We went to Storm King.
I told you my mother was a culture vulture. You need to have plans, you need to DO something, watching television during the day was illegal in our house, as is staying home and relaxing. But when we get back from the day's activities my mother does have a stiff vodka, my dad owned a liquor store, their drink of choice used to be the whiskey sour, as for telling my mother how much to imbibe, in December she's gonna be 91!
And all of her friends are dead. Except for Franki in Westport and Jene in California and Judy in the building. Oh, she has other friends, but the inner circle has passed, but my mother soldiers on. But instead of the weekends being full of activity, now they're quiet.
But she gets around. Despite needing a walker and a wheelchair. She's GAME!
So yesterday we went to the Yale Center for British Art, it just reopened, and...
I've told you I'd be cool with living the rest of my life in a museum. In this case, it wasn't the art so much as the STORIES! It started in the 1500s, and the people...
Looked just like you and me.
Talk about perspective!
We think we're important, we think what we're doing counts, and then you read about the guy who spent his whole life in pursuit of marrying the queen. He didn't make it. And the teenagers getting married. Most people died in their fifties, but they had huge estates and you contemplate their life and you realize they were unaware of mobile phones and the internet, but otherwise it was the same, they worked, they screwed and they gossiped, and they drank, there was a lot of drinking, and if the people in the paintings weren't wearing different clothing, you'd swear you knew them.
And when we got back from New Haven we stopped at Pepe's to eat, that's right, Pepe's Pizza, considered the best in the land by many, and of course we had the white clam, and Stanton joined us.
Stanton was a year ahead, in my sister's class, but he didn't leave town, he stayed here, he's the city attorney and...
He knows everybody and everything.
Reminds me of my dad. It's what's going on beneath the surface that matters, that explains it all.
And we talked about the musicians who live in town, like Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, and all the acts that now come to FTC, the Fairfield Theatre, and the billionaires too, like Ray Dalio, and then we talked...
About people we knew.
Some dead, some alive, all of whose lives have been written, now that we are this age.
That's one weird thing, you stop at the grocery store and you don't recognize the cashier, for years I did.
And so many are retired...
And I want to work forever, but sometimes your health does not allow this. And at what point do you give up anyway, when it's too much effort to keep up, when you don't like the new music and no one catches the references and you're better off hanging with the people you know until...
Felice's mother is 93, she copes by hanging with the younger set. She's resigned from some boards, but she's out seemingly every night, it's amazing.
But so many of my friends can no longer work in the music business. And so many of my friends have limited retirement accounts, if they have them at all, and just like every generation before us, we thought we'd never get old, but we did.
So today we went to Storm King. I studied it in college. That's where the David Smith sculptures are. We were allowed to park right up close, because of my mother's frailty, and it bugs me that the handicapped spots are always full, of wankers beating the system, hell, just getting my mother out of the car and into her wheelchair is a production, if you saw it you'd never needlessly park in one of those blue spots again, but that's what America has turned into, a selfish state, then again, it's amazing how people will take the time to open doors.
So Storm King is a sculpture garden. Across the Hudson, in New York, and if you go there you'll want to move there. It's kinda like that Arlo Guthrie song "Massachusetts," or "Sweet Baby James" and that line about the Berkshires, even though it's in New York, but no one would know the difference if they didn't have signs at the border, all the landscape is the same, rolling, hilly.
And speaking of rolling, they have this one land sculpture by Maya Lin that resembles waves. Another one that is a stone wall, going across the hill and dale. And you remember that the world runs on art and physical beauty, but too many are chasing the buck.
We took a tram around the property, seeing one sculpture after another, and on the hill are the David Smiths, which is what they started with, they showed slides of them in art class, but that was forty five years ago.
I don't want to go back, I don't ever want to be in school.
And I remember wanting to escape, to the west.
But the west is new, and spread out. In the east there are a ton of attractions mere minutes away. Whereas once you've been to Santa Barbara, San Diego and Big Bear, you've burned out L.A.
And there's so much history. And the roads are curvy and the trees are close and it all feels so intimate, everything looks good in hindsight, even the dead of winter when you stayed inside and drank hot chocolate, but...
I don't know what but. You make choices in life and you end up where you do, there are no do-overs. And you lose time, you wake up and your life is set in stone, but you always wonder, should I have done it differently?
And on the way back the app took us across the countryside, avoiding the highways, and you see the ponds and the cows and the churches and your brain starts to spin tales, you feel warm and fuzzy, alive.
And then we stopped at Aspetuck Farms, so I could buy Macoun apples, a fall staple in Connecticut. I did, but they were out of cider, and the clerk implored me to try one of the free Sweet 16s, and it tasted better than any apple I've ever eaten in California, then again, everything does when you buy it at the farm, when it's about local consumption as opposed to agribusiness.
Not that I want to denigrate the future, there's some b.s. in the "Times" today about traveling without a phone. I'm sick and tired of self-satisfied boomers wanting to jet back to the past, sure, the future is imperfect, but it's so much better. Hell, remember the cars, that used to break all the time? We may not have vent windows, but automobiles all come with air-conditioning and as I write this I remember how people bug me, run on emotion instead of fact, are set in their ways, which is one of the reasons I moved to L.A., where they tear down the past before you get used to it, it's all evanescent, it's all in motion, you just grab on and ride, no one's in your business and you feel free.
And freedom's where it's at.
But on the east coast there's context, and meaning, and...
I'm gonna miss it.
https://britishart.yale.edu
http://stormking.org
http://www.pepespizzeria.com
https://www.facebook.com/Aspetuck-Apple-Barn-1454761178082295/
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Friday 20 October 2017
Wednesday 18 October 2017
Connecticut
I'm so high on cookies it's INSANE!
I sat down for the Wrap Up show and there was a bag with a note and I figured it was a gift from the Stern show but it turned out to be a bag full of Levain chocolate chip cookies, delivered by Judy Tint, and it made me so happy. I ate two for lunch and two after dinner and now I may never sleep again, high on sugar. The cookies are akin to cakes, thick, and the chocolate chocolate chip ones are to die for, I'd like to say you can stop eating them, but you can't.
And a lot of people recommended their personal haunts in the city, and I'd like to try them all out, but alas I'm now in Connecticut, my homeland, where it is so...
Green.
That's right, the leaves have not turned yet, or just barely. But if you live in Los Angeles Connecticut is a revelation, you take it for granted when you live here, but the foliage makes you feel warm and alive, cocooned, like the planet was made to be inhabited by people.
And my mother lives in an apartment on the sixth floor and from her balcony you can look over the Sound all the way to Long Island, and this may not mean anything to you if you're not from the area, but once upon a time the Hamptons were not hip and the thought of taking the ferry to the Island...wasn't exactly unthinkable, but you didn't do it. This was before I went to summer camp and found out so many lived on that island known as Long, found out about the Five Towns, and once again you either know what I'm talking about or you don't. And the truth is the east coast is one big club, with its own references, a bunch of culture, and if you live here it's hard to move anywhere else, but some of us escape, to Florida, where the humidity will kill you, or Los Angeles, where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive, which is just phony enough for me. Hell, where I went to college never comes up in California, whereas in the east it's a badge of honor.
So I woke up and went to the Stern show.
One thing you've got to know about New York is the security. You can't make your way into any building without credential. And the elevators have no buttons, you can go to your floor and only your floor, and this used to seem like overkill but in this era of Las Vegas, of mass shootings every week, it's good to be safe, hell, you get off the elevator and you still can't get into Sirius, there's a guard, you've got to be buzzed in.
So I was greeted by Steve Brandano, Stern's young music expert. He talked about loving the Dead with Mayer, going to six of Phish's Baker's Dozen, and liking Daniel Glass's Jade Bird and Durand Jones, I love picking people's brains, seeing what they're excited about, that's where I get my best tips.
And then the show ended and we were ushered into the Wrap Up studio and that's when I realized I was out of energy. I started to talk and...
I wasn't gonna blow my big moment, was I?
Reminded me of the bar exam. The multistate. Whose cutoff point is higher in California than anywhere else. When I took the bar far under 50% passed it. And they say you guess on the multistate, multiple choice exam, BUT NOT BOB LEFSETZ!
Oh yes I did. It was about ninety minutes into an all day exam and I realized...
I was flunking. So I went to the bathroom, sat on the pot, pulled myself together, and passed.
So during the first commercial break I ate an energy bar, got up my gumption and...
Ran with it.
Gary wanted to talk vinyl. I told him I had all mine and was all for it as long as the records were originally recorded analog, i.e. on tape, otherwise it's a fetish, hell, many people buy vinyl who don't even own turntables!
And they asked me to beat up on Rahsaan for not liking the Beatles.
