44's List of 35

Oh, look.  This is from President Barack Obama's Twitter feed - his "Favorite Music" list for 2019.

Not only is Obama supremely cool for even posting something like this - I can't think of any other former president who would do it, and the current pretender to the throne certainly wouldn't - but we even have a lot of songs in common.

My Top 10 countdown included Big Thief's Not, Mavis Staples' Change, and Sharon Van Etten's Seventeen, all of which appear on Obama's list as well. For some reason, The National didn't make my Top 10 list, but I like this year's LP by them and am glad that they at least made Obama's list.

So 44 and I both have good taste in music, apparently.

Also, Happy New Year, everybody!  Here's to 2020 - the last full year of Trump's failed presidency.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 1, Sharon Van Etten

No strings attached. The triumph of the Year of the Woman. Singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten chose 2019 not only to make a comeback from a short hiatus, but to emerge with a new, powerful and assured sound. Van Etten had titled her 2010 LP Epic, but it wasn't until this year that she truly realized that title. Employing synths and drum machines, Van Etten's new sound was a stark departure from her past, and while we loved her older recordings, the new record left us speechless.  If, like us, you ever thought that your life wouldn't be complete until you heard Sharon Van Etten powerfully screaming at you while on a stepladder at the beach, then Seventeen is the video for you.

According to Pitchfork (which rated Seventeen as No. 185 of the Top 200 Songs of the 2010s), "Sharon Van Etten’s best songs are often marked by their restraint: There’s a feeling that her husky and wide-ranging voice, along with her roiling guitars, could run off the rails, but they’re held in place by her steadfast sense of control. Seventeen, from this year’s Remind Me Tomorrow, stretches this idea to the limit—and then careens right past it. The song is immaculately arranged, a lockstep keyboard-rock anthem that’s artfully mussed with synth wobbles and Van Etten’s quavering vocals. But then, as her ambivalent reflections on a youthful doppelgänger wind down, she unleashes a full-throated scream: 'Afraid that you’ll be just like me,' she bellows, losing her cool but gaining something even fiercer."

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration: The Year of the Woman: It was a hard choice between Van Etten's Remind Me Tomorrow and Angel Olsen's All Mirrors for the No. 1 album on this list, and the best solution seemed to be to rank them 1/2, each with the runner-up spot on the other's listing. While Seventeen is probably the song that likely will most remind us of 2019 in the future, if there had to be one song you heard right before you die, possibly even as you peacefully pass on, wouldn't you really want Angel Olsen's Chance to gracefully guide you to the next realm?

Trompe L'Oeil

The terminally ill (lung cancer, from smoking) art critic Peter Schjeldahl recently wrote in The New Yorker, "I remember arriving in an Italian village by train after midnight and walking past a cemetery where candles burned at every grave, with no one around. Or I think I remember it."

Acutely aware of the limited time he has left (his doctor's prognosis on his spreading cancer is not optimistic), Schjeldahl's written an intimate and confessional memoir of his life, as filtered through that most  unreliable of witnesses, memory. "We have lousy memories," he observes.  "Memory is a liar. It’s a heap of dog-eared, smudged, incessantly revised fictions. The stories make cumulative lies—or, give us a break, conjectures—of our lives. This is O.K. because it had darn well better be."

We tell others stories about our life, our childhood, our loves, our careers, and our ambitions, and with time, we remember the stories that we tell more vividly than the actual memories.  But by necessity, those stories have to leave out extraneous - or unflattering - details and, unlike life itself, have to conform to the structure of fiction: character, crisis, climax, conclusion.   

But life doesn't follow the rules for a short story and is in fact one long, continuous experience. Climactic moments might resolve into conclusions, but the real story of our life keeps on continuing past "conclusion" and "resolution," and  the characters and crises overlap in a confusing tapestry of interwoven experiences.  The actual experiences of our lives don't end with fades to black or someone calling "End scene!," but that's the way we replay them in our minds.

This year, I touched base for the first time in nearly four decades with a childhood friend of mine, and we talked about an epic cross-country camping trip which we participated in during the summer of 1969.  It was the first time since the early 70's that I discussed the trip with an actual participant.  I vividly remember watching the first moon landing on a portable black & white t.v. while camping in a Louisiana bayou that year.  But my friend remembers it differently - we were on the high plains of Texas in his version, and he has some detailed chronological evidence to back him up.

I'm convinced that his version is correct and my memory is wrong.  As I consider his evidence, I realize that we weren't in Louisiana until much later that summer when my late July birthday occurred.  Over the years, I've conflated those two events, the moon landing and my birthday, in my memory.  

I've had to abridge the story of the camping trip for impatient listeners, who didn't necessarily want to hear a day-by-day account of a six-week experience.  Over the years, I've told the shortened version, or shortened versions, so many times that I've come to believe my Cliff Notes edition over my own recollection, and my mind has stored the memory of the abridged story in the place of the actual first-hand experience.  

This may sound to you to be unique and disingenuous on my part, or possibly even dishonest, but I propose that the same is true for a great many of my memories and a great deal of yours.  The problem is the memories of the stories we tell ourselves feel exactly the same as memories of the experience - they're indistinguishable - and we've fooled ourselves for most of our lives with our own little fictions.  

We're not necessarily all little liars because we're telling that which we earnestly believe to be true. And it's okay to trust the stories that others tell us, because their edits and the way they construct their stories reveal as much if not more about their character as precise documentation would.  

But we should doubt ourselves. We'd be fools if we mistook our own internal narratives as incontrovertible fact.

