Make America Great Again?

Yet another salvo on the Trump issue.  That's because I have some more thoughts on this issue.

Putin’s Support For Trump.   Perhaps we’re a bit too caught up on the premise that Putin supports Trump because he believes Trump, having been helped into office by his comrade Vladimir, will reciprocate in some way.  While I wouldn’t entirely put it past Trump to honor some under-the-table agreement hatched at some meeting in Moscow before the election, a much more mundane idea is this.

Putin’s Russia is angling for more power and influence in the world.  It wants to replace the US as the #1 big shot on the world stage.  Its obvious rival therein is none other than the US of A.   He doesn’t need an American run by a Manchurian candidate either brainwashed, corrupt, or blackmailed (though two of these are sadly plausible).  All he needs is a US president who can’t even talk to Fox News people ostensibly favorable to him without compromising half his policy positions.   A weak and incompetent US president is perfect for Putin’s ambitions. 

[Having said that, given the circumstances we certainly should investigate whether Trump is, in fact, a Russian agent.  We’ll see where all this leads…]

Make America Great Again.  This is rather silly.  Aside from Russian spies or Islamic terrorists, is there anyone in the US who doesn’t want America to be great again?  Did all those people vote for Hillary because they thought she would ruin the country?   Even if Bernie Sanders’ idea of a “great” America resembles Denmark or Sweden, at least he and his supporters are sincere in their ideals – if somewhat misguided (!). 

By the way, speaking of Hillary Clinton.  It’s clear to me that she represents everything that non-Democrats hate about Democrats.  Arrogant, full of herself, confident she knows better than anyone else and that anyone who disagrees with her is an idiot.  She had no charisma, no charm, and no redeeming values.  Hillary weaseled her way to the nomination, pure and simple.  [FYI I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and have NEVER voted Democrat in any election, going back to my first in 1988].  The parties were supposed to put forward their best candidates, instead we got their worst.  This 2016 election was as if the last Super Bowl had been between the New York Giants (3-13) (even the hapless Lions hit 9-7) and the Cleveland Browns (0-16).  That would have been a game, huh?

Anyhow.

We have no issue rejecting ads promising to increase our penis size by 3” (probably a plastic extension measuring exactly 3”) or Viagra/Cialis pills at a mere fraction of what the pharmacist charges (probably placebos).  An offer to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge should be just as easily dismissed.  “Make America Great Again” is just as empty. 

The question is not whether we want America to be great again.  The question is why on GOD’S GREEN EARTH anyone believes that Donald Trump, of all people, could possibly make this happen.

Let’s examine who is making this promise.  While Trump himself has never filed personal bankruptcy, plenty of his companies have.  He no longer owns the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.  His airline, college, and meat business all went under – under strong charges of fraud.  Although Trump claims he never settles cases, he does so all the time.  He’s screwed up lots of real estate deals, including one for the upper west side of Manhattan.  He inherited his money from his father, and has less money today than if he simply invested his inheritance in a mutual fund.  Trump’s wealth came from his father and his own dumb luck at not losing it all, not from any brilliance or business savvy.  If it were Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, or other far more capable business magnates, I’d be more inclined to believe “Make America Great Again” to be a plausible promise.  From Trump it’s nothing more than cow manure.   Though at least cow manure is actually good for something.

I’ll repeat my earlier point about Trump’s golfing.   If what he accomplishes in the Oval Office is as likely to make Russia great as the US, I’m all for him spending more time on the golf course than in the White House. 

The sad irony of impeachment is that even if, somehow, that happens, we still wind up with Mike Pence as President.  Would anyone have voted for him as a Presidential candidate?  Who knows – and we may well find out in 2024.  In the meantime we have to simply hang on for the ride.  “May you live in interesting times…”

Happy 420

Yeah, more weed jokes.  But not from me.   I’ll just offer up more observations on the topic.

4:20 & 4/20.   It’s not just Hitler’s birthday, it’s the alleged time and/or date to toke up.  Really, you can toke up at 4:19, 4:21, or any other time of day, and any other day of the year.  By now it’s so well known it’s not even special or unique. 

Stoners have a bad habit of assuming because they’re stoned and find literally everything funny, that everyone else will too – and find their nonstop laughter and amusement endearing.  Nope.  Please, laugh at everything responsibly.