But I couldn't. You see it's a white boomer thing. And Rahsaan is black and thirty two and grew up in a household of funk. Everybody's s ethnocentric, everybody's so self-satisfied. But the truth is there's a generation gap as wide as the one in the sixties, been happening for years, when you listen to the Spotify Top 50 and laugh, the joke is on you, there's a culture in hip-hop, boosted not only by music but the clothing, and the oldsters just can't understand it, and since white boomers have power they think they're right, that their music rules, but they're wrong.
Then again, Rahsaan loved "Led Zeppelin II" and the Beatles and the classic acts drove the culture in a way hip-hop does not, because we had so few outlets and we all listened to the same ones, radio ruled, and I'll argue the old music was better because in today's income inequality world the middle class does not go into the industry but we can discuss that amongst ourselves.
And the thing about the Stern show is it's a family. And you feel included. We talked about Sal and Ronnie and it was like talking about someone you go to school with, we all want to belong and being at the Stern show feels like home, and you never want to leave.
But ultimately I did.
And I went out to this restaurant Whelk with my mother, in Westport, I Yelped it, had eight oysters and a lobster dish, you can't get this variety of oysters in the west, one from Norwalk, right next door, and another from Connecticut and the rest from Massachusetts! And they were all delicious. Did I tell you about the time Marc Reiter and I went out for dinner and ordered eighty oysters? Your man Luke may be able to eat fifty eggs, but we can eat...
And Paul Newman lived in Westport and the Post Road is the same but different. The Chinese restaurant is gone, but Gold's Delicatessen is still there. And you drive past the haunts that were a staple of your youth, when you were not only young, but ignorant, yet thought you knew everything, and you feel a sense of connection and loss all at the same time. This is my life, but I know I'm never returning here anymore.
That's what's funny. All the things you leave behind, they're not in the distant past. You run into an old love and the sinews start forming instantly, what brought you together is still there, and you have to hang for a while to remember what pulled you apart.
And today Gord Downie died. I knew him. He was an artist more than a rock star. But I never thought he'd pass before me, at fifty three. Canada is mourning and New Orleans is sinking and my mother is still living when almost all of her friends have passed. Weekends are quiet, but she fills up the days, she's game, she uses a walker but she gets around, went to a play at Yale Rep this afternoon and she's got me totally scheduled for the next two days and it's like she'll be here forever but I know she won't and I don't want to contemplate this.
And high on cookies I decided to tackle four hundred and fifty e-mails and in the middle I found one from Jimmy Kimmel, inviting me to the taping today, with Howard, but I left Sirius straight for Connecticut and missed out.
Jimmy did the show and then went to see Springsteen.
I saw Springsteen at the Bottom Line back in '74, when boasting about seeing an act early was a thing, before Bruce was a thing, after I became enamored of "The Wild, the Innocent..."
But we're neither wild nor innocent anymore. We tend to be complacent and living on our laurels. Hell, Bruce Springsteen is selling nostalgia. A notch on the belt for supposed fans. But the truth is he not busy being born is busy dying and it's Dylan who's the beacon, who never gives us what we want but follows his own muse and I no longer want to go but I get it, you've got to keep pushing the envelope, keep searching, keep going when everybody else gives up, not to win, but to be happy, for the stimulation, embrace the new and unknown and you'll have disappointments but also the experiences of a lifetime.
So I cannot go to sleep. For some reason Henley's "End of the Innocence" keeps running through my head, I don't know why, but it's true, like that old Canadian band once sang, I'm an adult now, I'm responsible for my own life, I've got to go where I wanna go, do what I wanna do, with whoever I want to do it with...
And so should you...
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I sat down for the Wrap Up show and there was a bag with a note and I figured it was a gift from the Stern show but it turned out to be a bag full of Levain chocolate chip cookies, delivered by Judy Tint, and it made me so happy. I ate two for lunch and two after dinner and now I may never sleep again, high on sugar. The cookies are akin to cakes, thick, and the chocolate chocolate chip ones are to die for, I'd like to say you can stop eating them, but you can't.
And a lot of people recommended their personal haunts in the city, and I'd like to try them all out, but alas I'm now in Connecticut, my homeland, where it is so...
Green.
That's right, the leaves have not turned yet, or just barely. But if you live in Los Angeles Connecticut is a revelation, you take it for granted when you live here, but the foliage makes you feel warm and alive, cocooned, like the planet was made to be inhabited by people.
And my mother lives in an apartment on the sixth floor and from her balcony you can look over the Sound all the way to Long Island, and this may not mean anything to you if you're not from the area, but once upon a time the Hamptons were not hip and the thought of taking the ferry to the Island...wasn't exactly unthinkable, but you didn't do it. This was before I went to summer camp and found out so many lived on that island known as Long, found out about the Five Towns, and once again you either know what I'm talking about or you don't. And the truth is the east coast is one big club, with its own references, a bunch of culture, and if you live here it's hard to move anywhere else, but some of us escape, to Florida, where the humidity will kill you, or Los Angeles, where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive, which is just phony enough for me. Hell, where I went to college never comes up in California, whereas in the east it's a badge of honor.
So I woke up and went to the Stern show.
One thing you've got to know about New York is the security. You can't make your way into any building without credential. And the elevators have no buttons, you can go to your floor and only your floor, and this used to seem like overkill but in this era of Las Vegas, of mass shootings every week, it's good to be safe, hell, you get off the elevator and you still can't get into Sirius, there's a guard, you've got to be buzzed in.
So I was greeted by Steve Brandano, Stern's young music expert. He talked about loving the Dead with Mayer, going to six of Phish's Baker's Dozen, and liking Daniel Glass's Jade Bird and Durand Jones, I love picking people's brains, seeing what they're excited about, that's where I get my best tips.
And then the show ended and we were ushered into the Wrap Up studio and that's when I realized I was out of energy. I started to talk and...
I wasn't gonna blow my big moment, was I?
Reminded me of the bar exam. The multistate. Whose cutoff point is higher in California than anywhere else. When I took the bar far under 50% passed it. And they say you guess on the multistate, multiple choice exam, BUT NOT BOB LEFSETZ!
Oh yes I did. It was about ninety minutes into an all day exam and I realized...
I was flunking. So I went to the bathroom, sat on the pot, pulled myself together, and passed.
So during the first commercial break I ate an energy bar, got up my gumption and...
Ran with it.
Gary wanted to talk vinyl. I told him I had all mine and was all for it as long as the records were originally recorded analog, i.e. on tape, otherwise it's a fetish, hell, many people buy vinyl who don't even own turntables!
And they asked me to beat up on Rahsaan for not liking the Beatles.
But I couldn't. You see it's a white boomer thing. And Rahsaan is black and thirty two and grew up in a household of funk. Everybody's s ethnocentric, everybody's so self-satisfied. But the truth is there's a generation gap as wide as the one in the sixties, been happening for years, when you listen to the Spotify Top 50 and laugh, the joke is on you, there's a culture in hip-hop, boosted not only by music but the clothing, and the oldsters just can't understand it, and since white boomers have power they think they're right, that their music rules, but they're wrong.
Then again, Rahsaan loved "Led Zeppelin II" and the Beatles and the classic acts drove the culture in a way hip-hop does not, because we had so few outlets and we all listened to the same ones, radio ruled, and I'll argue the old music was better because in today's income inequality world the middle class does not go into the industry but we can discuss that amongst ourselves.
And the thing about the Stern show is it's a family. And you feel included. We talked about Sal and Ronnie and it was like talking about someone you go to school with, we all want to belong and being at the Stern show feels like home, and you never want to leave.
But ultimately I did.
And I went out to this restaurant Whelk with my mother, in Westport, I Yelped it, had eight oysters and a lobster dish, you can't get this variety of oysters in the west, one from Norwalk, right next door, and another from Connecticut and the rest from Massachusetts! And they were all delicious. Did I tell you about the time Marc Reiter and I went out for dinner and ordered eighty oysters? Your man Luke may be able to eat fifty eggs, but we can eat...
And Paul Newman lived in Westport and the Post Road is the same but different. The Chinese restaurant is gone, but Gold's Delicatessen is still there. And you drive past the haunts that were a staple of your youth, when you were not only young, but ignorant, yet thought you knew everything, and you feel a sense of connection and loss all at the same time. This is my life, but I know I'm never returning here anymore.
That's what's funny. All the things you leave behind, they're not in the distant past. You run into an old love and the sinews start forming instantly, what brought you together is still there, and you have to hang for a while to remember what pulled you apart.
And today Gord Downie died. I knew him. He was an artist more than a rock star. But I never thought he'd pass before me, at fifty three. Canada is mourning and New Orleans is sinking and my mother is still living when almost all of her friends have passed. Weekends are quiet, but she fills up the days, she's game, she uses a walker but she gets around, went to a play at Yale Rep this afternoon and she's got me totally scheduled for the next two days and it's like she'll be here forever but I know she won't and I don't want to contemplate this.
And high on cookies I decided to tackle four hundred and fifty e-mails and in the middle I found one from Jimmy Kimmel, inviting me to the taping today, with Howard, but I left Sirius straight for Connecticut and missed out.