Dreaming of the Masters

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 2, Angel Olsen

More strings:  After several fine folk-rock and indie pop albums, musician Angel Olsen chose 2019, The Year of Woman, to make her breakthrough record, the art-rock masterpiece All Mirrors.  Embracing an orchestral sound and soaring, majestic vocals, Olsen finally realized the potential her career had been promising up to this point, launching her to the No. 2 spot on our Best of 2019 list.

Runner Up/For Your Consideration:  Another singer-songwriter, Sharon Van Etten, chose 2019 not only to make a comeback from a short hiatus, but to also emerge with a powerful and assured new sound.  Employing synths and drum machines, Van Etten's new sound was a stark departure from her past, and while we loved her older recordings, the new record left us speechless.

Dendrophile - that's not me.  

I mean, I like forests.  Trees, when they're altogether in one place by themselves, are cool.  But individually, they're  assholes.  Not fit to share living space with human beings.

Case in point: a couple years ago, a huge tree fell in the neighborhood and completely demolished my next-door-neighbor's house.  Would have killed them, too, if they were home (fortunately, they were at their summer lakehouse in the North Georgia mountains).  

Many tree have fallen in this woodsy neighborhood since them.  Some have damaged homes, others automobiles.  Most have knocked down power lines leaving us without electricity until a chainsaw gang can clear the timber and the power company can restring the wires. That takes anywhere from four hours to several days.

On Monday morning, December 23rd, 5:20 a.m., a major tree fell three houses over from mine.  It blocked the road and of course took down the power lines.  Cable and fiber-optic lines, too.  Power was restored after 10 hours, but cable and internet access weren't restored until 1:30 pm today, some 80 hours later.

My plan for the Christmas week was simple - watch some college bowl games, binge on some Netflix and maybe re-watch The Witcher series or the entire four seasons of Mr. Robot.  Download one or two of the games I bought on Steam's Thanksgiving sale to fill in the rest of the time.

But, no, the tree made sure I couldn't do that.  No cable and no internet means no Netflix and no Amazon Prime.  No cable means no ESPN or football games.  No internet means no access to the video games I have stored on Steam's cloud.  And as luck would have it, I had just cleaned my hard drive of the games I had completed, and Sunday night, the evening before the tree fell, I completed Far Cry: New Dawn.  The only games left on my hard drive were the leftover missions in New Dawn, Minecraft,  and Microsoft solitaire.

The tree couldn't have timed its fall better - falling the day before Christmas Eve assured that services wouldn't be restored until after the holidays.  

So, excuse me if I'm not a dendrophile.  I'm certainly not a dendrophobe, it's not like I'm afraid of them.  Call me "dendroaverse." 

Santa Dog

It takes a minute or two until it's intentions become clear, but the above video, in reality an ad for a Polish e-commerce firm, morphs into a surprisingly moving little holiday featurette.

Last year, I vowed that every Christmas I would post a different version of The Residents' Santa Dog song.  This is the first year since that vow, and so far, I'm good to my word.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, y'all.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 3, Kishi Bashi

Brace yourself for some strings: while we typically don't like string sections added to pop and rock music (look at how syrupy strings ruined Nashville country music in the 60s and 70s), the next couple of Best Of selections prominently feature string arrangements.  And probably no one can arrange strings better than violinist Kishi Bashi, whose 2019 album Omoiyari was by turn a bracing statement about the Japanese internment camps during WWII, a tender love story, and a tour de force in song writing. 

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  My iPhone video of Kishi Bashi live in his home town of Athens, Georgia performing  Annie, Heart Thief of the Sea unplugged in the audience at his official album-release show.

Also, for those of you interested, my power's been restored after a neighborhood tree fell on the power lines, but I still have no cable or high-speed internet.  Probably won't until Thursday or Friday. This was posted using my iPhone as a mobile hot spot.

Remembering Walt Kelly

Television weekend: I watched six hours of college bowl games on Friday and 10 1/2 hours on Saturday, all eight hours of Netflix' The Witcher Season One, and the 2 1/4-hour series finale of USA's Mr. Robot.  Over 24 hours of television in one weekend, and still managed to find time to just about wrap up Far Cry: New Dawn (beat the demolition derby and offed the twins, but then took a brief break while attempting to win the climactic boss fight with Ethan).

Dark weekday: A tree fell in the neighborhood at 5:20 this morning (I know the exact time because it woke me up) and took down the power line, and I was without electricity for some 10 hours or so until it was finally restored at around 3:30. Still no cable or internet, though. Posting this with my iPhone, now that I’m confident I can recharge the battery and don’t have to preserve the charge.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 4, Toro Y Moi

Chaz Bundick (now Chaz Bear) started his Toro Y Moi project as part of the so-called late-oughts "chill-wave" movement along with Washed Out and Neon Indian, and over the years gravitated increasingly toward groove-based pop-funk.  But this year, in his LP Outer Peace, he moves into near Stevie Wonder territory with some of the most infectious yet still laid back dance music I've heard in years.  This genre is not even close to my favorite, but when it's performed this seamlessly there's no denying it's attraction, both to the mind and toward the dance floor, which makes Freelance our No. 4 song of the year..

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  If Freelance makes you feel like dancing, here's Ordinary Pleasure, another great song from Outer Peace, to keep the party going.  Plus we're always suckers for long-take, single-shot tracking videos.

Dreaming of the Masters

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The holidays are coming down hard upon us and we are all being deluged with carols and other Christmas music.  

It was no different in 1960, when Sun Ra, trying to get his fledgling Satur Records up and running, recorded a doo-wop Christmas song.  Who actually participated in this session is lost to the foggy mists of time, and who "The Qualities" were, other than Sun Ra himself on harmonium, is not known.  But there are little touches to this song that indicate that jazz musicians were in the band, such as the unusual use of wood-block percussion.

