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.

Watchmen

A month or so ago, I started following the new HBO series, Watchmen.  I liked it then and I like it more even now.

I don't disagree with Martin Scorsese's criticism of the superhero genre in movies.  Generally, I don't go for Marvel blockbusters and I find the typical superhero movie to be puerile and boring.  But this show had some complexity and depth, and the "superheroes" were merely masked marauders - mortals without superpowers but driven by unusual circumstances to avenge crime and bring justice while concealing their identity.  But the story was deeper than that, and the plot involved a frank examination of the history of racism in America and the damage that it has wrought.

At the beginning, I was just hoping that they'd maintain the quality of the first couple episodes. "Please don't blow it," I wished.  There was so much promise and potential at the start of the series and I so didn't want to see if collapse into cliche superhero violence or self parody. Also, I didn't want to see it become preachy and self-righteous, either.

Last night, Episode Six, This Extraordinary Being, aired.  It was a work of art, and I don't mean that facetiously or ironically.  Like many recent episodes, on one level it was just the back-story of one of the heroes, Hooded Justice (far right, above), but on another level it was the frankest depiction of America's legacy of racism in the series yet.  It finally answered many of the mysteries of the previous episodes, right back to the very opening sequence of the first episode, which had seemed like a totally forgettable non sequitur up to that point.   It was all done with incredible story-telling, juggling several different time lines without getting confusing, and photography that changed from color to black-and-white, and sometimes even combined the two in a single frame.  It was so well-paced and so compelling to watch, that I re-watched the episode when it aired a second time an hour later.

I'm not going to give anything away and I won't spoil your future watching (if you're not doing so already).  My point here is that not only did they not blow it as I was fearing, but they elevated it from a mere t.v. series, to bona fide art.

If this show, this episode, doesn't sweep the Emmys, the problem is with the awards, not the program.

If it were 15 years ago and 2004, this would be a great lineup, although even then, Smashing Pumpkins would have been a revival act.  The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the vanguard of the early-millennial New York garage-rock revival, the successor to the 90s grunge movement and the predecessor of the mid-Oughts indie-rock renaissance.  Those days, however, are over.

Joan Jett hit her peak in the 80s and was something of a nostalgia act in the 90s.  I don't know what she has to offer in the 20's.

It's impossible to have no one worthwhile on a lineup this large, and I'm liking the new solo project of Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes (who played Shaky Knees five years ago).  Stereolab have been around for a long time, but their unique sound transgresses any genre or specific time period.  Phoebe Bridgers and Snail Mail are both important contemporary artists with something to say.  Meanwhile, The Front Bottoms are good but played Shaky Knees three years ago; The Growlers, two.  

Before getting down to the bottom four or five lines of literally who?, there's some bands that should hold their own in a festival setting (Murder By Death, Caroline Rose, and returning veterans Surfer Blood), but they're not enough to make want want to pay the price (up to $1,600) for a Shaky Knees pass. 

I attended every day of the first six Shaky Knees festivals.  Last year was the first year I didn't attend as I was disappointed by that year's line up.  This  year's is even worse.

It's sad that a festival that once boasted some of the best lineups for fans of indie, guitar and college rock has fallen to the wayside for sure-fire, radio-friendly 90s rock bands, but I guess the promoters have a right to cash in and make some money.  They just won't get mine.

Thank goodness for Big Ears!

Dreaming of the Masters

The song Enlightenment was a staple of Sun Ra performances.  Its composition reaches back to some of the earliest days of the Arkestra and if you ever saw them live, chances are good that you heard some version or another of the song.  Enlightenment first appeared on the album Jazz In Silhouette, recorded in Chicago in 1958 or 1959, as a fairly traditional big band arrangement that only hinted at the other-worldliness the Arkestra was to later embody.  This instrumental version also appears on the album Sound Sun Pleasure, which wasn't released until 1970.

At some point, lyrics were added to the arrangement, and it was the vocal version of Enlightenment that became the staple of Sun Ra's live sets.  Here's an excellent profile that appeared on French television in 1969; the vocal version of Enlightenment begins at the 3:21 mark.  

Around this time, a similar version of Enlightenment that was recorded at Sun Ra's Philadelphia home was released as a single, with Journey to Saturn on the flip side. This slow, almost dirge-like version of the song was performed by the trio of Sun Ra on clavinet, Tyson on vocals, and the great tenor saxophonist John Gilmore on drums and vocals.  

At some point, June Tyson began echoing back some of the lyrics of the song, creating the call-and-response typical of later performances of the song.  Here's a faster-paced, live and livelier version from their 1973 Town Hall concert in New York commemorating the near-Earth approach of the comet Kohoutek.  This was how the song was performed in the shows I saw in the 1970s and '80s. 

A live version of Enlightenment is included in Gilles Peterson's posthumous compilation To Those Of Earth... And Other Worlds.  I have no idea when or where this live version was performed.