Jimmy did the show and then went to see Springsteen.
I saw Springsteen at the Bottom Line back in '74, when boasting about seeing an act early was a thing, before Bruce was a thing, after I became enamored of "The Wild, the Innocent..."
But we're neither wild nor innocent anymore. We tend to be complacent and living on our laurels. Hell, Bruce Springsteen is selling nostalgia. A notch on the belt for supposed fans. But the truth is he not busy being born is busy dying and it's Dylan who's the beacon, who never gives us what we want but follows his own muse and I no longer want to go but I get it, you've got to keep pushing the envelope, keep searching, keep going when everybody else gives up, not to win, but to be happy, for the stimulation, embrace the new and unknown and you'll have disappointments but also the experiences of a lifetime.
So I cannot go to sleep. For some reason Henley's "End of the Innocence" keeps running through my head, I don't know why, but it's true, like that old Canadian band once sang, I'm an adult now, I'm responsible for my own life, I've got to go where I wanna go, do what I wanna do, with whoever I want to do it with...
And so should you...
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Tuesday 17 October 2017
Me On The Wrap Up Show
That's right, tomorrow, Wednesday, I will be sitting down with John Hein and Gary Dell'Abate to discuss the day's Howard Stern show and more. And either this rings your bell or it doesn't. Either you're a fan of Howard or you're not. But Howard is the king of his world, which includes late night TV, it's the number one get in celebrity interviews, so...
I'm excited.
Tonight I went to Morton's for the Lead Edge Capital dinner. Pretty fascinating, one is rarely in such a group, people who've made it in their various fields and now have money to invest. The M&A attorney whose son started "The Source," the CFO of Dell who opened his own bank in Austin, the guy who started Playlist.com and even a headhunter for hedge funds, who knew there was such a thing?
Although Ilana Weinstein does have an undergraduate degree from Penn and an MBA from Harvard. Not that she's airy. Once you're in the club everybody's relaxed, but everybody's a self-starter, everybody saw the light and went their own way, it's kinda like the music business before it was codified, before they taught it at school, Jay Marciano dropped out of college to open a music store and then became a concert promoter, while still a student Irving Azoff represented WLS deejays and even flew to New York for an ultimately unproductive meeting with Morris Levy, Mo Ostin was running finance for Frank Sinatra before he became a label head, and the hedge fund/investment world is still a little wild despite now getting so much attention.
Mitchell Green, now thirty six, started Lead Edge Capital seven years ago. He had a hunch that Alibaba was a winner, he was right. But before that he raised $17 mil for a friend's business that turned into 80, quite a return, but Mitchell BELIEVED! That's akin to a music manager, or the old independent record company heads, never forget, Jerry Moss started out as a promotion man.
And after a bit of steak and wine, the discussion opens up. But it's not about the content, but the business. Kinda like in music, only in music the discussion is how many tickets Taylor Swift will sell, in this case it's about whether Netflix stock will go up or down. I was sitting next to an analyst, who'd spoken at the conference, sounds a bit like school, you've got to grind it out for quarterly numbers, they work hard for the money, and if you don't like it...
And I like being in New York.
Everybody in L.A. wears sunglasses. But in New York the buildings are so tall and block so much sun that I was the only one walking with shades.
And everybody does walk. It's good exercise. But when you bump into someone and excuse yourself you realize they're not paying attention, do this in L.A. and the person turns around and glares, in New York they just soldier on.
And they talk to you. This is what I hate about Los Angeles, the lack of banter. Everywhere you go, people start up a conversation, it's silent in the elevator in Los Angeles, but not in New York.
And speaking of elevators, I got into a conversation with a young woman from Mexico City. Her family spends summers in San Diego and Vail. You see there's a rich circuit, and there's tons of dough in Mexico, but most people are unaware, if you only saw how the other half lived, I went to Jerry Perenchio's house and remarked that if everybody saw the property there'd be riots in the streets, it's literally the "Beverly Hillbillies" house, there's a long access road in Bel-Air, and it just went on the market for $350 million, and you don't know even know who Jerry Perenchio was.
He was an agent, and so much more.
And he hated publicity.
But the point is most business is not like entertainment, the movers and shakers are not in it for the glory, so you've got no idea who they are or what they're doing or...
So it's fascinating to be let inside.
I'm leaving tomorrow, going to visit my mother after Howard, so for those of you who e-mailed me about getting together, mea culpa, I wanted to do so much of it, but not as much as I wanted to go the cookie place recommended by attorney Judy Tint, the Levaine Bakery (https://www.levainbakery.com) even has lines, I jones for chocolate chip cookies, my absolute favorite was David's, I'm waiting to find something as good.
But there's always next time.
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I'm excited.
Tonight I went to Morton's for the Lead Edge Capital dinner. Pretty fascinating, one is rarely in such a group, people who've made it in their various fields and now have money to invest. The M&A attorney whose son started "The Source," the CFO of Dell who opened his own bank in Austin, the guy who started Playlist.com and even a headhunter for hedge funds, who knew there was such a thing?
Although Ilana Weinstein does have an undergraduate degree from Penn and an MBA from Harvard. Not that she's airy. Once you're in the club everybody's relaxed, but everybody's a self-starter, everybody saw the light and went their own way, it's kinda like the music business before it was codified, before they taught it at school, Jay Marciano dropped out of college to open a music store and then became a concert promoter, while still a student Irving Azoff represented WLS deejays and even flew to New York for an ultimately unproductive meeting with Morris Levy, Mo Ostin was running finance for Frank Sinatra before he became a label head, and the hedge fund/investment world is still a little wild despite now getting so much attention.
Mitchell Green, now thirty six, started Lead Edge Capital seven years ago. He had a hunch that Alibaba was a winner, he was right. But before that he raised $17 mil for a friend's business that turned into 80, quite a return, but Mitchell BELIEVED! That's akin to a music manager, or the old independent record company heads, never forget, Jerry Moss started out as a promotion man.
And after a bit of steak and wine, the discussion opens up. But it's not about the content, but the business. Kinda like in music, only in music the discussion is how many tickets Taylor Swift will sell, in this case it's about whether Netflix stock will go up or down. I was sitting next to an analyst, who'd spoken at the conference, sounds a bit like school, you've got to grind it out for quarterly numbers, they work hard for the money, and if you don't like it...
And I like being in New York.
Everybody in L.A. wears sunglasses. But in New York the buildings are so tall and block so much sun that I was the only one walking with shades.
And everybody does walk. It's good exercise. But when you bump into someone and excuse yourself you realize they're not paying attention, do this in L.A. and the person turns around and glares, in New York they just soldier on.
And they talk to you. This is what I hate about Los Angeles, the lack of banter. Everywhere you go, people start up a conversation, it's silent in the elevator in Los Angeles, but not in New York.
And speaking of elevators, I got into a conversation with a young woman from Mexico City. Her family spends summers in San Diego and Vail. You see there's a rich circuit, and there's tons of dough in Mexico, but most people are unaware, if you only saw how the other half lived, I went to Jerry Perenchio's house and remarked that if everybody saw the property there'd be riots in the streets, it's literally the "Beverly Hillbillies" house, there's a long access road in Bel-Air, and it just went on the market for $350 million, and you don't know even know who Jerry Perenchio was.
He was an agent, and so much more.
And he hated publicity.
But the point is most business is not like entertainment, the movers and shakers are not in it for the glory, so you've got no idea who they are or what they're doing or...
So it's fascinating to be let inside.
I'm leaving tomorrow, going to visit my mother after Howard, so for those of you who e-mailed me about getting together, mea culpa, I wanted to do so much of it, but not as much as I wanted to go the cookie place recommended by attorney Judy Tint, the Levaine Bakery (https://www.levainbakery.com) even has lines, I jones for chocolate chip cookies, my absolute favorite was David's, I'm waiting to find something as good.
But there's always next time.
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Lead Edge Capital
Today's one of those days I love my life.
I went to lunch with Daniel Glass and his wife Deborah. Daniel's father passed a month ago. It's his first parent to leave the planet. And you don't know what it's like til you've experienced it. You know they're going, and then they're gone. Forever.
We went to this restaurant Le Bilboquet, they don't have places like this in L.A. Where all the tables are jumbled up close and the women wear skirts and the guys are all wearing suits, you can feel the hustle and bustle. Edgar Bronfman, Jr. sat next to us, and in this restaurant that's inches away. And Daniel told me about rappers influenced by Chance, who think they can do it by themselves, but they need help, still, making a deal isn't so easy. Then again, Daniel just sent a seven figure royalty check to Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, so when it works, it works.
Then I hustled to this place called Convene.
But I went to the wrong one, the one that came up on Google Maps, but the real one was just a couple of blocks away, so no biggie.
To speak at the annual convention of Lead Edge Capital.