The 45-rpm cover, with Sun Ra's head floating over a background of images of the planet Saturn and some sort of Playboy bunny couldn't be less traditionally "Christmas," but this is Sun Ra so what did you expect?

Cheers, and happy holidays, everyone.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 5, Helado Negro

For reasons that we're not able to articulate, this song, Pais Nublado, our Number 5 song of the year, makes us happier than words can express, and we don't even speak Spanish. It's an incredibly simple, uncomplicated song, carried by a single, four-bar guitar passage, and even that drops out halfway through to let the lyrics float alone in space.  The performer is Roberto Carlos Lange, the son of Ecuadorian immigrants who goes by the stage name of Helado Negro.  I don't know how he makes this simple song work so well, but he does.  This La Blogotheque performance is a near-perfect combination of ambiance and performance, enhancing the inherent joy in the source material.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  Although stylistically light years away from Helado Negro's stripped down South Americana, Norwegian artist Jenny Hval evokes similar feelings of joy and contentment in her electronic pop, and magically coaxes hygge warmth from layers of ice-blue synthesizers. 

Truthfully, I'd really rather not talk about this.  But this is truly historic and not saying anything, especially after all of my rants and tirades against the president, could be taken as a statement in and of itself.  You have to say something.

To be clear, the reason I'd rather not talk about this is because so much is being said elsewhere - the media is saturated with editorials, commentary, punditry, tweets, and satire. My words would be at best redundant, at worst derivative.  Others have more and better informed things to say about yesterday's impeachment, and I sincerely doubt that you are lacking for access to opinions on this situation.

Back in the first decade of this 21st Century, back when I used to give regular dharma talks at the Zen Center, I often used Donald Trump as an example of the first noble truth, of the existence of suffering.  Back then, Trump was a B-list celebrity, a New York real estate tycoon and the host of a reality game show.  But despite all of his riches, I'd point out, he still seemed unhappy.  "He has all the money one could want," I'd point out, "and yet he always looks like he's miserable."  His petty grievances, his ill temper, his intolerance - these were not the marks of a satisfied human being. "He's one of the last people I'd want to be," I'd say.

Suffering, the Buddha taught, is not having what one wants and also having what one does not want. In other words, suffering is desire and craving, both to have some things and to avoid some others. Trump's apparent unhappiness indicated that his particular suffering was due to wanting still more than the abundant riches he already had, and his profound dissatisfaction with that which he did possess.  

On the other hand, Trump posed a conundrum when it came to the concept of karma.  Even back then, it was common knowledge that he was a ruthless and untrustworthy businessman, prone to bankruptcy, cheating and scandal.  There was little doubt that he had hurt a great many people along the way, and that he had lied, stolen, and connived his way into great wealth  And yet, despite all of the negative karma he must have accrued, he was still rich and still lived in luxury.  Is he somehow immune to karma, or do I not understand how karma works?  Or was I wrong about the things I'd assumed he had done to earn bad karma?

Since entering politics and assuming the presidency, Trump's bad actions have been well documented - children in cages, fraudulent charities, cutting off aid to the poor and needy, insults to the weak, the hurt, and the disenfranchised,.  So where are the karmic consequences of these actions?  How can he still be rich and even more famous and powerful than before?

And then I remember that this is a misunderstanding not only of karma but of the first noble truth.  It is incorrect to think that having wealth is a sign of good karma or that being poor indicates bad karma.  Believing the first is a sort of Buddhist equivalent of Christian "prosperity gospel" ("Look at how rich I am.  The Lord must surely love me!").  Believing the second leads to one of the criticisms often leveled against   Buddhism - a lack of sympathy or empathy for the poor, the wretched, the sick, on the basis that their maladies must be the karmic result of wicked actions in their past. No, being rich is not the absence of suffering based on good karma, just as the absence or wealth is not the same as suffering or the result of bad karma.

If we look clearly, we can see the karmic price that Trump is paying, even now, for his actions.  The man is manifestly unfulfilled and unhappy.  He needs to hold seemingly endless rallies among his faithful supporters to boost his self-esteem and confidence.  His angry tweets and constant feuding with anyone who dares to criticize him demonstrates a profound discontent with both himself and the world around him.  He has alienated himself from the international community, multiple branches of the federal government over which he presides, and even most of his own staff, who routinely get fired and replaced at his whim.  He is secluded and lonely, seemingly trusting only of his own immediate family and the most servile and obsequious of advisers.  

And now he is blemished with the brand of impeachment, his failed presidency forever to be remembered as among the worst in American history.

I still don't want to be him.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No 6, Purple Mountains (David Berman)

The Number 6 spot goes to David Berman (formerly, Silver Jews) and his second band, Purple Mountains.  Nights That Won't Happen is possibly the saddest song in the world (and I've heard Mt. Eerie's A Crow Looked At Me). I can barely watch this elegiac compilation of home movies and performance footage without tearing up knowing that Berman is no longer with us.  In retrospect, it was so obvious that the man was suffering from depression and probably other maladies, but between his humor, his gift for lyrics, and his laid-back music, no one acted on it until it was too late. Ironically, in the song, Berman provides perhaps the best argument against suicide: "All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind."

There's really nothing more to say beyond what Berman sings in his own song.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  The antidote to Nights That Won't Happen, the only song that can pull me up out of that bottomless pool of despair, is Rudy Willingham's appropriately named Pool Party.  "Hey, ladies!"

Almost a productive day: I was successful in finally got the condo painted today (first paint job since, like, 2004), and went to the dentist to complete the repair of my chipped front tooth.

