Orange is the new hack

Borrowed from TotallyLooksLike.com

"John Boehner totally looks like an orange M&M."

Credit where credit is due--This image and the idea behind it is from the website TotallyLooksLike.com. I'm not sure when it was first created or by whom, but it seems relevant to this past week in American politics.

When I posted this to Facebook recently, my sister the Journo quickly noted that two may look alike but that they are not the same. The difference between the two? "The orange M&M has more integrity."

I would also like to add that the orange M&M has more self-awareness. At least the orange M&M is honest about being a buffoonish cartoon character.

Now orange you glad you didn't vote in the 2014 midterm elections ?

Day after day

I'm not quite sure why, but this has been my earworm for the last couple of weeks, "Day After Day" by Badfinger, a song I esteem to deserve the label "classic"--unlike so many other offerings from your local "classic rock" radio station.

This was in heavy rotation in Casa Montag circa 1971 or so, mostly because Montag's older, teenaged brothers loved this song, especially Cousin Andy, the middle son. And who can blame them or him? Like I said, classic. Lush and romantic in sound, wistful and plaintive, but with just enough rock-and-roll guitars and drums to provide some power and edge, leading no doubt to bro-bonding among the lovelorn.

I'm describing the song cheekily, I know, but I do think it is praiseworthy. Sure, it's a pop song but it's a poetic, artistic one, a song that makes you feel something, about love, loss, longing, and loneliness. Many pop songs attempt to accomplish this but often fail horribly at it, especially (in my humble opinion) those in the current era.

Usually, most pop tunes get stuck on the theme of love and run the needle into that groove, over and over and over. Longing gets its due as well, as does loss. But loneliness à la carte, let alone the bento box of all four emotions, rarely is listed on the pop menu.

I'm not sure I have any bigger point to this post, other than to say I adore this song, and it's been happily stuck in my brain for some time now. It's a good memory, a recollection of, again, the simplicity of childhood, the warmth of the family hearth, and the comfort of feeling that anything is possible--in 1971 or 2014--even love.

Piggy in the middle

Truly one of my more bizarre childhood recollections: The happy-go-lucky-all-the-way-to-the-slaughterhouse "pre-ham" pigs from the Frosty Morn commercials.

"The height of a piggy's ambition/ from the day he is born [cue stork]/ is to hope he will be good enough [cue halo]/ to be a Frosty Morn!"

I swear I had no idea what these singing pork chops were on about when I used to see this TV commercial circa 1964 or so. Not that it would have mattered so much. They were just so darn cute! Who gave much thought to the their enslaved status, their worshipping of their oppressor, or their imminent execution? Not I. Please pass the bacon.

I kid, I kid. While I think the modern meat business is a dirty one, I do, nevertheless, participate in it--although I do try to buy organic, grass-fed, free-range, small-batch, what-have-you whenever I can, and mostly succeed. But I can afford to do so. Most of the time.

While this commercial is rather macabre (Who was the intended audience? Children who were afraid to eat breakfast meat? Wouldn't the adorable, harmonizing pigs have the opposite effect and swear them off sausage for life?), I can't get as worked up about the pork underbelly of it all as some might. Do a Google search for "frosty morn commercial" and about the third or fourth result is for a blog called "Suicide Food," which, as far as I can tell, is dedicated to decrying the use of cartoon animals to sell food by having them praise themselves on how delicious they will taste.

Yes, that is a strange, strange genre of advertising, one excellently parodied by an old Saturday Night Live cartoon commercial for Cluckin' Chicken--"And then they pluck me and boil me in oil! I'm delicious!" That's how I remember it, at least. Not sure that's ever actually said, but someone obviously picked up on this subtext--animals appraising their tasteworthiness before giving themselves up to the gas oven--and dove undercover into the dark comedy.

But the Frosty Morn pigs are cartoons, not actual pigs hell-bent on self-destruction and self-loathing. Thus it's hard for me to see how they're committing suicide. Technically, others--that is to say, humans--are killing them. Wouldn't then this be more the case of "Martyred Food"? But even still: They are cartoon pigs.