Triumph of the Veridical - The Top 100 Songs of 2019

Okay, enough with the politics already and sitting around all day watching congressional testimony. It might be too soon, but this has been a great year for music and I can already easily select 100 songs for a Best Of list.  Besides, all of the music web sites and zines already have their best of 2019 lists out, as if there weren't another six or so weeks left to the year for more music to be released. 

A note on format: for the first time, I'm posting a link here to Spotify.  It doesn't seem practical to post 100 separate YouTube videos or Bandcamp gadgets here, and I see no other way that's practical and (bonus points) also not a copyright infringement.  If you don't have Spotify, then download the program - there's a free version if you don't mind some ad spots popping up in your playlist, and besides it's almost 2020.  Like it or not, streaming is here to stay.  The list above will play some short, lo-fi snippets of the songs if you don't have Spotify, but you really need the app to play it properly and understand why the songs included here are on this list.

Also, posting in this format allows me to not have to rank the songs in any numerical order.  Sharon Van Etten's Seventeen might be my No. 1 song of the year, but can I really say that it's better than Angel Olsen's All Mirrors?  And if I'm in the mood to dance, is there a better song than Toro y Moi's Ordinary Pleasure?  And then there are times when Kishi Bashi's Summer of '42 sounds absolutely perfect to me - not a note can be changed to improve it - and while it's objectively a better composition than Vampire Weekend's Harmony Hall, subjectively, there are times when I want to hear the latter more than the former.  But on other days, the sheer urgency and power of Idles' I Dream Guillotine seems to render everything else dainty and frivolous, while other times the narcotic lunacy of Underworld's Hundred Weight Hammer is the only song that feels right.

I've been working on this list for a long-ass time, since September at least, and while I can rank a handful as the "best of the best," I can't rank them in any definitive order.  The list is culled down from at least 1,000 songs that I've downloaded or streamed during the year, and while I'm sure that it doesn't look or sound like anybody else's Top 100 list (no Billie Eilish or Lil Nas X, f'rinstance), these are the songs that stuck in my head, the songs that I played and replayed over and over, in 2019. These are the songs that triggered my veridical processing system into releasing endorphins to my brain this year.

I'll let you decide if I like the songs or if I like the endorphins, or if that makes any difference, or if both basically mean the same thing.

Either way, as a result, I can't say that these are necessarily the 100 best-produced songs, or the absolute epitome of musicianship over the past year.  This isn't an audiophile's list and it most certainly isn't any sort of best-seller list.  These are the songs that were rattling around my head at 3:00 a.m. when I was trying to sleep, the songs I was singing to myself when I was supposed to be paying attention to something else or listening to someone who was talking to me.  

To be sure, there is much great musicianship on this list, many meticulously produced songs (Lady Lamb's Even In The Tremor and Nick Cave's Spinning Song) and some absolutely great songwriting (Destroyer's Crimson Tide and Big Thief's Not).  Other songs made the list simply because they had some great hook somewhere in there (Hælos' End of World Party and The Juan Maclean's Get Down), which doesn't make them any less than the other songs - a killer hook is just as legitimate as meaningful lyrics or virtuoso instrumentation.  What I'm trying to say is there's something in every one of these songs that made me want to listen to them again, and then again, and so on and so forth throughout the year.

Special mention in this earworm category goes to Rudy Willingham's Pool Party.  I doubt this song made anyone else's Best Of list and I don't even know what the hell this song is (hip hop? funk? novelty? children's music?), except that for some reason it makes me irrationally happy and I seem to be biologically incapable of not clicking on it every time I see it on this or any other playlist.

I limited the list to include no more than one song by each artist, but had to break my own rule for Purple Mountains (David Berman).  Ten years after disbanding his previous group (The Silver Jews) and not recording anything, he returned to music with an outstanding eponymous album last July, full of lyrics that were simultaneously among the wittiest and the most heartbreaking of the year. Tragically, just before he was about to go on tour with his new music, Berman took his own life.  I'm only just now processing the loss and realizing that the sadness and lonelinesss he sings about in his songs weren't just lyrics to him. I could probably include at least a half dozen songs from Purple Mountains on this list but couldn't contain myself to just one, and after much consideration selected two (Darkness and Cold and Storyline Fever) for this list. Please take a moment to pour one out on the ground for Mr. Berman.  He will be missed.         

I'm fairly proud of the diversity on this list, which in addition to the usual indie rock includes some country (Jack Klatt, Leslie Stevens, Lola Kirke), some power pop (The Rallies and Dan Luke),  some synth pop (Metronomy, Operators, Lower Dens and YACHT) some post-punk (Gauche and Squid), and even goth (Final Body).  The list also includes some hip hop, both old-school (DJ Shadow's Rocket Fuel, which I wish I could somehow make into my official theme song that would play as I entered every room), contemporary (Sampa the Great), and cutting-edge (clipping.). There's even a reggae song in there (Dance In the Sunshine by Hollie Cook).