Almost a productive day: The dentist didn't have the right matching color for my damaged bicuspid, so I have to go back again in January when the right part is available.

Almost a productive day: All this on about three hours sleep last night.  Tonight, after I fix some dinner, I will try to stay awake through an episode or two of Mrs. Maisel and then go to bed. I'm bushed.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 7, Big Thief

Sunn O)))) wasn't the only band to release two albums in 2019 - Brooklyn's Big Thief released UFOF early this year and then Two Hands a little later this year.  Two Hands got a 9.0 Best New Music score from Pitchfork.  The album's stand-out song, Not, was NPR's No. 1 best song of 2019 and Paste Magazine's 75th best song of the entire 2010s.  With two near-perfect albums released this year, this was clearly not only the Year on the Woman, but more specifically the Year of Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  While Not was the standout song of the Two Hands album, the titular song was the standout of the earlier UFOF.

RIP Anna Karina

We'll admit to the very real possibility that we might secretly be in love with Anna Karina, the late Queen of French New Wave Cinema.

For a period of time in the 1970s, we were obsessed with cinema, especially the French New Wave of the 60s.  We actually entered University as a film major and for a while had a job at the Alston Art Cinema in Boston, which showed foreign and repertory films. Even after  we stopped working there, we were always waved in without paying by the other employees who recognized us.  Getting a wink and  a nod as we went in free to see the latest Bergman or Bertolucci seemed to be the epitome of cool at the time.  

Back then, it seemed to us that the high priest of cinema, the inscrutable master over all, was Jean-Luc Godard. We still hold that opinion at times, and Godard's muse (and wife) was the Danish actress Anna Karina.  

Impermanence is swift: Ms. Karina left this world yesterday, age 79, in Paris.  Life-and-death is the great matter.  We should not forget this.

If that's too many film clips for you to watch, here's a nice little summary combining much of the above.

Dreaming of the Masters

We'll admit to the very real possibility that we might secretly be in love with June Tyson, the late Saturnian Queen of Outer Space.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 8, Swans

Today, on the 13th of Friday (paraskevidekatriaphobia, anyone?), we interrupt The Year of the Woman with some of the most swaggeringly macho music of the year.  It's almost as if all the testosterone in the music industry somehow got channeled into one spot on the Best Of list.

Michael Gira has once again reformed his long-running band Swans, and after a three-year wait, they've released a new album, leaving meaning., featuring a new lineup which in many ways sounds a lot like the old lineup (several of the same musicians are involved in the new project).  At the same time, the new Swans are also noticeably different, featuring a less confrontational sound and a greater emphasis on lyrical content.  The Hanging Man sounds like a commentary on Swans' 2016 The Glowing Man, but with a newfound sense of restraint that only emphasizes the suspense and tension. This is a band that is justifiably famous for being able to become overwhelmingly loud and produce incredibly abrasive sound at the drop of a hat, but instead of doing just that, they instead use their frightful reputation to heighten a creeping sense of dread and apprehension.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  If you like it loud, Sunn O))) released not one but two new albums in 2019, Life Metal and Pyroclasts.  Thematically, all songs from both of the LPs are fairly consistent, consisting of long-form drone-metal studies, but one of my favorites is the second cut from the first LP, Life Metal, titled Troubled Air.  If you love this track, you'll love both albums; if you hate this track, you'll hate both albums. Simple as that.

New Dawn

As previously noted, over the Thanksgiving weekend I took advantage of a sale on Steam and bought myself five new (to me) video games, all for less than the price of one brand-new game (it was a good sale).   But rather than binge out and play them all at once, I've decided to unwrap my early-season Christmas gifts to myself slowly, and before downloading even the first new game, I finished my replay through Fallout: New Vegas.

The replay was fun, and since it had been almost two years since I had last played the game, it didn't seem at all redundant or overly familiar.  But playing through the DLCs began to feel like a chore (how much more before I can finally finish this?), especially considering the five new (to me) games still sitting under my virtual Christmas tree, so I stopped after completing two of the four DLCs, and downloaded the first of my new games.

To start, I chose Far Cry: New Dawn.  Unlike some of the others in my 5-game package, New Dawn is a new (2019) game, and I chose it in part to indulge in that new-car smell before it wore off, and also because it's a sort-of sequel to Far Cry 5, which I played earlier this year.  Since completing Far Cry 5, I've played The Outer Worlds, some DLCs to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and my recent replay through Fallout: New Vegas, and I didn't want to play too many other games and forget the details of 5 before taking on New Dawn.  

I'm only about four or so hours in, but I already like the new game.  Like Far Cry 5, New Dawn is set in the fictional Hope County, Montana but after the nuclear war that closes out 5 (I noted a while ago that the ending to the game was surprisingly dark).  So it's basically another post-apocalypse game, like the Fallout series, but it presents a refreshingly different take on the post-nuclear world.  Instead of everything being one big trash-strewn ruin like in Fallout, New Dawn imagines a world reclaimed by nature, where plants and forests have erased the footprints of civilization (which were pretty light in Montana to begin with). 

As a result, the scenery and settings of New Dawn are beautiful and quite fun to romp around in. Unlike the gray and brown world of Fallout, full of dilapidated buildings and decay, the buildings in New Dawn, which are few and far apart, are covered by flowering vines,.and the forests are teeming with wildlife.  Further, the wildlife in New Dawn are not the ghouls and giant green mutants of Fallout and there are no radscorpions or radroaches scurrying about - the New Dawn wildlife are deer (albeit albino for some reason), boars, and bears.  I've already seen enough foreshadowing to know that some of the bears and boars I'll be coming up against later are larger, more aggressive mutated variants, but they're not the slimy, scaly monsters of Outer Worlds.  You hunt and fish for your food instead of scavenging old canned food like in Fallout, and instead of the hermits and survivalists of Far Cry 5, your allies are likable settlers and their families. It's a refreshing and different vision of post-apocalyptic sci fi, and I like it. 

