems to come from his middle name, Hussein.   We may as well accuse him of being Saddam Hussein’s brother.  He also caught flak for being associated with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago – and he disavowed that.  Wright was a controversial, highly liberal black pastor and Obama was in his church.  How can he be Muslim AND be associated with a left-wing Christian pastor?  Points off for inconsistency, it seems.

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King.  I will not blame Obama for everything that happened in the US between January 20, 2009 and January 20, 2017.  We do not have a totalitarian dictatorship with an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent ruler.  S**t happens every day, everywhere, and the majority it is outside the man’s ability or inclination to control.  That also applies to giving him credit for all the fantastic, wonderful stuff that may have happened on his watch. 

Legacy.  Military.  He drew down forces in Iraq, increased forces in Afghanistan, sent in the team that killed Osama Bin Laden, “managed” US involvement in Libya.  I’d say it’s about even in this area. I have seen no evidence that he sympathizes with Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or any other radical Islamic organization.

ObamaCare.   This looks like it will be the #1 thing he’s left us with.  So far our experiment with socialized medicine has not been a success, and it remains to be seen if it can be salvaged or reformed into something that actually works and does what it claims to do. 

            Objectively I don’t consider him either a success OR a failure.  We’ve now had 44 Presidents, but very few really stand out as spectacular, either good or bad.  In fact, while we have had some superlative Presidents, like Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, the “bad” presidents – James Buchanan comes to mind as the generally accepted “worst” – really were no worse than simply mediocre placeholders who prevented the country from being invaded by Mexico or Canada or being nuked.  Could Buchanan have prevented the Civil War?  Can we blame Hoover for the Great Depression?  Discuss.

"Let me be clear...."  As my buddy Dave put it, when the dust clears and the “It’s the WHITE HOUSE, N*GGA” cracker crowd is excluded as outliers, Obama will rank somewhere around President Rutherford B. Hayes and Millard Fillmore, two Presidents who came and left without amazing success or catastrophic failure, his primary distinction being his race.  

America's Guerilla Army

July 4^th is coming up soon, and remarkably I have a revolutionary topic to discuss.  How convenient…

This is yet another salvo of mine in the gun control war, currently being waged on Facebook as well as in the country at large, and those sitting down in Congress types who know what’s best for everyone else.  Regrettably, the “hand control” advocates on the Interweb or Book of Faces can’t resist starting off with benign patronizing, followed by outright insults when you don’t agree with their wisdom (?) and logic, such as it is.  So much of this will be preaching to the choir.  So be it.  If any of my readers are actually undecided on this issue, by all means listen up. 

AR15.  The sad joke about this is that as military weapons go, the AR15 would be almost at the bottom – just above bolt-action rifles and muzzle loaders.  It can’t even fire full auto, or even 3 round bursts.  The Army uses the select-fire M16A2 (semi-auto/3 round burst) which replaced the M16 and M16A1, which could fire full auto.  It has full auto .308 machine guns and the beloved M2 .50 caliber machine gun.  Add to this: grenades, grenade launchers, mortars, light artillery, heavy artillery, APVs, tanks, and also ground attack by helicopters and the US Air Force, both F16s and the big B52s.  Plus strategic nuclear weapons – so far only employed against Japanese civilians.

Oh, by the way:  this business of “The Founding Fathers never imagined the AR15.”  Are you assuming that the Founding Fathers believed that military technology in the late 1700s would NEVER progress?  That black powder, muzzle-loading muskets were as far as any army could ever go?  Highly presumptuous.  Of course, there is no evidence for that position.  I’d say the Founding Fathers could better imagine better versions of firearms – which they had then – than they could the Internet, but you don’t hear liberals admitting that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to the Internet. 

“We, the Militia”.  Thank God the First Amendment protects the right of free speech, religion, and assembly – of the militia.  That the Fourth Amendment protects…the militia…from unreasonable searches and seizures.  That the Fifth Amendment prevents the Militia from testifying against itself.  Thanks to the Sixth Amendment, the Militia has a right to a speedy and fair trial.  The Militia merits a jury trial – by a peer of militias (Seventh) – and no excessive bail will keep the militia locked up or subject to cruel or unusual punishments (Eighth).  The Founding Fathers – including NRA Founder James Madison – didn’t really mean “people” when they said “people” could bear arms.  They meant that the armed forces had the right to bear arms.  What a radical idea!  That’s why it’s sandwiched between the first and third amendments (no militia quartered among the militia, without the consent of the militia).  In the Militia’s Bill of Rights.  If it comes to a toss between Chief Justice Warren Burger and James Madison as to what the Founding Fathers intended, I’ll pick Madison.  Not only was he there, he was one of them.

Anyhow.  SO then the liberals sneer that civilians armed with AR15s would be no match for SEAL Team Six.   “Black Hawk Down”, people.  Mobs of angry, well-armed Somalis made life very difficult for us in Mogadishu.   Mobs of angry, well-armed Americans can make life very difficult for regular US soldiers, just like the Viet Cong made life difficult for US soldiers in Vietnam, the Taliban did so – and continues to do so – in Afghanistan, and Iraqi rebels did in Iraq.  This despite all the horrendous damage that our advanced military technology could inflict on our opponents.  Funny how the liberals who laugh about the VC or Taliban giving our much-vaunted high tech military a hard time conveniently change their tune when the roles are reversed.

And that’s US soldiers fighting against foreign guerillas.   You really cannot assume the reliability of ordinary soldiers sent to fight against their own people.  All bets are off.  Sure, there will be some hardcore nuts who “love the smell of napalm in the morning” – and who are as likely to be shot from behind as from the front. 

During our own War of Independence, we did raise conventional forces, trained by Baron von Steuben, but we never had enough to avoid relying upon irregulars.  Von Lettow-Vorbeck, arguably the best guerilla warfare leader Germany ever produced (yes, I know that’s a very small group), knew that guerillas do not necessarily have to overcome conventional forces on the battlefield to be strategically effective: they can tie down such forces and spread them out.  Every Commonwealth unit wasting its time chasing VLV and his Askaris around Tanzania and Mozambique was a unit that wasn’t fighting at the Somme.  And every now and then – early 1800s Haiti, Dien Bien Phu in 1954 – a guerilla army will defeat a conventional army.  In our case it would simply be enough to make a constant nuisance to the conventional forces.  If we ran out of patience in Vietnam and Iraq, we’ll certainly run out of patience fighting ourselves. 

Che Guevara.  Here’s another funny thing.  Liberals love Che Guevara.  Wasn’t he brave?  He fought against Batista (who ran away quickly); he fought in the Congo; and then he fought in Bolivia, until taken down by the Bolivian Army assisted by Felix Rodriguez and the CIA.  You would think that liberals would be cradling their semi-auto AK47s and training in the backwoods like Che and the VC: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!”  But they didn’t do that when Reagan was president.  They didn’t even do that when George W. Bush was President AND we had the Patriot Act, which might have inspired some to prepare against a right-wing dictatorship.  Should we be surprised?  If liberals think the AR15 – a civilian, semi-auto version of a full-auto military rifle - is the pinnacle of military technology and get PTSD simply firing one, no wonder they lack the courage to emulate their hero.