Animal Collective, who usually can be counted on to make this list, didn't release any new music in 2019, but the collective's Panda Bear is well represented here by his song Dolphin.

80-year-old Mavis Staples (who still sounds as vital as ever) made the list with the blues-rocking civil rights anthem Change.  Hannah Williams is here with the R&B feminist anthem 50-Foot Woman. There's even two gay anthems here, Sufjan Stevens' Love Yourself and Claud's Wish You Were Gay.  

Mythology:  Both Sisyphus (Andrew Bird) and Orpheus (Shawn James) somehow made the list.   

Two songs made the list due to the way they both morph into something else midway through.  Jay Som's Superbike is a great song with a super-catchy guitar hook and probably would have made the list on its own, but somewhere around the 2:45 mark she unfurls a soaring, uplifting guitar solo which elevates the entire song and releases a flood of endorphins in my brain.  Seattle's Great Grandpa does much the same thing but in a different way with Bloom - the song starts as a sort of folk-rock number name-dropping Tom Petty and builds up into a solid rocker before chilling out halfway through and resolving itself with some gorgeous cooing vocals and strings. 

Latinx music is fairly well represented here (Cimafunk, Cineplexx, Lila Downs, Nortec Collective, Y La Bamba, and more). Helado Negro's Pais Nublado is one of my favorite songs of the year, certainly ranking among that  handful of "best of the best," and, like Pool Party but for very different reasons, makes me feel irrationally happy.

Contemporary classical music is represented by The National's Bryce Dessner with the French piano duo of Katia and Marielle Labèque (Haven).  Pan-African world music is represented by Ghanaian xylophone master Isaac Birituro (I Know). 

If you like it louder and harder, Chicago post-metal band Russian Circles made the list with Arluck, and we have two nearly 11-minute songs that might interest you: Frost by the great drone-metal band Sunn O)))) and The Hanging Man by Swans.  And if 11 minutes is still too short for you, the list includes the 21-minute psychedelic rock freak-out Henchlock by Thee Oh Sees.

If you like it quieter and softer, there's no shortage of acoustic singer-songwriters here, including Jessica Pratt (Poly Blue), Julia Jacklin (Body), and VanWyck (Carolina's Anatomy). If it's chill-out lounge music you're after, check out 10,000 Days by Keifer, or Dame Love by Girl Ultra, or Space Is the Place, a Sun Ra cover by Ezra Collective.

I could go on and try to name-drop all 99 artists on the list but you get the idea.  I hope you enjoy the music (I hope you give it a listen) as much as I've enjoyed pulling this list together.  I hope you enjoy  these great songs as much as I did listening to them throughout 2019.

ROM Does It For You Again

After no one knows how many hours of impeachment hearings yesterday morning and afternoon, even creeping well past sunset, the Democratic Presidential Candidate's debate was held here in Atlanta last night.  The ROM doesn't have too much to say about the debate, other than to express some gratitude that there weren't nearly as many attacks on the front-runners as there were at the last debate.  During that last debate, then-front runner Elizabeth Warren had to fend off criticisms and attacks from all comers, but this month's front runner, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, faced far fewer attacks.  While Mayor Pete may come off sometimes as something of a white-bread milquetoast, when attacked he can come right back at his opponent with a surprising ferocity and effectiveness, while still looking as calm and as friendly as Mr. Rogers.  It would be interesting to see how he would fare in a one-on-one debate with bully Dumbledorf Pumpernickel.

That was yesterday.  Today was another gruelling seven hours of hearings and testimony, interrupted by one extended break for a congressional vote on other matters (I went out and got some barbecue during the break).  Today's hearing featured two witnesses - Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, a top aide in the United States Embassy in Kyiv  (turns out that in addition to pronouncing it wrong - "Key-EV" instead of "Keev" - I've also been spelling "Kiev" wrong).

Holmes testified about the now infamous phone call in a Kyiv restaurant between Trump and EU Ambassador Sondland, yesterday's star witness, that was loud enough for him to clearly hear.  It's extraordinarily irresponsible for the president to take a call from a diplomat over an unsecured cell phone, much less in Ukraine where it's well known the Russians are listening in on everything. Anyway, in the call, Holmes testified that Sondland reassured Trump that the new Ukrainian president "loves your ass," and that the new pres was ready to do anything requested, including launch investigations into the Bidens.  Holmes also testified that Sondland later told him that Trump "doesn't give a shit" about Ukraine, but only cares about the "big things," meaning not national security or Ukraine's on-going hot war with Russia, but investigations into his electoral opponents. 