The video above is the actual first minutes of the game.  I love the way it conveys so much story with one long pan shot, and how the background changes with the voice-over narration even as the POV pans to the right.  It's a good example of how a video game can employ the virtual tools of CGI for narrative purpose in a way that mere cinema can't, at least not as easily.  It's a good example of how a video game can transcend mere entertainment and actually become art.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No. 9, Y La Bamba

The Year of the Woman continues - the No. 9 spot is taken by Luz Elena Mendoza's Portland-based band Y La Bamba and their vastly underrated LP, Mujeres.   "Underrated" - I had not seen this album on any of the several Best Of lists for 2019 compiled by the usual music web sites and literally had to check again to make sure that it was in fact released this year (it was, last February). 

How can everyone else have overlooked this great album?  Every song has a vastly different structure than the others and several, such as the title song and Conocidos, make use of complex layers of electronic sound that take the band into almost Animal Collective territory.  More specifically, the song Mujeres, especially on the studio version, evokes We Tigers-era AC, while the sonic complexities and layering of Conocidos, as well as this live version of Mujeres, reminds me of AC's What Would I Want? Sky.  The more you listen to the sounds going on beneath the vocals, the deeper you realize the layers go.  As a whole, the album is a dazzling statement on Mexican-American heritage and musical traditions and on being an immigrant woman in the Age of Trump.  I don't know why it hasn't received more attention.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration:  More latinx music, this time from Lila Downs covering Manu Chao's 2013 song, Clandestino.

The Wheels of Justice

A federal judge today ruled that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp must answer questions about minority voter registration and Kemp's oversight of investigations into last year’s gubernatorial election.  The questioning is related to a lawsuit filed by Fair Fight Action, a group founded by allies of  Democrat Stacey Abrams, Kemp’s opponent in last year's election.

As secretary of state, Kemp was Georgia’s chief elections official until he resigned after Election Day.The lawsuit is asking the courts to intervene in Georgia’s elections following voter purges, absentee ballot cancellations, precinct closures, and other allegations of obstacles to voting. 

Oh, and the United States Congress presented articles of impeachment today against the so-called president.  This is only the third time in this nation's history that articles of impeachment were formally unveiled.

The wheels of justice turn slowly and sometimes the machinery seems unnecessarily baroque and  slow,  but no one is above the law and eventually everyone has to answer for their actions.

Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No 10, Mavis Staples

Sure, why not?  Top 10 lists don't mean a thing - you like what you like and you dislike what you don't, regardless of how others rank things.  But these lists get generated anyway, and we here at the Music Desk aren't about to be left out.  We've already posted our playlist of the 100 best songs of 2019, but that list wasn't ranked in any particular order, so here's a highly idiosyncratic quick rundown of what we think were the 10 best songs of the year, or at least those that we listened to the most.

Last year, we weren't able to come up with even a full 10 songs to complete a "Best Of" list for the year, much less a playlist of 100 best songs.  In general, 2019 saw the continued drift of popular music away from rock and toward hip-hop, glamorous pop divas, and bland commercialism - other than hip-hop, the very things that punk rebelled against in the 1970s and that we had hoped the early-centennial indie renaissance would finally bring to an end.  

We're not optimistic about the future of music over the next couple of years, but like any year, there are little pockets and oases of good music if you know where to look (or if you kept searching hard enough).  And what was good in 2019 turned out to be, in fact, very good indeed, improbably making 2019 a very good year for music, arguably the best since 2015.

Musically, 2019 was, among other things, The Year of the Woman, and 80-year-old Mavis Staples (who still sounds as vital as ever) starts off our list with the No. 10 song, the blues-rocking anthem, Change.   Mavis, Pops and the rest of the family were recording socially-conscious music as The Staples Singers since at least the early 70s, and it's so cool to see Mavis still preaching truth these many decades later.  With any luck, in a decade or so, this youngster might even grow into a fully mature performer, like the 95-year-old Marshall Allen.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration: Old-school music as reinterpreted by a younger generation - Hannah Williams & The Affirmations with the R&B feminist anthem, 50-Foot Woman (you may recognize the song from an Infiniti car commercial). Hannah isn't 80 years old and she isn't the gray punk riot grrl in her video (she's actually the pink-haired on-looker), but the music and the accompanying video do make a good visual and musical companion to Mavis Staples' song.

From The Sports Desk

The Sports Desk is not disappointed that the Georgia Bulldogs lost the SEC Championship Game to the LSU Tigers yesterday.

Although we're Bulldog fans, we've been watching both teams play the last couple of weeks, and had little reason to believe that Georgia really stood a chance against LSU.  Going into the game, Georgia was a 7 1/2-point underdog.  They lost the game by 27 points.

No, we're not disappointed.  In fact, we're appreciative.  If you always win, it takes the fun out of the game.  The excitement, the thrill, of sports is knowing that there's a very really probability that your team may lose.  Without that risk, there's no suspense, no tension, and no fun.  So, you could say that LSU made future games more exciting.

I had a conversation earlier this year with a young man who works in the video game industry. He explained that the art of designing a game was making the play hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard as to be frustrating.  If a game is too easy, players will lose interest and move on to something else.  If a game is too hard, they'll get angry and quit.  A good game designer will operate between those two guardrails and pace the game to have some relatively easy stretches alternating with some relatively hard challenges, but none either too easy or too hard for players across a wide range of ages and abilities.