Semantics aside, is there an actual subtext? "Eat meat! The pigs don't mind!" I dunno. Methinks if you're going down that path, you've had one too many literary or social theory classes in grad school--Derrida to the left of me, Gramsci to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with no job prospects and too much time on my mind. Honestly, it's not like kids had to be sold on eating meat in 1964. Pretty much everybody was doing it already, at least in the South, rural or otherwise, where these commercials aired.

Today, sure, I could see the TV ad being all about the subtext--the elfin boy leads the pigs in song signifies (not just "means" but "signifies") that the human dominates the animal and makes the animal perform for his entertainment and yield to his will. It's a form of "porcine othering." Post-colonial agriculture if you will.

But in 1964, the only subtext wasn't even much of a subtext: Buy our brand of meat because our pigs are happy!

That's not oppression. That's capitalism.

Admittedly, the difference is hard to tell somedays.

74 is the new 24

And 53 is the new 13! At least as far as me and my mentality are concerned. Because nothing makes me feel more youthful, carefree, and positive about the future than new music by Giorgio Moroder.

The new single, "74 is the new 24," is out now with a new album--his first in 30 years--due in early 2005.

Thanks to Daft Punk and others, finally Giorgio Moroder's reputation has been rehabilitated, but I knew he was brilliant all along--despite what pseudo-intellectual hacks like Peter Shapiro may have written in Turn the Beat Around. But more about that another day when I have my claws fully sharpened and can rip that book apart in a way that it most truly deserves.

Oh, sure, there were missteps and mistakes, things I didn't particularly care for at the time or even now--for example, the music from his 1976 album, Knights in White Satin, is wonderful but his weird, poorly executed orgasmic "singing" kind of ruins the record for me. Shame that. And I admit to losing interest in some of his later '80s Phil Oakey/"Together in Electric Dreams" stuff, which oddly represents all that I eventually disliked about '80s music--the faux edginess and insincere hipness of it all. More about that another day.

But then he followed it up with the tremendous From Here to Eternity, a record I still play regularly, nearly 40 years later.

Sometimes it's funny what sticks with me all these years later. For example, remembering the first time I heard "Son of My Father" on the radio, listening to the console stereo in my parent's living room, in Eastern North Carolina circa 1972. I recall being fascinated and "funkified," if you will, by that bouncy synth riff--Bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW, bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW--played by some Euro unknown named simply Giorgio.



Move forward to 1977, and I'm blown away by Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There was music before "I Feel Love," and there was music after "I Feel Love," but after "I Feel Love," music was never the same. Hallelujah. Amen.

Who came first, Giorgio or the egg? Kraftwerk or the chicken? I have no idea, but I do know that I think Mr. Moroder was a genius, a popular musical innovator, and one with whom I'm proud to have shared an era, a mood, and some most excellent music.

And now there's even more music to look forward to in 2015.

Talkin' Mac

After a week of politically inspired gnashing of teeth and work-inspired bitterness, perhaps it's time for something musical. My go-to happy place seems to be consistently the sounds of the 1970s. Horrible fashion, dodgy color schemes, no Internet, and stuck in a small town in the back of beyond, yet I feel warm and cozy toward that era.

Pre-adulthood, pre-serious relationships, pre-money woes, pre-responsibilities. About the only things I had to worry over were getting to school on time, finishing my homework, and not looking like a fool every minute of every day in front of my classmates. Part of the foolishness was no doubt conveyed through my taste in then what was considered "not cool" (and probably gay) musical choices, such as ABBA, soul, and disco.

The best years of my life, maybe, at least if nostalgia is our benchmark. I wouldn't want to relive them, though. They were not in any sense my "glory days" in junior high and high school. Years of angst spent not knowing who I was or being able to own up to who I found attractive are not experiences I would want to relive, thanks all the same.

Instead, what I'd like to do is sink back into the "mise en scène" of the '70s, if you will--just luxuriate in the culture, the milieu, the zeitgeist. That's often what I feel nostalgic toward--not the trappings of crap style or tacky furnishings but what we were listening to at the time, what we were talking about, and what I was feeling at the time. So it's more of a me-me-me zeitgeist, but, hey, that's what you pay me for.

So this weekend's "8-track flashback" looks wistfully upon the music of Fleetwood Mac. I am by no means a "classic rock" fan and, similar to how I feel about most country music, would just as soon see it banished from the light, their aficionados forced underground, having to swap shittily recorded mixtapes of every entitled white guy and boringly middle class singer-songwriter-screamer signed to a big deal on Sunset Boulevard.