Fiona Hill's testimony was devastating.  Calmly and professionally, she dispelled notions that anyone other than the Russians were behind the interference in the 2016 election, and that theories to the contrary were nothing other than Russian propaganda that only benefits Vladimir Putin. She and Holmes both had the clear understanding that talk about investigations into the corruption of the Ukraine gas company Burisma was just code for investigations into the Bidens, and that Trump himself was behind the campaign to withhold the aid to Ukraine authorized by Congress.  Hill often referred to the investigations-for-a-meeting quid pro quo as a "drug deal," a name given to the scandal by former national security adviser John Bolton ("drug-deal-gate?"). 

Republicans congressmen, unable to refute Hill's testimony, lectured her instead of asking questions and mansplained the so-called "real" reasons behind the hearings.  They used their 5 minutes to recite sound bites about other topics, anything really - Hillary Clinton, the Steele dossier, Hunter Biden's language skills, anything but the scandal at hand. They criticized Holmes for "indescretion" in talking about things that made the president look bad. Creepily, Rep. Devin Nunes, the California congressman with that punchable face, continued to imply that the hearings were all just some sort of  attempt to try and find nude photos of Trump, a nauseating concept the ROM for one refuses to picture in his imagination.   

The good news is that today was the last day of planned testimony, at least until and if there's some sort of breakthrough on Trump's refusal to cooperate and allow Cabinet members to testify.  

The bad news is that nothing new was learned about Trump's character or behavior that's going to change anyone's mind about him.  His actions with regard to Ukraine are clearly treasonous high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment, but nothing was shocking or seemed out of character for Trump - we always knew he was a selfish, cheating, megalomaniac  narcissist who would do things like withhold aid to an ally at war with America's foremost adversary in order to benefit himself.  The findings, even to those supporters not in denial about the facts, aren't going to change anyone's position on him,   Yes, the ROM is confident that the House will vote for impeachment, but sadly the Senate won't vote to remove him from office.  

In six months, we'll have forgotten all this and have moved on to the next news cycle.  

ROM Does It Again, Another Marathon Session Watching Impeachment Hearings

Apparently a masochist, the ROM squandered another of the remaining days of his life sitting on the sofa, eyes glued to the t.v. as he watched today's impeachment hearings.  This time, though, it was worth it, as Gordon Sondland, a Trump supporter who donated $1M for the 2016 inauguration and was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the EU, ratted out his boss.  

As some point, Sondland must have realized that if Trump was willing to let close associates like Roger Stone and Michael Cohen go to jail for him, if he was even now actively throwing Rudy Giuliani under the bus, and as he was already distancing himself from Sondland ("barely know the guy"), that there was no reason not to expect he wouldn't wind up in jail.  Sondland didn't donate one million dollars to go to jail for that son of a bitch, so he finally broke rank, directly contradicted two of his own prior testimonies ("oh, yeah, now I remember") and spilled the beans on our so-called president.

Sondland said that Giuliani had indeed sought a “quid pro quo” - a public statement announcing investigations into widely debunked theories that could benefit Trump politically in exchange for a White House visit. Sondland want on to state that Trump’s demands on Ukraine prioritized the announcement of investigations into the Bidens more than actually completing any investigation. As far as Trump was concerned, Ukraine’s announcement that it was investigating his rival as part of a Ukrainian anti-corruption agenda would be damaging enough.  In other words, Trump wasn't concerned about ending corruption in Ukraine, he just wanted a damaging sound bite on Joe Biden.

Sondland also told Congress that the pressure campaign against Ukraine was directed by Trump personally and that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had signed off on it.  He confirmed that there was a “clear quid pro quo” for a White House meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s president, and that Vice President Mike Pence was told about the link between Ukraine’s military aid and the investigations that Trump wanted. 

Sondland told Congress about other interactions with senior administration officials who have been trying to keep some distance from the scandal.  In addition to Pence and Pompeo, Sondland mentioned chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, dragging him further into the circle of people in the know. He also mentioned former national security adviser John Bolton, testifying that Bolton had called him in late August to request Giuliani’s contact information before a visit to Kiev.

The president, of course, took this all this in stride, calmly and professionally assessing his options. No, who am I kidding?  He lost his shit on live television with an unhinged, impromptu  speech, reading from some of the simplest talking points anyone ever bothered having to write down on paper.  

Right now, Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant defense secretary, and David Hale, the under secretary of state for political affairs, are testifying to Congress, but even the ROM has to rest sometime.  I can only take so much, and after watching seven hours of the Sondland testimony, I'm taking a break right now.  

Tonight is another Democratic Presidential Debate.  This one will be held right here in Atlanta, on Tyler Perry's brand new movie studios on the former Fort McPherson, where I have no small amount of experience.   I'll be watching that tonight, so in the meantime, I need to make some dinner and get ready for the next political marathon.   