It's the same with sports.  If a team always loses, it will lose its fan base. If a team always wins, its fans will get jaded and blase.  From a business perspective, you can say its better to have jaded and blase fans than no fans at all, but from a fan's perspective, it's best to feel protective but loyal to your team.  

Georgia's loss to LSU in this year's SEC Championship Game just underscores what a tragedy the Dogs' loss to Alabama was in the 2018 National Championship Game.  That was the year Georgia should have won it all; that was the year Georgia was the best team in the country.  Sophomore quarterback Jake Fromm was playing the best football of his career, and the Bulldogs had the twin running backs of Sony Michel (now with New England) and Nick Chubb (now with the Cleveland Browns).  Georgia beat Auburn, 28-7, in the 2017 SEC Championship Game and then beat Oklahoma in two overtimes in the first round of the 2018 playoffs.  They had a 13-0 lead over Alabama at halftime in the Championship Game and forced Crimson Tide Coach Nick Saban to pull his starting quarterback, Jalen Hurts, for then-unknown freshman QB Tua Tagovailoa, who came out blazing and tied up the game by the end of regulation and then won it in overtime.  

Alabama won the game and won another National Championship; Georgia hasn't been the champion since 1980.  But in January 2018, we were 30 minutes from a second championship, the stars were all aligned in our favor, and it would never get that good for us again.  Yesterday's loss to LSU assured that Georgia wouldn't be in the playoffs this year, which only increases the frustration over the Bama loss in 2018 and the eventual enjoyment whenever the Dogs get all the stars aligned once again and finally win another championship.

By the way, Jake Fromm's assuming the Georgia QB role that year forced the previous QB, Justin Fields, to transfer to Ohio State, and Tagovailoa's success at Alabama forced Jalen Hurts to transfer to Oklahoma.  This year, both Fields and Hurts will be in the playoffs representing their new teams.  All of which is due, in part, to Georgia's 2017-2018 season.

It's not official yet, but Georgia is expected to play No. 7 Baylor in the Sugar Bowl on January 1.

Dreaming of the Masters

A recently released recording of Sun Ra's first-ever performance in what was then known as The Polish People's Republic (now, simply "Poland"). The core Arkestra is here - John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, Danny Thompson, James Jacson, etc.) but apparently June Tyson, the Queen of Outer Space, wasn't able to make the trip.  

A fascinating aspect of this 1986 performance is how slyly Sun Ra offers revolutionary (or as the ruling Communist Party leadership would have called it, "counter-revolutionary") lyrics into the song Children of the Sun. Between the language barrier and the outlandishness of the Arkestra's Afro-futurist appearance, he was able to tell the audience that the political repression wasn't going to last much longer and freedom was just over the horizon without incurring the wrath of the police state.

Alert listeners will recognize the intro section of Discipline 27-11 before the song morphs into Children of the Sun.

Preview

Sunrise at Singing Beach (Manchester, MA) this morning.  Photograph by M Carvalho

As I've said before, even though retirement is sort of like a weekend that never ends, I'm still aware of the rhythms of the week, and I feel a sense of both relief and anticipation that it is now, as I write this, finally Friday afternoon.

The week started early Monday morning with my mouth wide open and my ass in the dentist's chair as I got a chipped tooth repaired.  After that rude start to the week, there was some drama on Monday through Wednesday getting the tenant out of my condo.  It's not that he refused to leave or that I needed to threaten eviction, but he just took his own sweet time moving.  I drove out there each day expecting him to be gone only to find that there were still a few more things left behind for him to move (including, on Tuesday, a pit-bull terrier), and it wasn't until Wednesday that he finally got the last of his stuff out and I finally got the keys back. To his credit, he didn't leave the place in nearly as bad shape as the previous tenant, although the place will still need some walls painted and a professional deep cleaning.

Thursday and Friday were pretty low key, but after the previous three days, I needed some time to just putter around in my usual routine.   

I'm looking forward to the weekend.  I've been re-playing Fallout: New Vegas and after an almost two-year absence, the game feels fresh and almost new again (even though it's a 10-year-old game).  Besides, I'm deliberately changing things, siding with different factions and making different choices than before, making this play-through feel unique.  I anticipate completing the game this weekend, and then moving on to one of the five games that I purchased on Cyber Monday of this week.

The Sports Desk is all excited about the SEC Championship Game here in Atlanta tomorrow.  We won't be attending (tickets are astronomically expensive), but the University of Georgia Bulldogs will be playing the favored (7 1/2 points) LSU Tigers, and while we have little reason to expect a Georgia upset, the Bulldogs have played some of their best football when up against the toughest teams (Alabama the last two years, Notre Dame, Florida and Auburn this year).  This game should be exciting.

And all week, we've been almost breathlessly waiting for Sunday night and broadcast of the latest two episodes of Watchmen on HBO and Mr. Robot on USA Network.  These are not only the two best shows on t.v. this year, especially after the final season of Game of Thrones shit the bed last spring, but last Sunday night's episodes were among the best for both shows, and anticipation of what happens this week couldn't be higher.  We re-watched last Sunday night's episodes of both shows a couple times this week, and each time we caught some nuances or revelations that we had missed the times before.  This is the first season of Watchmen, and after the final episode airs in a couple weeks, we know we will binge-watch the entire season over again.  On the other hand, this is  the climactic last season of Mr. Robot, and after this season and the series ends, we fully expect to be binge-watching all four seasons this winter.

Also, if we get bored with all the macho energy of college football and the tension and suspense of super- and anti-hero dramas, Season 3 of Amazon's breezy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has finally dropped.  We'll probably be watching some of that sometime between football, video games, and our favorite television shows.

