Trying to get through the morning news this AM is an exercise in "duh"-factor avoidance. Maybe it's the Ahmadinejad halo effect. First, post-launch for the Halo 3 video game. Lines in LA and New York looked as bad as iPhone cult queues, and the front of the line was dominated by people in their 20s and 30s. I've resigned myself to this being the new, "mature" gaming market -- after all, the only sector of my own company doing well is the sector serving the gaming community. But standing in line all night for the privilege of buying a VIDEO GAME??!! And I thought Apple had turned people into mindless consumer robots. All hail X Box, PS3, Wii, the sole determinants of the new American economy! Feh.
Now it's on to those pesky illegal aliens. The New York Times gave us a front-page story about how the town of Riverside, N.J. set ordinance after ordinance to limit employers hiring those of questionable status, only to see two-thirds of the businesses downtown get shuttered. Gee whiz. Do you think it's actually possible illegals might have an overall positive effect on the economy? Is it possible Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh were actually feeding people a load of crap? Nah, it's like Riverside's former mayor Charles Hilton said, the ones that closed were just the bad businesses. Too bad they were sustaining the town.
Listen to me, I'm starting to sound like that grumpy crone Joni Mitchell on her new album Shine. Pay no attention, I'll grab some Prozac to counteract the stupid pills.
7 comments:
Funny you mentioned Joni. I was thinking about her poem/lyrics to one of the songs in the new album that was published in last week's New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/09/17/070917po_poem_mitchell
"Bad dreams are good in the great plan." It's pretty hard not to be grumpy.
Don't think the whole URL is visible. Here's the poem/lyrics:
Bad Dreams Are Good
by Joni Mitchell
A red hawk rides the sky
I guess I should be happy
Just to be alive
But
We have poisoned everything
And oblivious to it all
The cell-phone zombies babble
Through the shopping malls
While condors fall from Indian skies
Whales beach and die in sand
Bad Dreams are good
In the Great Plan
And you cannot be trusted
Do you even know you are lying?
It’s dangerous to kid yourself
You go deaf, dumb, and blind
You take with such entitlement
You give bad attitude
You have No grace
No empathy
No gratitude
You have no sense of consequence
Oh, my head is in my hands
Bad Dreams are good
In the Great Plan
Before that altering apple
We were one with everything
No sense of self and other
No self-consciousness
But now we have to grapple
With this man-made world backfiring
Keeping one eye on our brother’s deadly selfishness
Everyone’s a victim here
Nobody’s hands are clean
There’s so very little left of wild Eden Earth
So near the jaws of our machines
We live in these electric scabs
These lesions once were lakes
We don’t know how to shoulder blame
Or learn from past mistakes
So who will come to save the day?
Mighty Mouse. . . ? Superman. . . ?
Bad Dreams are good
In the Great Plan
In the dark
A shining ray
I heard a three-year-old boy say
Bad Dreams are good
In the Great Plan
Reminds me a little bit of "The Boho Dance," one of my all-time-fave Joni songs.
I dunno that one.
"The Boho Dance", Joni Mitchell, 1974, from "Hissing of Summer Lawns"
Down in the cellar in the Boho zone
I went looking for some sweet inspiration, oh well
Just another hard-time band
With Negro affectations
I was a hopeful in rooms like this
When I was working cheap
It's an old romance-the Boho dance
It hasn't gone to sleep
But even on the scuffle
The cleaner's press was in my jeans
And any eye for detail
Caught a little lace along the seams
And you were in the parking lot
Subterranean by your own design
The virtue of your style inscribed
On your contempt for mine
Jesus was a beggar, he was rich in grace
And Solomon kept his head in all his glory
It's just that some steps outside the Boho dance
Have a fascination for me
A camera pans the cocktail hour
Behind a blind of potted palms
And finds a lady in a Paris dress
With runs in her nylons
You read those books where luxury
Comes as a guest to take a slave
Books where artists in noble poverty
Go like virgins to the grave
Don't you get sensitive on me
'Cause I know you're just too proud
You couldn't step outside the Boho dance now
Even if good fortune allowed
Like a priest with a pornographic watch
Looking and longing on the sly
Sure it's stricken from your uniform
But you can't get it out of your eyes
Nothing is capsulized in me
On either side of town
The streets were never really mine
Not mine these glamour gowns
That's one of her albums I don't have, obviously. I need to get the new one.
I think her absolute best period was Summer Lawns/Hejira. Better than Blue, Ladies of the Canyon, etc. Then by Don Juan and Mingus she started getting a little too haughty. Most critics are really giving a mixed, if not harsh, view of the new one, which I partially agree with, for reasons I laid out in another one of them there blog items somewhere...
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