ROM Loses Another Whole Day of His Life Watching Impeachment Hearings So You Don't Have To

 

Where did the day go, and can I have a do over?  Starting at 9:00 this morning, the ROM watched over 11 hours of congressional impeachment hearings featuring Lt. Col. ("Don't Call Me Mr.") Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert, Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Mike Pence, Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, Tim Morrison, a former official at the NSC, Adam Schiff's bulging eyeballs, and Jim Jordan's shirtsleeve rants. It wasn't all finally over until after 8:00 at night.

Lt. Col. Vindman, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, wore his Army dress uniform. During his opening statement, he explained how his father had fled Ukraine with the family when Vindman was a toddler. “You made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union," he told his father, "and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” Later, he got a round of applause during his testimony.

Vindman testified that Trump’s request for Ukraine to open investigations into his political rivals should be viewed as demands, not "requests" or "suggestions."  He added that they were also inappropriate and “likely to have significant implications” for national security. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said of the July 25 call. “My worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out.”

I ate my lunch, a store-bought Cuban sandwich and a bag of chips, sitting on the sofa while Ms. Williams testified.  Like Vindman before her, Williams said that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine was damaging to Ukraine’s ability to fight Russian aggression. “Any signal or sign that U.S. support was wavering would be construed by Russia as potentially an opportunity for them to strengthen their own hand in Ukraine,” she testified, repeating what the president of Ukraine had said during a meeting with her boss, Mike Pence.

Volker and Morrison testified in the afternoon.  Both were from the Republican's witness list and the two together in one session represented the GOP's best opportunity to oppose the emerging Democratic narrative of White House wrong-doing.  But Mr. Volker disappointed by portraying himself as an out-of-touch bureaucrat, saying he didn’t know of “any linkage between the hold on security assistance and Ukraine pursuing investigations.” He later said that he considered concerns about the Bidens and the 2016 election to be “conspiracy theories,” and “not things that we should be pursuing as part of our national security strategy,” not exactly what the Republicans had wanted to hear when they invited him.

I had a Caesar's salad for dinner while Mr. Morrison explained how the normal NSC leadership structure had been subverted by Gordon Sondland, a Trump donor appointed ambassador to the European Union.  Morrison said it was referred to internally as “the Gordon problem.” He said he kept track of what Sondland was doing, but "I didn’t necessarily always act on things Gordon suggested he believed were important.”

Read the press - there are far better accounts of what happened today elsewhere.  But as these are the times and this is my record of the times, I'm recording it here for posterity to largely be ignored in years hence, likely even by myself.

From The Sports Desk

The Sports Desk had a good weekend.  

The Georgia Bulldogs survived a scare and held off an Auburn rally to beat the Tigers, 21-14. Georgia is now No. 4 in the AP Top 25 poll, behind LSU, Ohio State and Clemson (in that order), and right above No. 5 Alabama. Auburn fell from No. 12 to No. 16 after the loss.  Despite an embarrassing loss to South Carolina, Georgia clinched the SEC East, and if they win the Conference Championship game against LSU ("if" being the important word there), they'll be back in the NCAA National Championship playoffs again.  Even if they lose to LSU, like every other team in the country has so far this year, if the game is close they'll still have a claim to a playoff spot, as unlike Alabama or Clemson, they'll have beaten three ranked teams this season (Notre Dame, Florida and Auburn).  But first, they have to focus on beating Texas A&M and Georgia Tech.

The Patriots also survived a scare last weekend, coming back from a 10-0 deficit to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 17-10, and you know how I feel about the Eagles.  The Patriots are 9-1 on the season and are tied with San Francisco for the best record in the NFL.

The Celtics beat the Warriors at Golden State, 105-100, on Friday night although to be fair, Golden State in 2019 isn't the same team they were in years past.  On Sunday night, the Celtics 10-game winning streak finally came to an end with a one-point loss to Sacramento, but that 10-game run was a thing of beauty to watch.  The Celtics are 10-2 on the season, a half-game behind the 11-2 Lakers for the best record in the NBA.  

The Sports Desk doesn't follow hockey until the playoffs, but can't help but notice that the Bruins are 12-3-5 so far in this young season.

In the sport of politics, the desk was pleased to see that Team Trump had a bad weekend.  On Friday, Trump shot off one of his mean-girl tweets during the testimony of an American diplomat in his impeachment hearings, and instead of turning public opinion against her, he possibly wound up with another article of impeachment against him (intimidation of witnesses), and she got a highly unusual, possibly unprecedented, standing ovation after her testimony.  On top of that, despite Trump's endorsements and rallies in their states, the Republican candidate for Governor in traditionally red-state Louisiana  lost to the Democratic incumbent, and the Republican in the Kentucky gubernatorial race finally conceded defeat to his Democratic rival this weekend. 

It's been a good weekend.

Dreaming of the Masters

And now for something completely different.

Pre-Arkestra Sun Ra, recording as Sun Ra and the Cosmic Rays, in 1954, the year I was born.