In other words, we're in for a full weekend within the weekend that never ends.

Doonesbury

First of all, I didn't even know that Doonesbury was still a thing.  Doonesbury was my favorite comic strip in the 70s, followed by Bloom County in the 80s and Calvin & Hobbes in the 90s.  

Second of all, I should have suspected but I didn't know that Doonesbury would still be topical and relevant in the late 2010's.

The Diminished Dignity of the American Presidency

We're the laughing stock of NATO now, and our so-called Commander In Chief can't even tolerate some snarky comments from the Canadian Prime Minister.

"No One Has The Right To Obey"

I didn't retire because I wanted to have places to be at 8 a.m., but there I was, in the dentist's chair, getting an emergency procedure to repair a chipped front tooth.

I also wasn't expecting an almost 90-minute procedure.  

It turned out to be worth the effort, though. The chip is repaired, at least for now, with a temporary crown, so at least I'm past that meth-head/goalie appearance.  But while I was there, we went ahead and fixed a few other things too and right now my teeth look better than they ever have.  Literally, ever in my life.  

I'm pleased with the results, and grateful to the dentist to rearrange his other patients' schedules to take me in and to go that extra mile to give me the results that I got today.

Belated gratitude for Thanksgiving.  Also, an early Christmas - I took advantage of some of the on-line Cyber Monday sales and bought myself not one, not two, but five - count them, five - new video games today for less than the typical cost of one new release.  

No, they're not brand new games, certainly not new releases, but they're new to me as I haven't played them yet.

When people ask me what retirement is like, one of my stock answers is to honestly say it's like a weekend that never ends.

At the same time, though, I am fully aware of the days of the week and the dates of the month.  Even though there's no back-to-work day for me, a weekend still feels different that a weekday, and the long Thanksgiving weekend ending tonight felt different that the other days in November.

I spent much of the holiday in fantasyland, completing the video game The Outer Worlds and re-starting the classic Fallout: New Vegas.  Meanwhile, I indulged in my current television favorites, Watchmen and Mr. Robot, rewatching past episodes to keep up with what's going on now in the shows. And tonight, we have new episodes of both.

I also binge-watched 16 hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of Netflix' The OA.  I liked Season 1 more than Season 2, a lot, but it says something about the latter season that it kept me up past 3 a.m. last night to get to the conclusion.  

Today, I had to drive up to the condo in Vinings to inspect the place as my tenant was moving out.  I was hoping to exchange keys today, but not surprisingly, he hadn't yet finished yet and I gave him until tomorrow to move everything out, rather than have him dragging furniture up and down the stairs until late hours tonight and disturbing all the neighbors.  

Tomorrow morning, I have an emergency dentist appointment.  Somehow, I managed to chip a front tooth on Thanksgiving day, and couldn't get to the dentist until they re-open on Monday morning.  I don't want to talk about it except to say that even though chipping a tooth sounds like part of a drinking story, alcohol had absolutely nothing to do with it.  But going through the entire weekend with a smile that looked like an NHL goalie's and the prospect of having to be across town at my dentist by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, definitely made the Thanksgiving week feel more like a traditional extended weekend, with the weight of Monday-morning obligations ever looming over my head.

Dreaming of the Masters

Hollywood lied to us (again).  The Queen of Outer Space was not some eastern European white lady.

The Saturnian Queen of Outer Space was a woman of color who was born in North Carolina and lived in Harlem.  Her name was June Tyson and she was the vocalist for the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Thanksgiving

I only eat ice cream about 6 to 10 times a year - usually on holidays or as a dessert when dining out.  But when I do eat ice cream, I abide by two simple rules.  First, I eat an entire pint at a time (home rule, only -  don't try that one at a restaurant).  Second, when I finish, I let the cats lick the empty container (again, home rule only - don't try that one at a restaurant either); the cats actually are the ones who enforce Rule 2.

So late last night, Thanksgiving evening, I indulged in one of my splurges and ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert Americone Dream ice cream.  After I had finished, Izzy the cat (the dumber, fatter one), while trying to lick the very bottom of the container, got his head stuck in the container and couldn't figure out how to get it off.  He thrashed his head around for a while while the other cat, Eliot (the smarter, leaner one) calmly watched until the container finally came off.  I saw it all coming and had the presence of mind to grab my phone and snap some pictures.   

Actually, that whole head-stuck-in-an-ice-cream-container schtick is a perfect metaphor for gluttony and Thanksgiving traditions.  My Thanksgiving gluttony involved different kinds of over-indulgence.  I played Fallout: New  Vegas for something like 10 hours yesterday, from the start of the game to launching the ghouls into space from the REPCONN test center near Novac.  Later, I decided to unwind with a little Netflix, and watched the first episode of Season 1 of The OA. Season 1 first aired in 2016, but it was the first time for me, and I got sucked right in and wound up watching 5 1/2 60-minute episodes before finally going to bed near 4 a.m.    

I watched the last 1 1/2  episodes of Season 1 this morning, and expect to watch Season 2 tonight.  I know I keep saying that such-and-such a show is "the best thing on television right now," but any list of the most innovative and imaginative television shows would have to include at least Season 1 of The OA.  Probably Season 2 as well, but I haven't seen it yet and will withhold judgement and/or praise until I do.