Who are they, what do they do? Hell if I know! You offer to pay, you seem to have enough money to pay, and I'm in. That's the power of the internet, that's the power of e-mail.
Lead Edge Capital has a billion dollars under management. That's how I knew they wouldn't stiff me. Entertainment companies don't like to pay, they want you to work for free, and endless invites appear from people who say they'll pay but think I can spend the rest of my life eating at McDonald's. I say no much more than I say yes.
To Lead Edge Capital I said yes.
So I met the partner Nimay. Actually, I spoke with him on the phone last week. Everybody wants to prep, but I always tell them I don't like to rehearse, I don't want to leave the good stuff in the green room, hit me with your best shot, I'm an open book, let's have fireworks.
But it was hard to get ahold of Nimay. Or, should I say it was hard for him to get ahold of me, because he was going to London for the day. And I know that kind of travel seems more glamorous than it is, and from New York London is about as long a flight as it is to L.A., but if you're doing that kind of hit and run, what you're doing must be important.
So Nimay comes from a family of doctors. His mother is one of nine, all doctors or married to one. Nimay's two sisters are doctors. His father is a doctor.
But he's an investor.
His parents pushed him hard in school. That's what educated immigrants do. Immigrants who settled in an underserved community in Maryland. How did immigrants get such a bad name? They work hard, they contribute to society, but they don't measure up to the ignorant white people who've been here forever? Give me a break.
So Nimay went to Harvard.
That's the difference between finance and the entertainment business, the barrier to entry is high. And it's not that you learn anything in school, it's just that there's a thin layer of the best and the brightest and they come with a CV, not all of them, but most of them. I'm not saying you have to go to the Ivy League to break through, but I am saying you have to apply yourself, do the drudgery, your social media followers won't get you into Columbia and they're gonna fizzle out anyway, it's good to build a good foundation.
And then Nimay went to sell. Well, not exactly, he cold-called tech firms for a big outfit for two years, they wanted to leave no stone unturned. And sales is a great background, when Daniel Glass ran SBK Records way back when it was a prerequisite to work at the label, working retail, because that's where the money changed hands, that's what the business ultimately comes down to, THE TRANSACTION!
And then Nimay gets hooked up with this slightly older guy Mitchell Green, barely more than a millennial, and they start Lead Edge Capital.
And Nimay was cold-calling again.
Lead Edge Capital is a conglomeration of experienced, educated investors. Not passive people, but those who can add insight and help to the companies Lead Edge invests in. And Lead Edge specializes in late stage investments, i.e. they're not the first. So they have positions in Uber and Spotify, and a bunch of companies yet to go public that you probably haven't heard of. And those companies were testifying today.
Yup, the annual meeting for the investors to hear about their investments.
And this was not the shaggy west coast, everybody came in a jacket, well, almost all. That's the entry price in New York. You can buy a Ferrari in ripped jeans in L.A., but still not in New York.
And everybody was bright.
Which is a change from entertainment.
There were women too. Once again, dressed in finery one step more formal than you'd see in L.A. One from the Netherlands, another from the U.S. talking about a real estate platform, which had $44 million of investment already, entitled Compass. And the game intrigued me, because they were playing for real, too often in Hollywood people are jive-ass jerks who want to waste your time, selling their pipe dream.
So, money is building things.
But still...sit there long enough and you yearn for the freewheeling music business.
Then again, it ain't so freewheeling anymore. There used to be six major labels, a ton of independents, now everything's been rolled up and opportunity is scarce. Still, a person without portfolio can triumph in music, by thinking outside the box, by force of personality.
But you can't make that much MONEY!
Daniel Glass's son's girlfriend made 17k working for Morgan Stanley during the summer between her junior and senior years at Princeton. Think about that, it's hard to turn down. It's sad that the best and the brightest go to work in finance, but in a skewed world you can't make that kind of money anywhere else.
And to make the really big money you've got to be an adventurous entrepreneur with chutzpah. Same as music.
Life is just a game.
You choose the one you want to play.
I sat next to a thirtysomething investor who quit, who was burned out, could no longer work every day in the financial sector. Whereas in music it's hard to keep your job, few quit, the rest get squeezed out.
But it's fun to see how the other half lives.
And, unfortunately, the world has divided into winners and losers. It's a result of the internet, of globalization. You hate that you can't make it in music, but you love that you can record and communicate via the internet, you can't have it both ways. The successful acts are richer than ever before and the rest are...poor, with barely a middle class.
So how do you get ahead?
Damn hard work, there's no other way. Hell, Edgar Bronfman, Jr. inherited his money, but lost most of it. Money is hard.
So it leaves us in a world where the poor and left out are revolting, ignorantly, believing they can jet us back to the past, but that's impossible, you can only go forward. So decide who you want to be, don't wake up decades later saying you took the wrong path. Not that money is the only reward, but you can't bitch about money if you chose a hard path.
But we have to have a safety net for those left out, maybe even in a guaranteed income.
Meanwhile, you've got your whole life in front of you. Skills are transferable. Educate yourself. Read. Write. And if you're like me, the doors may open on a heretofore unknown world that will be so satisfying.
My goal is to meet people in every walk of life.
I met a bunch today.
P.S. China. It's happening. Kinda like digital photography, it was gonna eclipse film for years and didn't, and then it did, overnight. China is a bigger market than the U.S., with sophisticated players. Alibaba has more people to reach than Amazon.
P.P.S. Speaking of Amazon, their Web Services division dominates and belief is the spike will continue. We're only at the beginning of the interface of mobile and the cloud. Revenue is gonna rain down.
P.P.P.S. That's the kind of stuff I learned today, with statistics to back it up, not b.s. You see the world laid out before your eyes and you say...LET'S PLAY!
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I went to lunch with Daniel Glass and his wife Deborah. Daniel's father passed a month ago. It's his first parent to leave the planet. And you don't know what it's like til you've experienced it. You know they're going, and then they're gone. Forever.
We went to this restaurant Le Bilboquet, they don't have places like this in L.A. Where all the tables are jumbled up close and the women wear skirts and the guys are all wearing suits, you can feel the hustle and bustle. Edgar Bronfman, Jr. sat next to us, and in this restaurant that's inches away. And Daniel told me about rappers influenced by Chance, who think they can do it by themselves, but they need help, still, making a deal isn't so easy. Then again, Daniel just sent a seven figure royalty check to Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, so when it works, it works.
Then I hustled to this place called Convene.
But I went to the wrong one, the one that came up on Google Maps, but the real one was just a couple of blocks away, so no biggie.
To speak at the annual convention of Lead Edge Capital.
Who are they, what do they do? Hell if I know! You offer to pay, you seem to have enough money to pay, and I'm in. That's the power of the internet, that's the power of e-mail.
Lead Edge Capital has a billion dollars under management. That's how I knew they wouldn't stiff me. Entertainment companies don't like to pay, they want you to work for free, and endless invites appear from people who say they'll pay but think I can spend the rest of my life eating at McDonald's. I say no much more than I say yes.
To Lead Edge Capital I said yes.
So I met the partner Nimay. Actually, I spoke with him on the phone last week. Everybody wants to prep, but I always tell them I don't like to rehearse, I don't want to leave the good stuff in the green room, hit me with your best shot, I'm an open book, let's have fireworks.
But it was hard to get ahold of Nimay. Or, should I say it was hard for him to get ahold of me, because he was going to London for the day. And I know that kind of travel seems more glamorous than it is, and from New York London is about as long a flight as it is to L.A., but if you're doing that kind of hit and run, what you're doing must be important.
So Nimay comes from a family of doctors. His mother is one of nine, all doctors or married to one. Nimay's two sisters are doctors. His father is a doctor.
But he's an investor.
His parents pushed him hard in school. That's what educated immigrants do. Immigrants who settled in an underserved community in Maryland. How did immigrants get such a bad name? They work hard, they contribute to society, but they don't measure up to the ignorant white people who've been here forever? Give me a break.
So Nimay went to Harvard.
That's the difference between finance and the entertainment business, the barrier to entry is high. And it's not that you learn anything in school, it's just that there's a thin layer of the best and the brightest and they come with a CV, not all of them, but most of them. I'm not saying you have to go to the Ivy League to break through, but I am saying you have to apply yourself, do the drudgery, your social media followers won't get you into Columbia and they're gonna fizzle out anyway, it's good to build a good foundation.
And then Nimay went to sell. Well, not exactly, he cold-called tech firms for a big outfit for two years, they wanted to leave no stone unturned. And sales is a great background, when Daniel Glass ran SBK Records way back when it was a prerequisite to work at the label, working retail, because that's where the money changed hands, that's what the business ultimately comes down to, THE TRANSACTION!
And then Nimay gets hooked up with this slightly older guy Mitchell Green, barely more than a millennial, and they start Lead Edge Capital.
And Nimay was cold-calling again.