I once thought I knew Sun Ra.  I had seen him on many numerous occasions back in the 70s and 80s, had a lot of vinyl LPs by him and the Arkestra, and had even run into him on the street on a couple of occasions.  But as I mentioned in a previous post, one day back in the pre-digital mid-90s, I was searching through the bins of a record store and came across a 3-CD set called Sun Ra - The Singles. While I knew the El Saturn label produced all manners of LPs, EPs and even singles, many of which were only sold at shows, I had never even considered that a collection of the single-format songs might even exist.  I bought the set and took it home for a listen.

I. Had. No. Idea.  The anthology traces the evolution of Sun Ra's music from his earliest days as an R&B and doo-wop producer to the astro-infinity bandleader of the redoubtable Intergalactic Solar Arkestra.

Daddy's Gonna Tell You No Lie isn't the earliest song in the collection or the most, for lack of a better term, earthbound, but it's probably the best of the early output.  I could completely see this song becoming a hit back in its day if only it had better publicity and support.  

ROM Watches Six More Hours of Impeachment Hearings So You Don't Have To

It was a good day for staying inside today - cold (40s) and rainy, hardly fit for stepping outside at all, a perfect day for staying on the sofa.  The Retired Old Man did just that today and watched all six interrupted hours of the impeachment hearings, this time the testimony of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

The ROM watched all six hours of Wednesday's hearings too, but was so exhausted afterwards that he didn't want to talk much about it.  He has nothing much to say today either, certainly nothing more to add than is already being said all over the media elsewhere, but it was such a dramatic day that he wants to go over it and record it for posterity here in this web log.

The hearings were barely underway when Ms. Yovanovitch testified that she had felt personally threatened, both physically and professionally, by the President's statements and tweets that she was "bad news" and would "go through some things."  A mere few minutes later, it was learned that the so-called President responded by tweeting even more negative comments on her, bizarrely blaming her for the decline of Somalia (where she had once served in her long and distinguished career). Chairman Adam Schiff rightly pointed out that such comments constituted intimidation of a witness (a crime and certainly an impeachable offense in its own right). That pretty much shut Trump up for the day - bullies  usually back off when confronted by someone stronger.

During a break in the proceedings, it was announced that Trump's long-time ally and mentor, Roger Stone, was found guilty in his trial for obstruction of justice and lying to Congress.  Stone, Nixon's former "dirty trickster," who has a large portrait of Nixon tattooed on his back, at least fulfilled one of progressive America's wishes - finally, Nixon will face some jail time. 

In cross-examination, the Republicans kept pretending the hearings were about something, anything, other than Trump's actions with regard to Ukraine.  "Have you ever met Hunter Biden?," they'd ask, or "Did you ever investigate Burisma?" (as if criminal investigations were a part of an ambassador's job description).

The ROM believes that Trump should have been impeached on the day he took the oath of office.  He rents a former Post Office building from the U.S. Government and operates it as Trump Hotel, Washington.  Since he's now the head of the government from which he leases the property, that's a clear conflict of interest.  That he encourages foreign governments to stay there while in D.C. and receives an economic benefit from their visit, he receives something of value, in this case cash money, from foreign nations.  That's a clear violation of the emoluments clause and an impeachable offense right there, and it's gone on unpunished for some three years now. 

The Mueller report lays out clear evidence of multiple counts of obstruction of justice, but Congress lost the political will to pursue that matter further after less-than-exciting testimony by Mueller. Trump University and the Trump Foundation have both been exposed in courts as basically criminal sham operations.  Campaign funds were misappropriated to pay off porn stars after sexual escapades. The list goes on and on, and you should know all this and more if you pay any attention to news other than what's offered on the Fox channel.

There are historic times, my friends.  Pay attention - no matter what happens next, people will be talking about these times for years to come.

Second Line Announced

Back in October, we posted how excited we were about the 2020 lineup for Knoxville's Big Ears festival.  Anthony Braxton!  Terry Riley! We were so excited that we dug deeply into our life savings and shelled out the  money for a top-level, full-access pass for the entire event, as well as four nights in a downtown hotel located in the center of all the action.

Our faith was reaffirmed last Tuesday when the festival announced additional acts.  Poet and punk godmother Patti Smith!, who's ecstatic Horses still sounds as unsettlingly original as it did back in 1975. Electronic musician Fennesz!, who's 2019 album Agora was on our Best of 2019 list for several months before getting bumped off by something new (it's been a good year for music). And ambient wunderkinds A Winged Victory for the Sullen!  

This second-line announcement is good enough to warrant attendance at Big Ears in and of itself, even without the block-buster headliners previously announced.

But part of the charm of Big Ears is that beyond just a forum to hear all our old favorites perform, it's also an opportunity to learn about and discover new artists.  F'rinstance, like us, you may never have heard of Arooj Aftab before, but we can't help but notice that her band, Vulture Prince Ensemble, includes Terry Riley's son, Gyan Riley, and percussionist Shazad Ismaily, who we saw perform two years ago with Marc Ribot.  Here's a pre-Vulture Prince performance by Aftab to whet our appetites and tide us over until next year.