New Jersey.   Despite the promises now-Governor Phil Murphy made during his election campaign last fall, weed is still not legal in the Magic Garden State.  Remember, he’s the governor, not the NJ state legislature, so he doesn’t pass laws, he simply refrains from vetoing laws which Governor Fatso would have nixed.   As for when the legislature will pass anything, we’ll have to wait and see.

Decriminalization vs. Legalization.   Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has indicated he’ll try decriminalizing MJ at the Federal level.  In Virginia, decriminalization is what Ralph Northam promised.  A step short of legalizing, it means possession of modest amounts, typically under a half ounce, becomes merely a civil offense.  In Virginia, possession of a half ounce – a large amount for personal use but too small to be Costco quantity (try more like a pound) – is still a Class 1 misdemeanor, i.e. the worst misdemeanor short of a felony.   Doing so at a Federal level would get the FBI and DEA off everyone’s ass, nationwide. 

The following states have decriminalized marijuana: Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island

By the way, we associate Federal drug enforcement with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), but the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also actively investigating and prosecuting drug offenses.  It seems the two agencies had a brief turf war but eventually reached an agreement: the FBI hassles us at home, and the DEA goes outside the US. 

Anyhow.  Decriminalization is NOT legalization.  The latter exists in several states right now, the pioneer being Colorado.  In that state, officially sanctioned dispensaries sell recreational marijuana.  An adult – and you don’t even have to be a Colorado resident – can go in and purchase modest amounts of high quality, THC-laden marijuana with colorful names like Ghost Trainwreck, Green Crack, Soul Diesel, OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookies, AK-47, and so on.  [Maybe the Trump crowd would be more tolerant if someone named a strain AR15.]

The following states have LEGALIZED recreational marijuana:  Alaska, California, Colorado (the first), Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Washington State.   Leave it to the District of Columbia (Washington, DC) to screw things up:  possession and growing is legal, but buying and selling is not.  Either you live there and figure out how to grow it yourself, or you play games bartering with people.  The MA law is in effect but their dispensary system is not yet operational – they hope to have it going by fall 2018.  They will sell to non-residents but all weed has to be smoked in MA.   How about a reboot of Cheers?  Woody would be the perfect budtender. 

Outside the US, Uruguay was the first country to legalize recreational MJ.   Canada did so recently, but their system isn’t online yet.  FYI, weed is NOT legal in North Korea.  What is are some hemp cigarettes with no THC, and which the locals will not sell you.   

Medical vs. Recreational.  Marijuana has two major ingredients:  THC and CBD.  THC is the active ingredient which gives it psychoactive effect and makes Pink Floyd albums so awesome.  CBD is what cures cancer.  Recreational strains emphasize THC and ignore CBD, whereas medical strains have almost no THC and instead maximize CBD. 

The medical laws vary.   The more liberal laws simply allow a doctor to issue a prescription for MJ if he/she believes you have some condition for which it would help.   California’s law, passed back in 1996, was this type, which acted in some ways as de facto legalization.   Other states were stricter, specifically narrowing this to certain unpleasant conditions like cancer, epilepsy, and other nasty diseases which most people don’t have.  Moreover, they often limited the patient to CBD oil which has no THC – i.e. you can’t get high off it.

Flower vs. Edibles vs. Hash.  Generally we think of MJ as the leafy herb people smoke in joints (horrendously inefficient), pipes, bongs, or more recently, vaporizers. 

Edibles are weed-infused cookies, brownies, gummies, etc.  The MJ has to be specially treated into butter or oil and then cooked normally into food you can eat.  The effects come on in two hours – instead of relatively instantaneously for smoked herb – but are 4 times what you could expect for the smoked version.  This has screwed up people who had never smoked and suddenly munched down on cookies and wondered what happened.  Even experienced smokers are warned to start slowly and take into account the two hour delay.  A major benefit of edibles, however, is not having smoke and smell everywhere.   With more places banning indoor smoking these days – e.g. literally everywhere in DC – that makes edibles more convenient.