I don't know what it is about the Thanksgiving holiday that so brings out the contrarian in me, but after posting William S. Burroughs' cynical A Thanksgiving Prayer for some 10 years, it pleased me to no end to see Philip Deloria write in The New Yorker:

The first Thanksgiving was not a “thanksgiving,” in Pilgrim terms, but a “rejoicing.” An actual giving of thanks required fasting and quiet contemplation; a rejoicing featured feasting, drinking, militia drills, target practice, and contests of strength and speed. It was a party, not a prayer, and was full of people shooting at things. The Indians were Wampanoags, led by Ousamequin (often called Massasoit, which was a leadership title rather than a name). An experienced diplomat, he was engaged in a challenging game of regional geopolitics, of which the Pilgrims were only a part. While the celebrants might well have feasted on wild turkey, the local diet also included fish, eels, shellfish, and a Wampanoag dish called nasaump, which the Pilgrims had adopted: boiled cornmeal mixed with vegetables and meats. There were no potatoes (an indigenous South American food not yet introduced into the global food system) and no pies (because there was no butter, wheat flour, or sugar). 

Nor did the Pilgrims extend a warm invitation to their Indian neighbors. Rather, the Wampanoags showed up unbidden. And it was not simply four or five of them at the table, as we often imagine. Ousamequin, the Massasoit, arrived with perhaps ninety men—more than the entire population of Plymouth. Wampanoag tradition suggests that the group was in fact an army, honoring a mutual-defense pact negotiated the previous spring. They came not to enjoy a multicultural feast but to aid the Pilgrims: hearing repeated gunfire, they assumed that the settlers were under attack. After a long moment of suspicion (the Pilgrims misread almost everything that Indians did as potential aggression), the two peoples recognized one another, in some uneasy way, and spent the next three days together. 

No centuries-long continuity emerged from that 1621 meet-up. New Englanders certainly celebrated Thanksgivings—often in both fall and spring—but they were of the fasting-and-prayer variety. Notable examples took place in 1637 and 1676, following bloody victories over Native people. To mark the second occasion, the Plymouth men mounted the head of Ousamequin’s son Pumetacom above their town on a pike, where it remained for two decades, while his dismembered and unburied body decomposed.

But that's just me.  I hope you enjoyed your holiday, or at least got what you wanted out of the day. Having completed The Outer Worlds (for the fourth time!) this week, I celebrated today by re-playing Fallout: New Vegas in a ten-hour marathon binge.

As long as we're giving praise to various pieces of pop culture - HBO's Watchmen, The Outer Worlds video game, the music of 2019 (but not Shaky Knees), and afro-futurist jazz legend Sun Ra - we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the cyberpunk drama, Mr. Robot. 

We're well into the fourth and final season right now, and the series continues to impress us with each passing year.  What started out as a basic hacker drama - alienated young man wearing a hoodie takes on bad guys by hacking computers - quickly morphed into a psychological drama about multiple personality disorder and global loss of privacy, basically Fight Club meets Matrix.  

Season 1 was mind blowing and one of the most audacious series not on premium cable.  But not content to rest on its laurels, Seasons 2 and 3 dove even deeper into the mystery, going well beyond the mere dual personality of its protagonist.  Those two seasons were surreal, paranoid meditations on global conspiracies, power, and the mind's ability to deceive itself, and the cast revealed themselves to all be superb performers capable of breathing credible life into the sometimes incredible script.  It was one of the best things on television.

Season 4, this season on right now, has upped the ante once again.  It may have seemed impossible to top Season 3, but Season 4 has just taken things to a whole other level.  I don't want to spoil anything with any reveals, and the plot is so twisted and mysterious that even if I tried to say what I thought was happening, the next episode would probably pull the rug out from under and prove me wrong yet again.  The show is so full of untrustworthy narrators and turn-on-a-dime plot twists that you're never on sure footing for long, which heightens the suspense and makes for some compelling watching.

Sadly, though, no one seems to be talking about this show.  I didn't even realize that Season 4 was on the air until Episode 5 had already played.  Even though it stars Rami Malek, who recently impressed the critics with his portrayal of Queen's Freddie Mercury in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, Christian Slater, and Grace Gummer (Meryl Streep's daughter), it's on the somewhat obscure USA Network, which has a reputation for airing old sitcom reruns and wholesome family programs.  Mr. Robot doesn't pull any punches though, and it seems as far from typical USA Network programming as you can get. 

But it's sad - arguably one of the best shows on t.v., certainly moments of some of the best drama on the air right now is hardly watched by anyone.  

Must be a conspiracy.

I'm still tinkering around with the highly enjoyable game Outer Worlds.  

Last night, late last night, I finished my fourth play-through of the game's story line. Part of the appeal of the game is that decisions and choices made earlier in the game result in different outcomes and events later in the game, so it's never really the same game twice, unless you slavishly repeat everything you've done before.  

To be honest, I didn't change my behavior very radically in any of the four play-throughs - I always try to be the good guy and to not offend the other characters (unless they're obviously the villains). But the game does give you the option to side with the villains if you want and fight your supposed comrades instead of the other way around.  I just can't get myself to do that. 

Most of the changes I made were little adjustments and modifications to previous choices after I learned some of the karmic consequences later in the game.  My goal was to have the "perfect" ending - all my companions not only surviving but thriving in the end, the space colony rescued, and the bad guys all vanquished.  That, and not miss any of the side quests or little details in the game.  I think I finally achieved that last night.

It's time for something new.  I've been playing The Outer Worlds for the better part of a month now and while I'm still intrigued with the idea of doing yet another run-through - maybe as a super-evil villain killing everyone I meet, friends and foes alike, this time, or as as a loyal captain working on behalf of the bad guys - I don't want to burn out on the game.  I'ts time to fondly set it aside for at least a couple of months and play something new, something different, or maybe pick up some other game that I had set aside for a while and see how that goes.

Outer Worlds was produced by Obsidian, the makers of 2010's Fallout - New Vegas.  It might be interesting to replay New Vegas and see if I get a  sense of the roots of Outer World's magic.