ROM Watches All Six Hours of Impeachment Hearings So You Don't Have To

I watched for so long that frankly I don't even want to talk  about it any more, except to say that I learned after all these years that I've been pronouncing "Kiev" wrong.  The Russian pronunciation is "Key-EV," but in Ukranian, it's pronounced "Keev," and the way you say it demonstrates your affiliation in the transnational dispute.

Okay, I'll add this - the career diplomats who testified today, George Kent and William Taylor, are some pretty impressive individuals, and America's fortunate to have them in our service.  And so is Ukraine (also, now that they're independent and all, we no longer say "The  Ukraine," but simply "Ukraine" like any other free country).

I don't think the people on the opposite sides of this picture like each other very much - at least, they're probably not all going out to Buffalo Wild Wings after the hearings to watch a game together over a bucket of long necks.

The sun's already getting low in the Georgia afternoon sky and the Retired Old Man realizes he's just wasted away one of the remaining days of his life watching all this drama.  It's chilly out there and last night the temperatures dropped to the mid 20s. The ROM can't remember it ever getting this cold this early in the season before - we usually don't drop below freezing until January or late December at the earliest.  Leaves are still on the damned trees, but it's literally freezing out.  

Where's Jim Inhofe claiming the cold temperatures prove climate change is all one big hoax when you need him?

EPA to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules

Any time you fill your car's gas tank and can smell gasoline, you're inhaling some small amount of benzene.  Fortunately, inhaling some small amount of benzene on an occasional basis is not deadly, nor does it necessarily have long-term health risks. But inhaling a lot of benzene on a regular basis will kill you, as benzene is a known human carcinogen.

How do we know this and how do we know how much benzene can be inhaled without any negative health effects?  The answer, it turns out, is that medical researchers and scientists working for the U.S. EPA have been reviewing medical records and academic dose/response studies to gain insight into how much exposure is acceptable and how much is "too much."  These studies and the EPA's conclusions are summarized in peer-reviewed papers and publications which are widely discussed and  frequently questioned and  criticized, and eventually the data is used to come up with estimates of acceptable exposure concentrations.  The EPA keeps an archive of the findings and the derived health-risk factors on line as a public service and to promote good science and sound decision making with regard to chemical exposures.

In the last 10 or so years of my consulting career, I increasingly had to use the results of these studies and their derived acceptable exposure concentrations to calculate clean-up goals for environmental restoration and pollution abatement projects.  These calculations involve a complex synthesis of chemistry, biology, and hydrology, as well as conceptual models of how the population might become exposed to the polluting chemicals.  It's difficult stuff, and it literally took me decades of practice and experience to get to the point where I could make meaningful recommendations for clean-up goals, and to help the parties responsible for the remediation and the government regulators overseeing the projects come to an agreement as to how clean "clean" should be.

Without the medical records and academic dose/response studies, our understanding of the health risks would be severely impaired, and the decisions and recommendations on clean-up goals would become meaningless.  They are the foundational basis for the decision making, and help governments understand if, say, tighter controls are needed at the gas pump to limit cancer deaths associated with exposure to benzene, or inversely, if money is being wasted on unnecessary controls where chemical exposure is not unacceptable.

Enter the Trump administration.  Since these studies, more often than not, suggest greater risks than previously known, they often require businesses and industry to invest more money into pollution control equipment and measures.  So the EPA has proposed new rules that will limit the use of medical records and dose/response studies in determining acceptable chemical exposure concentrations.

EPA's stated reason for the limitations is "transparency."  While the studies and conclusions, as well as the peer-reviewed summaries and determinations of the acceptable chemical-specific exposure concentrations, are public, much of the specific medical data are confidential, as they're derived from doctor-patient records.  The Trump EPA is now stating that's not "transparent" enough, and any conclusions that rely on studies based on confidential medical records cannot be used to set standards or regulate industry.

The result of this is that a great many regulations on the amount of pollutants an industry can emit to the atmosphere, can dump into a river or lake, or allow the public to be exposed to, may be struck down when they come up for renewal.  The proposed new "transparency" bill is also retroactive, which means some regulations may be overturned even before their renewal dates.  

This will lower the cost of environmental compliance for industry, but at the expense of the health and longevity of the American public.  In effect, the burden of the cost of compliance will be shifted from industry's bottom line to our medical expenses and we'll be literally picking up the tab with our lives.  

No one has ever accused the scientific community of falsifying the confidential medical records in order to justify more stringent pollution limits, and there are no known cases of this  occurring.  The need for "transparency" is just industry's alibi for discrediting the regulations, and Trump's EPA is playing along.  Need we point out that this rule was first proposed by discredited former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who as the Attorney General of Oklahoma had previously sued the Agency on numerous occasions for "over-enforcement" before Trump nominated him for the head position at EPA?