At the top end is hash, wax, shatter, etc., essentially highly concentrated marijuana.  This can be consumed in a bong or special pipe.   See The Hasheesh Eater, by Fitzhugh Ludlow (1850s account by a verbose New Yorker).  It’s available wherever legal marijuana is available and probably best for those who have “been there, done that” and ready to maximize their MJ experience. 

Vape Shops.  These have sprung up like wildfire.  It seems every time I drive down the street I notice a new vape shop open.  Ostensibly these are for tobacco smokers who use vape pens and vaporizers to smoke their traditional herb, but they sell bongs and other items which are almost exclusively associated with marijuana.  Do NOT refer to marijuana, even if you’re buying a bong. 

Other drugs.  California is now debating legalizing – or at least decriminalizing – psychedelic mushrooms.  These are usually psilocybe cubensis – though there are lots of different psychoactive varieties – and considerably stronger than marijuana.  Mushrooms are a good approximation of LSD, though not exactly the same;  mushrooms sometimes induce nausea and other unpleasant physical effects which are absent with LSD.  Both cause intense hallucinations when consumed in sufficient quantity.   Even if these were fully legalized for recreational use – an outcome I’d consider optimistic even for California – the sheer intensity of these drugs makes them much less appealing and desirable relative to marijuana.

Heroin.   Rather than go on about meth, ecstasy (MDMA), cocaine, etc. I’ll simply head to the top.  Heroin is by its nature physically addictive.  Bayer invented it in 1895 as a safe, non-addictive alternative to morphine, only to find it was neither.  It was criminalized in the US in 1924.   As too many people have found out the hard way, you can die of a heroin overdose – which is not true of marijuana.

Despite that, I would argue that heroin should be legal.  While legalizing it would not make it non-addictive, it would be safer, though not completely safe.  The #1 thing making heroin dangerous, though, is its illegality.  Available cheap, in known doses and quality, the risk would be brought down to manageable levels.  As a practical matter, I would argue that demand for cheap, legal, top quality heroin would still be a fraction of demand for any other drug, especially marijuana. 

Moreover, if heroin can be legalized, all those drugs between marijuana and heroin could also be legalized.  The biggest concern for doing so is the consensus – an unproven assumption but taken as irrebuttable fact – that if you legalize something, literally EVERYONE will do it.  Legalize gay marriage, and overnight all these happily married heterosexual couples will abandon their opposite-sex spouses and hook up with same-sex partners.  Legalize cocaine and everyone will snort it.  Legalize heroin and we’re all stabbing our arms with needles.  Legalize LSD and we’re all flying jumbo jets into rainbows.  You get the idea. 

I know several people who live in Colorado.  How many of them smoke marijuana? NONE.   I don’t know anyone who left their opposite sex spouse to go get married to a same-sex partner simply because their state suddenly legalized gay marriage.  I know nobody – myself included – who would even try heroin if it were legalized tomorrow.  And if you really think about it, very few people actually would.  

   

For those of you who do toke, enjoy today while it lasts.  And tomorrow, and the next day….

Uber

By now most of us know what this is, even if we’ve rarely used it as a passenger and never as a driver.  So my point here is not so much to de-clueless everyone, rather simply to offer my own opinion and thoughts on this issue.

For those of you living in caves without Internet access and thus unable to read my Facebook blogs, Uber is a ridesharing app that lets ordinary people arrange transportation from other relatively ordinary people (non-cab drivers) using their own private vehicles.  No direct payment occurs as the rider pays through online banking to Uber, and the driver gets paid the same way through Uber.  It relies on GPS and smartphones, so if you have neither, you might have a problem.  However, you can call and arrange Uber for someone else, e.g. an older parent without a cell phone.

Passenger.   I’ve used it a few times, more often lately to get to concerts in DC in neighborhoods where parking is nonexistent.  It also allows you to drink or consume mind-altering substances which would normally preclude driving.  (No comment).  It also helps people from out of town, they simply punch in their origin and destination and let the Uber driver worry about how to get from one to the other.  In between the issues of parking, driving, navigation, etc. I’d say that Uber is quite practical for many people – myself included. 

It’s available overseas:  my brother used it in Paris, while we simply took the Metro and RER. 

Driver.   Lately I’ve been driving more often.   I never considered myself a cab driver and don’t watch much “Taxi”.  As a practical matter, being an Uber driver makes you a de facto cab driver, albeit driving your own car. 