I'll see you in hell, '70s and '80s hair bands. You're in my sights, pretentious prog rockers. I'll have your heads on a platter with a sprig of parsley on the side, dear d-jays at every Middle America radio station. May the world find you stuck in a Reagan-era shame cycle, forced to just say no to anything new or fun or colorful, while your life spirit trickles down your spine and pools at your feet, in your new home: the sub-basement of a foreclosed Moral Majority McMansion, Any Suburb, USA. With liberty and Tom "Top Gun" Cruise and Melanie "Working Girl" Griffith movies for all.

In other words, welcome to the new 2014, same as the old 2004, 1994, and 1984.

Wooh. So much for steering clear of bitterness and politics. Let's move on, shall we?

* * *

And let's move on to Fleetwood Mac, circa 1975, with "Say You Love Me."



"Say You Love Me" was probably the first Mac song I appreciated at the ripe old age of what? 13? 14? For me, it was probably less about the lyrics (and for me it almost always is less about the lyrics) and more about the sound--the voice, the melody, and, yes, even the banjos. How can you not love the harmonies and happiness of this tune? I liked "Over My Head" and "Rhiannon" as well, but this is such a sprightly, poppy little thing, so evocative of that London-meets-Los Angeles folk/rock/pop/country sound that Mac had in the mid-1970s. I want to go back in time and hear it play on the radio of my parents' AMC Hornet once again. Those were the days, my friend, we thought that American Motors would never get bought out by Renault, of all enterprises, just a few years later.

* * *



When thinking about Stevie Nicks' role in the Mac, it's hard to pick a favorite from among songs. There is "Rhiannon," "Dreams," "Gypsy," and "Sara" to choose from. Along with "Landslide," "Gold Dust Woman," "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," or "Edge of Seventeen." The wealth is overwhelming, practically poignant.

"Sara" was on the turntable a lot during college, as was the quirky "Tusk." "Rhiannon" came out when I was still trying to figure out Stevie Nicks and whether I liked her voice or not. But "Dreams" edges out the others. It reminds me of a good era in my little hometown. I think my brother Frank owned the album (or maybe it was my brother Charlie or my sister Barbara?). It spun on the turntable a lot at our house in the spring of 1977.

At least I hope we had the album and not the 8-track tape . . . fade, beep, reprise.

* * *

Fast forward to 1979 and "Tusk."


A really bold, odd choice for a single, but a brilliant one at that. More like a soundscape, the soundtrack to some frenetic, tension-filled scene on celluloid--a chase scene or a bank heist gone wrong--than a 3-minute-and-30-second pop song. And god bless 'em for that.

I could take or leave some of the songs on which Lindsey Buckingham was featured prominently. To this day, I can't hear "Don't Stop" without thinking of how it's been abused by certain politicians wanting to appeal to (read: fleece) progressives and baby-boomers (an act that really doesn't require co-opting good music), but Lindsey really added a lot to the group. Who could imagine a group performing something as lush and radio-friendly as "Over My Head" in 1975 creating something as experimental and sonic as "Tusk" in 1979? With a marching band no less.

Plus you gotta love Stevie Nicks' expert twirling of a baton in the official video. I'm sure that's a moment when the British members of the group started to rethink the whole Southern California experiment. "My god. We're in the middle of a baseball field. There's a university marching band playing. And our little 'Welsh witch' is twirling an effin' baton! How did we get so lost?"

Faust was wrong. There are plenty of things to regret.

* * *

Lindsey has always bugged me for some reason. Perhaps in part because he was and remains a very handsome, self-assured (possibly too much so) man. He was gorgeous as a '70s hippie and luscious as an '80s hipster--and, in my warped mind, he always seemed completely aware of this, which is a major turnoff for me. Not that Mr. B. would be perturbed by this confession, of course. Not that this confession is based on anything other than gut and a few TV appearances.

But ol' Bucky was a terrific musician, writer, and singer. Just maybe not a great performer.



This is an incredibly overwrought performance by both Lindsey and Stevie. But "The Chain" is a brilliant song, so all is forgiven, Lindsey. Just don't do it again, please. Again, for Chris, John, and Mick, another bell must have rung, another penny must have dropped.