Lead Edge Capital is a conglomeration of experienced, educated investors. Not passive people, but those who can add insight and help to the companies Lead Edge invests in. And Lead Edge specializes in late stage investments, i.e. they're not the first. So they have positions in Uber and Spotify, and a bunch of companies yet to go public that you probably haven't heard of. And those companies were testifying today.
Yup, the annual meeting for the investors to hear about their investments.
And this was not the shaggy west coast, everybody came in a jacket, well, almost all. That's the entry price in New York. You can buy a Ferrari in ripped jeans in L.A., but still not in New York.
And everybody was bright.
Which is a change from entertainment.
There were women too. Once again, dressed in finery one step more formal than you'd see in L.A. One from the Netherlands, another from the U.S. talking about a real estate platform, which had $44 million of investment already, entitled Compass. And the game intrigued me, because they were playing for real, too often in Hollywood people are jive-ass jerks who want to waste your time, selling their pipe dream.
So, money is building things.
But still...sit there long enough and you yearn for the freewheeling music business.
Then again, it ain't so freewheeling anymore. There used to be six major labels, a ton of independents, now everything's been rolled up and opportunity is scarce. Still, a person without portfolio can triumph in music, by thinking outside the box, by force of personality.
But you can't make that much MONEY!
Daniel Glass's son's girlfriend made 17k working for Morgan Stanley during the summer between her junior and senior years at Princeton. Think about that, it's hard to turn down. It's sad that the best and the brightest go to work in finance, but in a skewed world you can't make that kind of money anywhere else.
And to make the really big money you've got to be an adventurous entrepreneur with chutzpah. Same as music.
Life is just a game.
You choose the one you want to play.
I sat next to a thirtysomething investor who quit, who was burned out, could no longer work every day in the financial sector. Whereas in music it's hard to keep your job, few quit, the rest get squeezed out.
But it's fun to see how the other half lives.
And, unfortunately, the world has divided into winners and losers. It's a result of the internet, of globalization. You hate that you can't make it in music, but you love that you can record and communicate via the internet, you can't have it both ways. The successful acts are richer than ever before and the rest are...poor, with barely a middle class.
So how do you get ahead?
Damn hard work, there's no other way. Hell, Edgar Bronfman, Jr. inherited his money, but lost most of it. Money is hard.
So it leaves us in a world where the poor and left out are revolting, ignorantly, believing they can jet us back to the past, but that's impossible, you can only go forward. So decide who you want to be, don't wake up decades later saying you took the wrong path. Not that money is the only reward, but you can't bitch about money if you chose a hard path.
But we have to have a safety net for those left out, maybe even in a guaranteed income.
Meanwhile, you've got your whole life in front of you. Skills are transferable. Educate yourself. Read. Write. And if you're like me, the doors may open on a heretofore unknown world that will be so satisfying.
My goal is to meet people in every walk of life.
I met a bunch today.
P.S. China. It's happening. Kinda like digital photography, it was gonna eclipse film for years and didn't, and then it did, overnight. China is a bigger market than the U.S., with sophisticated players. Alibaba has more people to reach than Amazon.
P.P.S. Speaking of Amazon, their Web Services division dominates and belief is the spike will continue. We're only at the beginning of the interface of mobile and the cloud. Revenue is gonna rain down.
P.P.P.S. That's the kind of stuff I learned today, with statistics to back it up, not b.s. You see the world laid out before your eyes and you say...LET'S PLAY!
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Monday 16 October 2017
New York City
It's cold here!
When I left L.A. it was nearly ninety. Right now Dark Sky says it's forty nine, and it feels like it. I put a fleece over my short sleeve shirt and the wind was blowing through my arms on the way to Halal Guys.
We've all got our pilgrimages. I don't want to sit down and eat dinner at ten p.m. And I'm not a room service guy, I've never had a great room service meal. But I love the dives. The carts. My belief is you've got to eat to the best of your ability! No, that's not right, that's not clear, all I'm saying is you've got to get the best at the price level you're at. No, that's not right either, what I'm saying is everybody can live like a king in certain genres. We can all afford the best chocolate chip cookies. And go to In-N-Out instead of McDonald's. The key is to be at the zenith of your chosen genre, and sometimes that genre is something everybody can afford.
Like Halal Guys.
I go every time I'm in New York. God, the only restaurant I know open til 4 A.M. in Los Angeles is that Thai dive on Hollywood Boulevard, east of the freeway, and the Pantry is open 24/7, but beyond that, not much. Whereas here in Fun City they expect you to wanna eat long after midnight. And I won't say the line at ten was as long as it is during the middle of the day, but there was a line. And the guy taking the order had a big wad of cash, right there in the open, as if he was saying MUG ME! But ever since Giuliani the city has been safe. Not sure I'd endorse his methods, but Bloomberg made it even better and now it's on the tipping point, will it go downhill once again? Elayne Boosler had that great joke, about her date asking if she wanted to go for a walk by the river. She said if you'd told me before, I WOULD HAVE LEFT MY VAGINA AT HOME! Elayne was the equal of Seinfeld and the rest of the men, she just never found the right venue, other than standup. Funny how you can remember a punch line, but the point is New York used to be unsafe. There were places you never walked, never mind after dark, and it is dark, it's that time of year, when the sun goes down right after work and you know the winter is coming. Put on Joni Mitchell's "Urge For Going" to get the feel.
And when I went to college in Vermont October was bad and November was brutal. When it was cold and gray and rainy, before the snow came. And I'm not sure quite why you snow-haters live in this environment, but there are many appealing elements.
Like the guy taking the order who expected me to know what I wanted. There are no questions in New York, they betray the fact you're a newbie, that you're not up to speed, you're supposed to know what you want, it's all hustle all the time and if you're not plowing ahead, you're falling behind.
And it used to be they asked you if you wanted sauce, now there are a zillion squeeze bottles on a rack on the side of the cart. And, since I was getting my chicken and gyro combo to go, they threw in some squeeze packets of white sauce. They literally said WHITE SAUCE! It's the ethnicizing of America, salsa outsells ketchup and even babies have rich palates.
So I squeezed some white sauce on myself and then sauntered back to the hotel. And nobody walks in L.A., but if they do they're a king, they have the right of way, I don't know what the law says in New York, but it's every man for himself, you've got to be totally aware. Who cares if you have the right of way, that ain't gonna help you much when you're dead. So you're never quite sure when to walk and when not to. Everybody jaywalks and the cab drivers are so busy getting to where they're going that if you live in California long enough, you're confused.
I used to live on the east coast. Came to the city all the time. But you had to be hyper-aware, on high alert at all times, for fear of muggings, crime, even my mother had a necklace ripped right off her neck, in broad daylight.
But as I was walking past the skating rink, which my ex insisted we glide upon, I know no native who has otherwise partaken, a feeling came over me, that this time was different, that I was finally an adult.
And the great thing about New York is no one's famous. Oh, you'll see a face here and there but it's not like L.A., where you're guaranteed to see celebrities at certain haunts. And there are so many ethnicities and races. A family was riding down the elevator with me and I wondered where they were going at this hour, then they started speaking Spanish and I got it, that's a late night culture. And I saw beturbaned men in Rockefeller Center. As well as some tourists watching the big screen, you come all the way from the hinterlands to watch television, what's that about?
And L.A.'s all entertainment. But the rich in NYC could be in finance, a lot goes on behind closed doors you never know.
And Wendy Waldman's "Wind In New York City" is playing through my head as I walk through the concrete canyons. And I get back to my hotel room and it's baking, that's how cold it is outside, and then I break the seal on my Halal Guys dinner and...
I take a bite and then cannot stop. The chicken is moist, the meat is roasted the way I like it, it's crisp on the end, but the reason it all comes together is that damn white sauce.
So I'll probably be up for hours because of the damn time change.
And then tomorrow I've got lunch and a gig, and I've learned that the key to travel is to stay busy, life is just about people, and I'm lucky enough to know someone seemingly everywhere I go so it's less about place and more about party but the truth is there's only one New York, and every time you come back you ask yourself why you ever left.
"Urge For Going" (the original, Tom Rush definitive version): spotify:track:4mVWOXS9KKhvDIdmkYUBOQ
Halal Guys: http://twitter.com/Lefsetz/status/920130502945894400
"The Wind In New York City": spotify:track:7vjsVSF0E1yiH9zNIQxHsd
When I left L.A. it was nearly ninety. Right now Dark Sky says it's forty nine, and it feels like it. I put a fleece over my short sleeve shirt and the wind was blowing through my arms on the way to Halal Guys.
We've all got our pilgrimages. I don't want to sit down and eat dinner at ten p.m. And I'm not a room service guy, I've never had a great room service meal. But I love the dives. The carts. My belief is you've got to eat to the best of your ability! No, that's not right, that's not clear, all I'm saying is you've got to get the best at the price level you're at. No, that's not right either, what I'm saying is everybody can live like a king in certain genres. We can all afford the best chocolate chip cookies. And go to In-N-Out instead of McDonald's. The key is to be at the zenith of your chosen genre, and sometimes that genre is something everybody can afford.