Uber tells you how to get to where you’re picking up your passenger, and once picked up, how to get to where they’re going.  It’s not perfect:  it’s told me to go through construction barriers and chain link fences.  Not to worry, though: if you have to detour, Uber will readjust and send you where you’re going by an alternate route.  Sometimes there’s a lag, though.

You accumulate a balance and can cash out fairly efficiently.  I’ve yet to ascertain whether I’m earning more in fares than spending for gas (89 octane for a 370 HP 5.7L V8 which gets 15 mpg in city driving) but my subjective impression is that yes, I am – though (Judas) Prius drivers undoubtedly have a better margin than me. 

Meeting new people is really not the thing for me.  Half my rides keep quiet and focus on their cell phones, others actually engage me in conversation.  I’m driving a 2009 Dodge Charger R/T with Flowmaster mufflers, which sometimes elicits comments from male passengers.   It’s unlikely any female passenger would notice if I was driving a Hellcat (700 HP).    Incidentally, your car has to be a sedan or an SUV, so Corvette, Camaro, Mustang and Challenger drivers need not apply.

For me the most fun part is finding new parts of town I might otherwise never visit.   Southeast DC in particular has been dramatically built up and is much more upscale.   That’s an adventure in itself.  But it’s also fun when the trip returns to familiar neighborhoods like the 14 Street corridor, Adams Morgan, and my own part of Northern Virginia. 

Most often I wind up picking up someone in Northern Virginia, taking them into DC, and getting a new trip set up before I’ve even dropped off the first passenger.  Eventually a DC passenger asks to be taken to suburban Maryland or Virginia and my shift ends – until I get ANOTHER fare just blocks from home.  Very often DC winds up being back-to-back fares, but the stop-go nonsense means the return on investment is less than you’d hope for.  The ideal fare is from DC out to somewhere in the suburbs.  But I can’t always count on that. 

Uber passengers can POOL, which means I’m picking up a series of passengers and dropping them off.  Pooling is cheaper for them, but unfortunately likewise less lucrative for me.  An ideal arrangement is a series of passengers, not a pool.  Shrug.

PEEVE.  Sometimes I arrive at the location and my passenger is nowhere to be found.  No-shows are fairly common, though thankfully not the majority of instances.  The other issue is when my passenger is a block away OR on the other side of the street.  Hint: it’s easier for a passenger to cross the street and get into the car, than it is for me to drive around the block, especially somewhere like DC.

PEEVE 2.  Some of DC’s streets are still not in good shape.  The city streets are nominally well set-up – numbered streets run north-south, lettered streets run east-west, state streets are diagonal, with the city bifurcated into NE/NW/SE/SW by Independence & Constitution Ave. & the Mall (north-south) and North and South Capitol Streets (east-west).  Much of what we’d think of as “SW” is actually Arlington County, Virginia, so SW DC is fairly small. 

Despite that, there are way too many dead ends, one-way streets, circles, confusing intersections, and so forth, which seriously compromise the city’s otherwise sensible format.   When it comes to planning the exceptions, I suspect DC paid the least expensive and least qualified person, e.g. Mayor Barry in a highly compromised state, to handle this. 

Long term, I’d wonder if less people wind up buying vehicles altogether and begin relying upon Uber. I don’t see it as practical to commute every day, but we’ll see.  I tried signing up for NYC as well, but Uber won’t let you be registered in multiple metropolitan areas simultaneously.  For that matter, I don’t know if DC includes Baltimore.  I dare say I’ll find out.  I’m also curious about the maximum range:  “take me to Hawaii”. 

one way to find out….

Three Mile China Chernobyl F-U-Shima Syndrome

Growing up in the US in the 70s, we accepted the commonly held – but false – belief that if you dug straight down from America, through the planet, through the core, to the other side, you’d wind up in China.

Recently I screwed around with an app that tells you exactly where you would wind up if you did exactly that.  And from most places in the US, that would be somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific ocean, literally in the middle of the ocean.  To come up in China, you’d have to start digging somewhere in Brazil, Paraguay or Argentina.   But d’uh!  Both the US and China are well north of the Equator.  Shouldn’t this be obvious?