This rule, if passed, would be a terrible thing for the health of this nation, and the damage caused may take years to correct, even if a new Administration reverses the rule in 2021.  Fortunately, the rule, after it is published in the Federal Register, will have a 30-day public comment period.  While the EPA can choose to ignore comments or rationalize them away (i.e., "We considered this concern but decided it did not have merit"), it's our best and only shot at preventing this rollback of our protections.  After publication, comments are to be mailed to:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EPA Docket Center, Office of Research and Development Docket
Mail Code 28221T
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004

I urge everyone to look into this matter themselves, and to write EPA to tell them "No."

According to Plato, as well as Epictetus and the Stoic philosophers, reason should be the master of the mind and the guide to our actions and reactions to events of the world.  If we coolly detach ourselves from our emotions and passions and examine each action with our gift of reason, we will surely make the best decisions.

The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume saw it otherwise, stating in 1739 that "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."  To Hume, our emotions have already made our decisions for us, and reason is the tool we use to justify those decisions.

Thomas Jefferson sought to reconcile these two opposing points of view, suggesting that reason and passion are and ought to be like two independent co-rulers of our minds and our actions.  Not surprisingly, the architect of the bicameral Congress also saw the mind as divided by reason and by emotion.

So who's right?

I'm with Hume, as his point of  view most closely aligns with my direct observations of my own mind. When I want to purchase some object, my "research," such as it is, goes into finding justifications and supporting information on why I should buy that thing.  Little attention is paid to the contradictory evidence I come across on why that purchase might not be such a good idea.  When I desire a romantic relationship with someone, I see only their better attributes and its only after the inevitable breakup that I realize that I failed to recognize all those clear warning signs telling me that it wasn't going to work out.

If we're honest with ourselves, we'd see the same is true for most of us in most situations.  We flip a coin to decide between two options.  When the coin flip doesn't go the way we wanted, we decide, "well, best two out of three," and then "best three out of five," and so on until we finally get the result we wanted.

But Hume also said some other things that give me pause as to taking him at his word.  "I  am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites," he wrote in 1753.  "There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white . . . Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men."

Notwithstanding his apparent confusion between races, breeds, kinds and species, Hume's comment is deplorable.  This is the argument of today's white nationalists and alt-right.  This is textbook racism - holding one race superior to another.  If a philosopher or professor were to say this today, out loud where others could hear, he or she would be immediately expelled from the faculty, their books would disappear from reading lists and the curricula of the other professors, and they'd become a pariah (that, and possibly get an appointment in the Trump White House).

I can't condemn Hume's comments about race strongly enough, although I do wonder how much actual contact the Scottish philosopher had with non-white peoples back in 1753, and how much of his opinion was based on literature and what he had heard from others about non-whites.  

But since what he said went well beyond mere political incorrectness, should we discard his other opinions as well?  Should we conclude that reason isn't the slave of the passions, since the man who declared they were was clearly a racist?  Or does our reaction merely illustrate his point, that is, show us how our view of "reason" is in fact affected by our emotional reactions?     

And if we discount Hume and write him out of the textbooks and philosophical literature, what do we do with the commentary and writings of others that are based on his works?  Does the whole house of cards need to come down?

Also, Jefferson famously owned slaves and sexually abused some of them, so there's that to consider.

Epictetus was once a slave himself, so we'll give him a pass (although he's still wrong).

Georgia Rednecks and Their Pick-Up Billboards

In certain parts of the rural South, a tailgate is considered an appropriate forum for expressing one's views.  The owner of this vehicle apparently prefers the Georgia Bulldogs to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.  The Sports Desk thinks THWT stands for "To Hell With Tech."

The Bulldogs recovered from their embarrassing loss to unranked South Carolina by beating Kentucky, then-No.-8-ranked Florida, and, last night, Missouri.  Meanwhile, LSU beat Alabama yesterday (both teams were ranked in the top three - which team was ranked what depends on which poll you were looking at) and Pedo State lost to Minnesota.  

As a result, Georgia moved up one space in the rankings, from No. 6 to No. 5, just below Alabama, who fell to No. 4.

LSU and Ohio State are also in the Top 5, along with Clemson.  Part of the reason that LSU is doing so well is because their quarterback, the talented Joe Burrow, transferred to Baton Rouge from Ohio State.  Part of the reason Ohio State is doing so well is their quarterback, the talented Justin Fields, transferred to Columbus from the University of Georgia.  Part of the reason Clemson is doing so well is their weak-ass schedule.

Georgia has a tough two weeks coming up, with games against No. 13 Auburn and Texas A&M.  The driver of the pickup above is probably already aware that this year's annual game with Georgia Tech will be November 30.