Like Halal Guys.
I go every time I'm in New York. God, the only restaurant I know open til 4 A.M. in Los Angeles is that Thai dive on Hollywood Boulevard, east of the freeway, and the Pantry is open 24/7, but beyond that, not much. Whereas here in Fun City they expect you to wanna eat long after midnight. And I won't say the line at ten was as long as it is during the middle of the day, but there was a line. And the guy taking the order had a big wad of cash, right there in the open, as if he was saying MUG ME! But ever since Giuliani the city has been safe. Not sure I'd endorse his methods, but Bloomberg made it even better and now it's on the tipping point, will it go downhill once again? Elayne Boosler had that great joke, about her date asking if she wanted to go for a walk by the river. She said if you'd told me before, I WOULD HAVE LEFT MY VAGINA AT HOME! Elayne was the equal of Seinfeld and the rest of the men, she just never found the right venue, other than standup. Funny how you can remember a punch line, but the point is New York used to be unsafe. There were places you never walked, never mind after dark, and it is dark, it's that time of year, when the sun goes down right after work and you know the winter is coming. Put on Joni Mitchell's "Urge For Going" to get the feel.
And when I went to college in Vermont October was bad and November was brutal. When it was cold and gray and rainy, before the snow came. And I'm not sure quite why you snow-haters live in this environment, but there are many appealing elements.
Like the guy taking the order who expected me to know what I wanted. There are no questions in New York, they betray the fact you're a newbie, that you're not up to speed, you're supposed to know what you want, it's all hustle all the time and if you're not plowing ahead, you're falling behind.
And it used to be they asked you if you wanted sauce, now there are a zillion squeeze bottles on a rack on the side of the cart. And, since I was getting my chicken and gyro combo to go, they threw in some squeeze packets of white sauce. They literally said WHITE SAUCE! It's the ethnicizing of America, salsa outsells ketchup and even babies have rich palates.
So I squeezed some white sauce on myself and then sauntered back to the hotel. And nobody walks in L.A., but if they do they're a king, they have the right of way, I don't know what the law says in New York, but it's every man for himself, you've got to be totally aware. Who cares if you have the right of way, that ain't gonna help you much when you're dead. So you're never quite sure when to walk and when not to. Everybody jaywalks and the cab drivers are so busy getting to where they're going that if you live in California long enough, you're confused.
I used to live on the east coast. Came to the city all the time. But you had to be hyper-aware, on high alert at all times, for fear of muggings, crime, even my mother had a necklace ripped right off her neck, in broad daylight.
But as I was walking past the skating rink, which my ex insisted we glide upon, I know no native who has otherwise partaken, a feeling came over me, that this time was different, that I was finally an adult.
And the great thing about New York is no one's famous. Oh, you'll see a face here and there but it's not like L.A., where you're guaranteed to see celebrities at certain haunts. And there are so many ethnicities and races. A family was riding down the elevator with me and I wondered where they were going at this hour, then they started speaking Spanish and I got it, that's a late night culture. And I saw beturbaned men in Rockefeller Center. As well as some tourists watching the big screen, you come all the way from the hinterlands to watch television, what's that about?
And L.A.'s all entertainment. But the rich in NYC could be in finance, a lot goes on behind closed doors you never know.
And Wendy Waldman's "Wind In New York City" is playing through my head as I walk through the concrete canyons. And I get back to my hotel room and it's baking, that's how cold it is outside, and then I break the seal on my Halal Guys dinner and...
I take a bite and then cannot stop. The chicken is moist, the meat is roasted the way I like it, it's crisp on the end, but the reason it all comes together is that damn white sauce.
So I'll probably be up for hours because of the damn time change.
And then tomorrow I've got lunch and a gig, and I've learned that the key to travel is to stay busy, life is just about people, and I'm lucky enough to know someone seemingly everywhere I go so it's less about place and more about party but the truth is there's only one New York, and every time you come back you ask yourself why you ever left.
"Urge For Going" (the original, Tom Rush definitive version): spotify:track:4mVWOXS9KKhvDIdmkYUBOQ
Halal Guys: http://twitter.com/Lefsetz/status/920130502945894400
"The Wind In New York City": spotify:track:7vjsVSF0E1yiH9zNIQxHsd
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More Weinstein
From: David Rubinson
This is such bullshit. And I must say that your willing participation in the bullshit machine is disappointing.
The Weinstein plot is another way to attack the "liberals."
And Jewish/Left Hollywood.
And to distract us from Trump's total destruction of the planet and rational global structure, and his fundamental racism, and inhuman acts of pure vileness on the weak and helpless.
Everyone in the business knew and knows that this goes on, every day.
But- it goes on everywhere. In Broadcast News for damn sure. In the last year it's been an avalanche of disclosure.
The Pope had to form a special committee.
And, certainly at the top of the list, the US Congress, among the very worst perpetrators, in recent times and throughout history.
Weinstein is all over the Pimp Media.
Dennis Hastert and Gen Petraeus walked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_scandals_in_the_United_States#2000.E2.80.932009
Weinstein is a glaring symptom, not the disease.
___________________________________________
Methinks he's right.
For those of you unaware of David Rubinson, he's a record producer famous for Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" as well as albums by Moby Grape, the Pointer Sisters and Santana, you can check out his CV here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rubinson
But that's a man of the sixties, one thinking for himself and challenging convention, seeing through the b.s. and separating the wheat from the chaff.
Harvey Weinstein is a very sick man. I won't say any more for fear of getting it wrong and having the left wing excoriate me. Did you see Mayim Bialik get caught in the crossfire?
"'Big Bang Theory' Actress Mayim Bialik Defends Sexual Harassment Comments - Star accused of 'victim blaming' after writing op-ed about Harvey Weinstein scandal": http://rol.st/2zfglqr
You've got to hew the line on the left. But the problem is we're all human and we sometimes fail to clarify and even make mistakes but we live in a zero tolerance society on the left, and the right are laughing all the way to elected office.
Harvey deserves to pay the price. And there are women who will never recover from his bad behavior. But what is fascinating is the scandal blew the atrocity in Vegas right off the front page. We can't figure out the shooter's motive and Harvey's story is much more salacious, so it dominates the news and conversation. I'm sure Weinstein is praying for a war or a shooting to blow him right off the front page. Because that's how it works, you release bad news on a Friday when the public is tuned out and you hope that your misdeeds are superseded by those of another.
But what I'm thinking is how this plays in the heartland. Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the most hated women in America. A laughable elitist to many. They don't care if she paid a price. As for the rest of the Hollywood elite, the closest the hoi polloi can ever get to them is their Twitter feed, which oftentimes the stars don't even write. So when you're struggling to pay your bills in the heartland, the Weinstein story sounds like...
Self-satisfied, uppity white people preyed on by a fat Jew.
It's great that the "Times" broke the story, kudos, but they keep piling on as they did after the Jayson Blair affair and Judith Miller's bogus reporting. Meanwhile, did Fox or the "Wall Street Journal" do endless investigations of O'Reilly's harassments? No, the right circled the wagons, tried to save Bill, and when they couldn't, they replaced him with Tucker Carlson, who soon turned into a Mini-Bill.
First the right says we're not taking Harvey's behavior seriously, so we pile on and they continue to laugh as we destroy our solidarity, bickering amongst ourselves
I'm not saying sexual harassment is insignificant. I'm not saying that it's limited to Hollywood. One can argue that Weinstein is an object lesson for all male/female relationships, that there's harassment in the workplace everywhere.
But that's not how those on the right see it. They see it as loudmouthed Jew in Hollywood. And when the news keeps talking about it, so do we.
So that's where we are folks. We just gave justification to the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville. They said the Jews control the media and that's what all the stories say, that Harvey used his power to not only win Oscars, but keep his behavior out of court and the press.
Meanwhile, the pussy-grabber in chief eviscerates these same right wing denizens' health care and there's nary a peep.
I laud the "New York Times" for printing both sides, but the truth is the right does not. The right is organized, it stays on message. One of the big messages is GOVERNMENT IS BAD! So government can't fix Vegas and it can't fix Puerto Rico and it can't get it right with Harvey Weinstein.
So, you need to buy a gun and pay no taxes and take care of yourself.
Harvey Weinstein is done. Maybe execs in Hollywood will modify their behavior, let's hope so. But I doubt the manager at Wendy's will be affected. Because he doesn't see himself in Weinstein's league, he doesn't think it applies to him.
So here we have it folks, the educated, left wing elite are piling on while the right kicks dirt on the whole thing. Mayim Bialik and Woody Allen didn't get it exactly right and are beaten into submission while Puerto Ricans starve in darkness. Ever notice they're both Jewish? Ever notice that the mayor of Chicago is also Jewish? And when they keep on talking about murders in that city the blame lies with Rahm Emanuel, who was born in America but has that foreign name?