Which made “The China Syndrome” even more puzzling.  We have smart people designing nuclear power plants, and presumably equally smart (?) people concerned about what might go wrong.  Assuming they’re not planning on building these plants in Paraguay, why would they assume a meltdown would go all the way to China?  Especially a plant in Japan…

Anyhow.  I also had occasion, when driving back from New Jersey, to drive down past Three Mile Island.  My toll-free route takes me past Harrisburg, either north of TMI across the Susquehanna River on 83/581, at Harrisburg, or well south of it on Route 30 from Lancaster to York.  My cousin Jimmy, upon learning of my travels, informed me of the location of TMI, which I had NO CLUE was near Harrisburg.  On an occasion of leaving NJ in the middle of the day and not close to midnight, I had extra time and decided to drive past it.
     

It’s a small island off the east bank of the river, which is pretty wide, though not nearly as wide as it is down in Maryland where 95 crosses over it on the Tydings Bridge.  There are four cooling towers.  The southern two are inactive and that reactor has remained shut down since the incident in 1979.  The northern two still belch steam, as the northern reactor is still in operation.  Presumably the issues of 1979 have been resolved.  But if there is a problem, it will melt down to the South Pacific, not China.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a recent MCU film.  We see Logan (Hugh Jackman) aka Wolverine, and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) aka Sabretooth grow up, serve in the Union Army, the AEF, and at D-Day taking out German bunkers on Omaha Beach.  Then they wind up in Vietnam, and Logan gets fed up and quits, eventually hooking up with the babacious Lynn Collins.   Eventually his exploits land him at Three Mile Island, where he and Sabretooth take on Deadpool 1.0.   Earlier in the film Ryan Reynolds treats us to a smart-ass version of his later self, so the film is worth watching for that alone, but I find Lynn Collins another good reason.  Note:  Taylor Kitsch is here as Gambit, a New Orleans-based superhero who throws playing cards at people and makes stuff happen that way.  He joined Lynn Collins in “John Carter”, with him as the title character and her as Deja Thoris, the heroine of that story.  ANYHOW.

“The China Syndrome” came out before the TMI incident, and takes place at a reactor in L.A.   Jack Lemmon plays the stressed out plant boss, Jane Fonda is a hot reporter trying to break out of soft news about tiger birthdays at the zoo and do serious s**t about reactors melting down.  Michael Douglas is a renegade cameraman who wants to blow this whole thing wide open.  Part of me wonders why they build reactors where earthquakes happen most often (yeah, how about that, Japan?) but the general idea was that the greedy bastards who built the thing falsified the records and left the plant built unsafely.   This begs the question, however:  are reactors safe IF properly built?  Are they safe if built in an earthquake-prone area?  Is nuclear power only unsafe if you cut corners and cheap it out, or can it be made safe?  The movie really doesn’t answer these questions.  But Jane Fonda is undoubtedly hot, especially as a redhead.

Which leads me to my next topic: brief discussions of the three most infamous reactor failures, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and F-U-Shima.

Three Mile Island (March 28, 1979).  What’s remarkable is that the failure at TMI was almost exactly the problem depicted in “The China Syndrome” released EARLIER (March 16, 1979).  A valve stuck open, but another sensor gave false readings of high coolant levels, resulting in a situation where the readings were mutually inconsistent and prevented the crew from correctly ascertaining the problem and fixing it quickly.  Some radiation was released, but no meltdown occurred.  Today, the unit which failed (TM2) is closed, and has been since the accident.  The northern unit, TM1, remains in operation but will close in 2019.

The shock of having Three Mile Island fail in exactly the same way predicted by the movie gave serious impetus to the movement against nuclear energy, and Fonda herself became a vocal opponent to nuclear energy and an advocate of using NVA anti-aircraft to shoot down US nuclear power plants.

Chernobyl (April 1986).  Next to this one, TMI was much less (level 5 on a scale of 7) – moreover, no one died as a result of TMI and as of today the area is non-contaminated.  We were in Paris by the time TMI occurred, but were still living there when the Ukrainian reactor blew up.   There was an explosion and a leak, resulting in enormous amounts of radiation being released – the equivalent of a nuclear attack.   28 rescue workers died soon after, 14 later died of cancer, and 15 cancer deaths from the surrounding population have been noted. 