* * *

I could never stand most of the Mac's '80s videos--I remember describing them in an essay I crafted for my non-fiction writing class in college as "a fine example of the symbolic wallow that is MTV" or some such.



This is the only one that I can just barely tolerate, "Little Lies" from 1987 or so. It gives me just enough mental respite and perverse fascination that I hesitate before I kick in the screen of my 30-year-old cathode ray-tubed console TV set.

And yet, I take issue with the video, nonetheless. To me it looks as if the band just happened upon a Tweeds catalog photo shoot and decided to add the leftover clothes to their own wardrobes. Just prior to the Tweeds shoot, Duran Duran had been on set making their own video--so Stevie, Lindsey, and Christine borrowed some makeup and spackled it on hurriedly before anyone could stop them.

That or the entire video was filmed as a promo for Glamour Shots. Whatever, everyone loses.

Nonetheless, while "Everywhere" from the same album, Tango in the Night, is probably my favorite Mac song ever, "Little Lies" features a wonderful mixture of all three singers--McVie, Nicks, and Buckingham.

* * *

And, finally, this is what I mean about Fleetwood Mac's dreadful, artsy-fartsy videos--



Honestly, dude, Whiskey-Tango in the night-Foxtrot. Who thought this was a good idea? Who allowed this to happen?

Personally, I think it was Stevie and Lindsey. Christine, Mick, and John on their own would never have approved this storyboard. "Let's just do it, please, so that they'll both shut up, alright?" I can hear Christine saying, while Mick and John sob silently into their sleeves.

* * *

With that, we conclude today's psychic flashback. Surprising to some that I could enjoy Fleetwood Mac so much, but it's all true.

Just be grateful I owned up to it--and opted for this nostalgia trip rather than the other one in my head this week--mid-'70s British soul with the likes of Tina Charles, Jesse Green, and Biddu on heavy rotation.

But never say never . . .

Choosy mothers choose riffs

I'm not gonna spread for no roses!

U.S. politics and elections: It's just like being on The Bachelorette! You get to choose from an all-male, mostly all-white cast, hoping against hope that you end up with the least sleazy one in the bunch.

Or at the one who is less likely to be brought up on criminal charges during your brief time together.

Better luck in 2016, y'all.

* * *

* * *

I had another odd dream last night. I dreamt I was overseas trying to call home to the U.S., but the call wouldn't go through. I kept getting the same message over and over again: "The number you have reached has been disconnected or is not in service at this time."

Funny. Just like many of our voters and elected officials.

* * *
 

How you can bring the economy back from the brink and finally get a national healthcare bill passed and yet be pilloried and shunned by your own party is something only the Democrats could manage.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory once again.

* * *

Everybody, at least in the American media, keeps talking about the takeaway from yesterday's election as being all about big money and its impact on democracy.

I can't really disagree with that, but for me, there's another, equally worrisome takeaway. And it's this: You lose the presidency, don't control the Senate, but own the House of Representatives until our candy-ass Democrats can bother to challenge Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts after the next census. You do not want to compromise with the party in power. You only want what you want.

Later, you lose the presidency, now control the Senate, and continue to own the House of Representatives. You now say you want to compromise, but really? How stupid do you think we are?

Yes, I know a grand portion of our electorate just proved that we're mighty mighty stupid, able to shoot ourselves in the foot and the head at the same time (gotta love our those no gun controlling ways!). But do give us a little credit: We know you are not about to compromise now.

Perhaps in the future you will win the presidency again, control the Senate, and own the House. And you still won't want to compromise.

I really don't know how you do it. It reminds me of that old slogan about the South losing the Civil War but winning the peace, being humiliated on the field of battle yet someone controlling domestic politics and race relations through, first, segregation, then later, institutionalized racism and uber-conservative, anti-social safety net policymaking.

Really, it's childish and transparent, easy to see happening yet horrible to watch. And yet you manage to do it again and again, and no one ever does a damn thing about it.

* * *

It's 9:53 p.m. Eastern the day after the election, and I've already yelled my first "STFU Mitch McConnell!" at my TV.

Courage, comrades. It is going to be a long two years until the next election.