The left thinks it's winning.
But it's not.
The left thinks it's rooting out bad behavior.
But the right is amplifying faux pas while it circles its own wagons.
I'm not saying that Weinstein is innocent, that he shouldn't be punished, but I am saying there's a bigger game being played here, and the left is losing.
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This is such bullshit. And I must say that your willing participation in the bullshit machine is disappointing.
The Weinstein plot is another way to attack the "liberals."
And Jewish/Left Hollywood.
And to distract us from Trump's total destruction of the planet and rational global structure, and his fundamental racism, and inhuman acts of pure vileness on the weak and helpless.
Everyone in the business knew and knows that this goes on, every day.
But- it goes on everywhere. In Broadcast News for damn sure. In the last year it's been an avalanche of disclosure.
The Pope had to form a special committee.
And, certainly at the top of the list, the US Congress, among the very worst perpetrators, in recent times and throughout history.
Weinstein is all over the Pimp Media.
Dennis Hastert and Gen Petraeus walked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_scandals_in_the_United_States#2000.E2.80.932009
Weinstein is a glaring symptom, not the disease.
___________________________________________
Methinks he's right.
For those of you unaware of David Rubinson, he's a record producer famous for Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" as well as albums by Moby Grape, the Pointer Sisters and Santana, you can check out his CV here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rubinson
But that's a man of the sixties, one thinking for himself and challenging convention, seeing through the b.s. and separating the wheat from the chaff.
Harvey Weinstein is a very sick man. I won't say any more for fear of getting it wrong and having the left wing excoriate me. Did you see Mayim Bialik get caught in the crossfire?
"'Big Bang Theory' Actress Mayim Bialik Defends Sexual Harassment Comments - Star accused of 'victim blaming' after writing op-ed about Harvey Weinstein scandal": http://rol.st/2zfglqr
You've got to hew the line on the left. But the problem is we're all human and we sometimes fail to clarify and even make mistakes but we live in a zero tolerance society on the left, and the right are laughing all the way to elected office.
Harvey deserves to pay the price. And there are women who will never recover from his bad behavior. But what is fascinating is the scandal blew the atrocity in Vegas right off the front page. We can't figure out the shooter's motive and Harvey's story is much more salacious, so it dominates the news and conversation. I'm sure Weinstein is praying for a war or a shooting to blow him right off the front page. Because that's how it works, you release bad news on a Friday when the public is tuned out and you hope that your misdeeds are superseded by those of another.
But what I'm thinking is how this plays in the heartland. Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the most hated women in America. A laughable elitist to many. They don't care if she paid a price. As for the rest of the Hollywood elite, the closest the hoi polloi can ever get to them is their Twitter feed, which oftentimes the stars don't even write. So when you're struggling to pay your bills in the heartland, the Weinstein story sounds like...
Self-satisfied, uppity white people preyed on by a fat Jew.
It's great that the "Times" broke the story, kudos, but they keep piling on as they did after the Jayson Blair affair and Judith Miller's bogus reporting. Meanwhile, did Fox or the "Wall Street Journal" do endless investigations of O'Reilly's harassments? No, the right circled the wagons, tried to save Bill, and when they couldn't, they replaced him with Tucker Carlson, who soon turned into a Mini-Bill.
First the right says we're not taking Harvey's behavior seriously, so we pile on and they continue to laugh as we destroy our solidarity, bickering amongst ourselves
I'm not saying sexual harassment is insignificant. I'm not saying that it's limited to Hollywood. One can argue that Weinstein is an object lesson for all male/female relationships, that there's harassment in the workplace everywhere.
But that's not how those on the right see it. They see it as loudmouthed Jew in Hollywood. And when the news keeps talking about it, so do we.
So that's where we are folks. We just gave justification to the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville. They said the Jews control the media and that's what all the stories say, that Harvey used his power to not only win Oscars, but keep his behavior out of court and the press.
Meanwhile, the pussy-grabber in chief eviscerates these same right wing denizens' health care and there's nary a peep.
I laud the "New York Times" for printing both sides, but the truth is the right does not. The right is organized, it stays on message. One of the big messages is GOVERNMENT IS BAD! So government can't fix Vegas and it can't fix Puerto Rico and it can't get it right with Harvey Weinstein.
So, you need to buy a gun and pay no taxes and take care of yourself.
Harvey Weinstein is done. Maybe execs in Hollywood will modify their behavior, let's hope so. But I doubt the manager at Wendy's will be affected. Because he doesn't see himself in Weinstein's league, he doesn't think it applies to him.
So here we have it folks, the educated, left wing elite are piling on while the right kicks dirt on the whole thing. Mayim Bialik and Woody Allen didn't get it exactly right and are beaten into submission while Puerto Ricans starve in darkness. Ever notice they're both Jewish? Ever notice that the mayor of Chicago is also Jewish? And when they keep on talking about murders in that city the blame lies with Rahm Emanuel, who was born in America but has that foreign name?
The left thinks it's winning.
But it's not.
The left thinks it's rooting out bad behavior.
But the right is amplifying faux pas while it circles its own wagons.
I'm not saying that Weinstein is innocent, that he shouldn't be punished, but I am saying there's a bigger game being played here, and the left is losing.
--
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Sunday 15 October 2017
Walter Egan At McCabe's
We sacrificed our lives for rock and roll.
Walter Egan graduated from Georgetown. His mother wondered when he'd get serious and live the straight life. But then he got a call to play guitar for Linda Ronstadt and he decamped for Los Angeles. The rest of the band stayed behind, in Washington, D.C., but Walter couldn't turn the opportunity down.
In high school his buddy John Zambetti said if he got an electric guitar he could join the band. At the time, Walter only had an acoustic. We all had acoustics in the house. With wide necks and nylon strings, we learned chords to play folk tunes, which were rampant.
And then the Beatles hit.
We grew our hair long. We feigned British accents. And we bought instruments. Lots of them. We wanted to participate.
And we wanted to get rich and famous.
It was very different from today. All the action was outside the house. We'd go to battles of the bands, where teenagers played the hits of the day. We were addicted to the radio, no one did their homework without a transistor nearby, to hear the countdown, to hear their favorites.
And then the action switched from AM to FM and it was like going from dialup to broadband and the entire nation was swooped up by the sound, well, at least the younger generation, the baby boomers, who ruled as a result of their sheer numbers, and still believe they rule today, even though they've been passed by and don't.
But the gig with Ronstadt fizzled. She said her guitar player wasn't working out and then he did, that was Andrew Gold.
Walter Egan has got a lot of these brushes with greatness. He's even got a big hit record. But now he pays his bills by being a substitute teacher, but he's still got the dream, he's still got that twinkle in his eye, even though he's past Medicare age he's still writing songs, still dreaming of a hit, whether it be a cover or an original, he's plowing on, the rest of the world be damned.
We're littered throughout society. The lifers. Who wanted to make the sound our own. Who needed to get closer. Who are sans IRAs, maybe don't even own a home, but can tell you who played on what and who produced it even though it happened decades ago.
So, living in Pomona, with Chris Darrow, Walter starts to scramble. That's the essence of being a musician, the hustle, the relationships, making the most of opportunities.
Not that Walter hadn't been in the game back east, hell, he orchestrated the meeting of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in his kitchen, but now he was in the big time.
He got a record deal. Dreamed of having Todd Rundgren produce his record. A household name. Instead he got Lindsey Buckingham, who the majordomo at Sound City recommended.
And his big hit emanated from a license plate he saw on a pimpmobile driving back to Pomona long after midnight, it said NOT SHY. Inspiration has to come from somewhere, and all your songs have stories, and Walter told them last night. He didn't talk quite as much as Billy Bragg, but he linked his career together, made the connections with the songs. And there were tons of near-misses. Having success on Columbia but then enduring an A&R change, which quashed his career. Then getting a deal with Danny Bramson's Backstreet but losing his bullet and said deal when Bramson lost a power struggle with Irving Azoff. You hear about the successes. You rarely hear about the misses. Mostly you know the never-beens, but some people take the risk, and some people succeed. "Magnet and Steel" is constantly synched. Eminem even licensed "Hot Summer Nights." But ask someone under thirty who Walter Egan is and their face will draw a blank. Time marched on, we didn't think it ever would. And we keep protesting that we want musicians, bands, people who can play their instruments.
Walter Egan comes from this background.
The second half of the show was the Malibooz, the surf/cover/original band that Egan fronts. The guitarist is the aforementioned John Zambetti, who followed his parents' incantations to go to medical school. But he became an emergency doctor, so he could take off time and play.
Which he could. Astoundingly. We spent so much time in our bedrooms and our basements, rehearsing, getting it right, and it didn't get us anywhere in modern society, those skills are truly monetizable by very few, but the sound is the bedrock of our life. Scratch a baby boomer professional and they'll lament that they went straight, they live for the music, they go to the show, they need to be close.