F-U-Shima (2011).  Here an earthquake AND a tsunami screwed everything up, but experts concluded that the plant should have been able to prepare for these events (which Japan is well acquainted with) and even allowing for the natural disasters, the engineers still did not do enough to prevent problems, including a partial meltdown and release of radioactive material.  Unlike Chernobyl, there were no immediate deaths, but they estimate that 130-640 will eventually die from cancer caused by the radiation leaked out.  There’s also talk that the Pacific Ocean, as far east as the west coast of the US, is still contaminated by radiation.  Mind you, the plant is currently operating today.

Nuclear energy.  Think of this: until the early 1900s, most of the world had NO electricity.  Now we take it for granted and freak out if the power goes out.  Notwithstanding mankind’s ability to live and enjoy life for centuries before Edison and Tesla gave us 110/220 volts, abandoning it now would be unthinkable.  So how to reliably, consistently, and sustainably provide this to as many of us as possible remains an issue.

            In “The China Syndrome”, plant supervisor Godell (Jack Lemmon) claimed that his power plant provided 10% of the local energy needs of L.A.   Today, nuclear power provides 11% of worldwide needs, as much as 21% for OECD countries, whichever those are.  Ironically, aside from those pesky and inconvenient meltdowns and leaks, nuclear power is actually very clean relative to other forms of generation (e.g. oil, coal, and natural gas).  From what I understand, nuclear reactors are specifically designed not to accumulate critical mass and allow an actual nuclear explosion to take place.  And even the worst incidents, both rated 7 out of 7 on the scale of “nuclear s**t hits the fan”, Chernobyl and F-U-Shima, did not result in a meltdown to the opposite side of the globe. 

            Fossil fuel – coal, oil, and natural gas – remains the primary source, though it’s the dirtiest and not renewable, though I suppose biodiesel could be considered somewhat renewable.  The problem is that crops grown for biodiesel take up cropland and cannot be eaten.  Also consider, with regard to electric cars, that the electricity they run on is mostly generated by fossil fuels which are just as environmentally detrimental as the gasoline or diesel we might otherwise use in regular cars or trucks. In fact, these days even vehicles running on gasoline or diesel are close to zero emissions.  Driving an electric car is really not any better for the environment or for natural resources than driving a regular gas or diesel vehicle.  However, they are ALL vegan AND gluten-free - and electric cars have NO GMOs.  Anyhow. 

            That leaves two more:  wind power is nice, but too weak to provide much help.  It’s dependent upon the wind and you need lots of windmills to make a fairly small amount of electricity, making it sadly inefficient.  Hydro-electric (water) power is the best, providing 20% of the world’s energy, though dams are big, difficult to build, and eventually wear out, plus they’re very disruptive of the local ecosystem and entire areas have to relocated.  This means that nuclear power is really no worse than any other form of energy production.  So we’ll stick with it for the near future.  

Bruce Dickinson

By now most of us are familiar with a popular heavy metal band, Iron Maiden.  They began in London in the late 70’s with original singer, Paul D’ianno, replaced him with Bruce Dickinson in 1982, briefly replaced Dickinson with Blaze Bayley from 1993 to 2000, and have continued with Bruce back on vocals from 2000 to the present.

Samson.  This was another New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, led by guitarist Paul Samson.  Their first album was as a three-piece, Samson singing as well as playing lead guitar.  Dickinson joined, then known by his stage name Bruce Bruce, and having a mustache.  He’s on Head On and Shock Tactics, two fairly decent albums.  Ironically, Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr had been in this band earlier, before Dickinson joined.  Also, they have an instrumental track credited to Steve Harris (“Thunderburst”, from Head On), which is essentially “The Ides of March”, which appears on Killers.

Quality-wise I’d say this is competitive with early Iron Maiden.  His voice is already well-developed and easily recognizable.  If you like his material, by all means add these two to your collection.  I’m glad I did. 

Iron Maiden.   He joined Maiden in 1982 and features on what I consider their best album, Number of the Beast.  From there it’s:  Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere In Time, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (concept album), No Prayer For the Dying, and Fear of the Dark.   This era is best illustrated with the Live After Death live album and video recorded on different nights at L.A. during the Powerslave tour.   It’s capped off by Raising Hell, filmed on the tail end of the Fear of the Dark tour.  The bass is nonexistent and the crappy magician screws things up, but for a guy who’s already quit the band by that point, Dickinson does a fairly good job.

From 1993 to 1999 he pursued a solo career (see below), returning in 1999 to record Brave New World, Dance of Death, A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier, and Book of Souls, a double studio CD. 

Solo.  As noted, he went solo.  My brother saw him on one of the earlier tours (in 1990, meaning Tattooed Millionaire), while I saw him in New Jersey in 1997 on what would have been the Accident tour.  Albums:  Tattooed Millionaire, Balls to Picasso, Skunkworks, Accident of Birth, The Chemical Wedding, and Tyranny of Souls.   To me these all sound the same and also sound – surprise, surprise – very similar to Iron Maiden.  But none are crappy, the standard being consistently high.  Leaving aside whichever bizarre idiots out there prefer Paul D’ianno or Blaze Bayley, if you’re an Iron Maiden fan, do yourself a favor and add 6 albums to your collection.  You’re welcome. 

Style.  BD has a strong voice with impressive vibrato.  I haven’t noticed any deterioration over the years.  Live, he has a tendency to chat with us between songs, but I’d say he has a good sense of measure to keep it reasonably brief.  Perhaps a spoken word tour would be nice.  [Although I never had the pleasure of seeing Frank Zappa, as opposed to his son Dweezil, play music live, I did catch him give a spoken word lecture at University of Maryland.  Unfortunately I can’t remember the substance of his speech, but suffice to say everyone was highly entertained.]  At the solo show my brother saw, he reminded the French audience chanting “EE-RON MAI-DEN” that “ce n’est pas Iron Maiden, c’est Bruce Dickinson!”   At our show at the Birch Hill he pissed off my friend Ken by accusing Soundgarden of ripping off Black Sabbath without giving due credit – whereas Ken and I were well aware that Kim Thayil was open in acknowledging Iommi’s influence.   Contemporary interviewer to Thayil: “Maybe you should be paying royalties to Tony Iommi.”  Thayil: “Maybe”.

Cancer.   Recently he caught cancer, but it was diagnosed fairly early.  With characteristic aplomb, he went ballistic and conquered it.  Neil Peart’s wife should have consulted him, were it not that her cancer took her 20 years earlier (at which point BD was going solo).

Hobbies.  BD loves to fence – fight with swords, not sell stolen merchandise.  He reached a point almost good enough to compete in the Olympics.  On tours he’d bring his epees and practice whenever possible.  His flight hobby reached the point of being able to fly commercial jumbo jets, and when Maiden acquired their own jets, he flew them himself.  In addition to the logistics of keeping everyone, band, crew and equipment, on the same plane, it also allowed the band to tour many places like Brazil, India, Antarctica, Mars, Middle Earth, Melnibone, etc. which most bands tend to ignore because they don’t actually exist. 

Autobiography.  Bruce Dickinson, What Does This Button Do?   From his childhood in England, born in 1958, raised partly in Sheffield, he also worked with Ian Gillan – his idol – early in his career.  From early bands, to Samson, to Iron Maiden, his solo career, and back with Maiden again, it’s here.  Don’t ask who he’s married to, though:  he kept his social life off-limits (Rob Halford).  I found it a bit long on his fencing and flying, but the anecdotes and honesty were more than entertaining enough to make this an enjoyable read.   

Hair.  Yes, oddly enough, I have a comment about this.  As a fan of heavy metal, my inclination and preference is to have long hair.  Unfortunately, my lifestyle as an attorney has largely prevented this.  Moreover, my hair has a tendency to curl up when it gets longer, and I don’t have the time to allow it to grow longer and curl down.  HOWEVER, for my senior year in high school in Paris, I did achieve the unlikely and sadly brief distinction of having long hair, which was cut during summer 1986 before going to college.  My high school graduation picture and UMCP student ID photo are the last surviving evidence of this. 

Anyhow.  When it came to getting it trimmed, I would take a picture of Bruce Dickinson to the stylist to assist them in knowing what look I was going for: IRON MAIDEN.  This was ages before the man himself cut his hair, prior to his return to Maiden in 2000.  After copying him, now he’s copying me.