And after the deals dried up, Walter went on the road with Spirit. And last night not only did the Malibooz do a spot-on rendition of "Nature's Way," they killed it on "I Got A Line On You." Bringing back those tracks that made our lives. Reminding me of when you went to hear a cover band as opposed to a DJ.
And Walter played his hits. And the band rocked. And the crowd was small. But it was a perfect example of what once was. We're old and lumpy and gray but when the amps are turned up and the musicians pick their Fenders we're reminded...
So I'm talking to Walter after the show. After talking to Lincoln, who runs the joint.
Lincoln's finally getting married, at 54, to a girl he's had a crush on since grade school. But he's living in rental property in Venice. If he chooses to move, where's he gonna end up, El Monte?
That's right, once upon a time the Westside of Los Angeles had a bohemian element. Hell, Walter once made whoopee in the median separating San Vicente. But today you've got to be rich to live there. Truly. Good luck finding real estate under seven figures. And to make that kind of money...
You need a straight job.
Oh, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham can afford property, but they're icons, they strung together enough hits to still sell out arenas. But there are very few of them. And so many of us still enthralled, still trying.
So Walter moved to New York when he inherited the family home.
And then to Nashville to be closer to the music.
And he tried to go straight, he tried to sell insurance, but it didn't take, no matter how much effort he put into it, he was called to be a musician, he's spent his whole life being a musician.
Did he throw it away?
My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. Hell, after two years starving in Salt Lake City and then getting the world's worst case of mononucleosis, I actually went to law school, and practiced for a minute or two, but it wasn't me.
I went off into the wilderness. Went broke. My wife left me. All this came back when Walter was telling me his story. Women are attracted to artists, but the bills always have to be paid.
And I've suffered to get where I am now. Unfortunately, I don't see another path, even if I was to start over. I was a mentor for tech startups for a day and realized those are not my people, I'm not a businessman...
But I don't own a house. I don't have any kids. I've got some money in the bank, but I'm parsimonious, I'm never sure where the next paycheck is coming from.
But I still dream of success. I still dream of the breakthrough. It keeps me going.
And Walter wants to play more gigs. And when you discuss music he lights up.
And here you have an entire generation, lost by today's standards but fulfilled by our own. Hell, I know people who made multiple six figures a year in this industry who are now broke, living in rentals, divorced, eking by.
But they can't stop talking about the music.
It's in their blood.
It's in mine too.
We had no internet, no social media, not even cable.
All we had was the radio and our records. And when the Beatles showed up we jumped on the bandwagon and we never got off. And now we're in an unrecognizable place that oftentimes freaks us out. But when we go to the show...
It feels like home.
Walter Egan graduated from Georgetown. His mother wondered when he'd get serious and live the straight life. But then he got a call to play guitar for Linda Ronstadt and he decamped for Los Angeles. The rest of the band stayed behind, in Washington, D.C., but Walter couldn't turn the opportunity down.
In high school his buddy John Zambetti said if he got an electric guitar he could join the band. At the time, Walter only had an acoustic. We all had acoustics in the house. With wide necks and nylon strings, we learned chords to play folk tunes, which were rampant.
And then the Beatles hit.
We grew our hair long. We feigned British accents. And we bought instruments. Lots of them. We wanted to participate.
And we wanted to get rich and famous.
It was very different from today. All the action was outside the house. We'd go to battles of the bands, where teenagers played the hits of the day. We were addicted to the radio, no one did their homework without a transistor nearby, to hear the countdown, to hear their favorites.
And then the action switched from AM to FM and it was like going from dialup to broadband and the entire nation was swooped up by the sound, well, at least the younger generation, the baby boomers, who ruled as a result of their sheer numbers, and still believe they rule today, even though they've been passed by and don't.
But the gig with Ronstadt fizzled. She said her guitar player wasn't working out and then he did, that was Andrew Gold.
Walter Egan has got a lot of these brushes with greatness. He's even got a big hit record. But now he pays his bills by being a substitute teacher, but he's still got the dream, he's still got that twinkle in his eye, even though he's past Medicare age he's still writing songs, still dreaming of a hit, whether it be a cover or an original, he's plowing on, the rest of the world be damned.
We're littered throughout society. The lifers. Who wanted to make the sound our own. Who needed to get closer. Who are sans IRAs, maybe don't even own a home, but can tell you who played on what and who produced it even though it happened decades ago.
So, living in Pomona, with Chris Darrow, Walter starts to scramble. That's the essence of being a musician, the hustle, the relationships, making the most of opportunities.
Not that Walter hadn't been in the game back east, hell, he orchestrated the meeting of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in his kitchen, but now he was in the big time.
He got a record deal. Dreamed of having Todd Rundgren produce his record. A household name. Instead he got Lindsey Buckingham, who the majordomo at Sound City recommended.
And his big hit emanated from a license plate he saw on a pimpmobile driving back to Pomona long after midnight, it said NOT SHY. Inspiration has to come from somewhere, and all your songs have stories, and Walter told them last night. He didn't talk quite as much as Billy Bragg, but he linked his career together, made the connections with the songs. And there were tons of near-misses. Having success on Columbia but then enduring an A&R change, which quashed his career. Then getting a deal with Danny Bramson's Backstreet but losing his bullet and said deal when Bramson lost a power struggle with Irving Azoff. You hear about the successes. You rarely hear about the misses. Mostly you know the never-beens, but some people take the risk, and some people succeed. "Magnet and Steel" is constantly synched. Eminem even licensed "Hot Summer Nights." But ask someone under thirty who Walter Egan is and their face will draw a blank. Time marched on, we didn't think it ever would. And we keep protesting that we want musicians, bands, people who can play their instruments.
Walter Egan comes from this background.
The second half of the show was the Malibooz, the surf/cover/original band that Egan fronts. The guitarist is the aforementioned John Zambetti, who followed his parents' incantations to go to medical school. But he became an emergency doctor, so he could take off time and play.
Which he could. Astoundingly. We spent so much time in our bedrooms and our basements, rehearsing, getting it right, and it didn't get us anywhere in modern society, those skills are truly monetizable by very few, but the sound is the bedrock of our life. Scratch a baby boomer professional and they'll lament that they went straight, they live for the music, they go to the show, they need to be close.
And after the deals dried up, Walter went on the road with Spirit. And last night not only did the Malibooz do a spot-on rendition of "Nature's Way," they killed it on "I Got A Line On You." Bringing back those tracks that made our lives. Reminding me of when you went to hear a cover band as opposed to a DJ.
And Walter played his hits. And the band rocked. And the crowd was small. But it was a perfect example of what once was. We're old and lumpy and gray but when the amps are turned up and the musicians pick their Fenders we're reminded...
So I'm talking to Walter after the show. After talking to Lincoln, who runs the joint.
Lincoln's finally getting married, at 54, to a girl he's had a crush on since grade school. But he's living in rental property in Venice. If he chooses to move, where's he gonna end up, El Monte?
That's right, once upon a time the Westside of Los Angeles had a bohemian element. Hell, Walter once made whoopee in the median separating San Vicente. But today you've got to be rich to live there. Truly. Good luck finding real estate under seven figures. And to make that kind of money...
You need a straight job.
Oh, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham can afford property, but they're icons, they strung together enough hits to still sell out arenas. But there are very few of them. And so many of us still enthralled, still trying.
So Walter moved to New York when he inherited the family home.
And then to Nashville to be closer to the music.
And he tried to go straight, he tried to sell insurance, but it didn't take, no matter how much effort he put into it, he was called to be a musician, he's spent his whole life being a musician.
Did he throw it away?
My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. Hell, after two years starving in Salt Lake City and then getting the world's worst case of mononucleosis, I actually went to law school, and practiced for a minute or two, but it wasn't me.
I went off into the wilderness. Went broke. My wife left me. All this came back when Walter was telling me his story. Women are attracted to artists, but the bills always have to be paid.
And I've suffered to get where I am now. Unfortunately, I don't see another path, even if I was to start over. I was a mentor for tech startups for a day and realized those are not my people, I'm not a businessman...
But I don't own a house. I don't have any kids. I've got some money in the bank, but I'm parsimonious, I'm never sure where the next paycheck is coming from.
But I still dream of success. I still dream of the breakthrough. It keeps me going.
And Walter wants to play more gigs. And when you discuss music he lights up.
And here you have an entire generation, lost by today's standards but fulfilled by our own. Hell, I know people who made multiple six figures a year in this industry who are now broke, living in rentals, divorced, eking by.
But they can't stop talking about the music.
It's in their blood.
It's in mine too.
We had no internet, no social media, not even cable.
All we had was the radio and our records. And when the Beatles showed up we jumped on the bandwagon and we never got off. And now we're in an unrecognizable place that oftentimes freaks us out. But when we go to the show...
It feels like home.
--
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--
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