"This might be the oxycontin talking, but..."

From MSNBC:
Before his own problems became public, Limbaugh had decried drug use and abuse and mocked President Clinton for saying he had not inhaled when he tried marijuana. He often made the case that drug crimes deserve punishment.
“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up,” Limbaugh said on his short-lived television show on Oct. 5, 1995.
During the same show, he commented that statistics that show blacks go to prison more often than whites for the same drug offenses only illustrate that “too many whites are getting away with drug use.”

Meanwhile, how many thousands of kids don't get to go to college becuase this windbag hypocrite ranted for so long about denying financial aid to kids with their own addictions, or maybe were just dumb enough to get caught with a joint at age 15?

"All Shook Down"--15 Years Later

At the cafe where I get breakfast 2-3 times per week, they've been playing a lot of Replacements lately, and mainly their last 2, "All Shook Down" and "Don't Tell a Soul."

I hadn't heard "All Shook Down" in fourteen years, since it first came out. The immediately apparent thing about it is how it sounds about 2 years ahead of its time. The tracks sound like a what's-what of alternative lite rock, a trojan horse for the Gin Blossoms and others from the class of '94. It's better than a lot of that, but not by a whole hell of a lot. You kinda just wish somebody would have given them a hit song already, so they could get on with it, or that the Replacements would have just tried a wee bit harder going down that slippery slope...put Tommy in some Vision Street Wear, give Bob's replacement some Navarroish dreadlocks, put Peter Criss cat whiskers on Chris Mars. I mean--if you wanna play by the rules of showbiz, you might as well go whole hog, right?

The other immediately apparent thing about "All Shook Down" is how weary and wornout they sound with the effort of trying to reach R.E.M.'s audience, especially compared to the earlier records. The band that started off with "Takin' a Ride" concluded their discography with "The Last," a piano ballad of all things. The closest song approximating a "rocker" is "My Little Problem," a duet with that Concrete Blonde woman, and these kinds of Don Henley/Melissa Ehteridge vocal exchanges where each verse has the singer representing their gender's side of the story whilst looking into each other's eyes is the only thing in rocknroll I hate more than Marshall stacks.

In spite of all that, the charming, "loveable loser" aspects salvage it from being totally horrible, and there are worse examples of great bands trying to make commerically-viable records (i.e. Beefheart's "Bluejean's and Moonbeams").

I actually saw the Replacements on their last tour in 1991 at Visage in Orlando. Tommy was the only one onstage doing anything close to "rocking out." They attempted a cover of "Walk On the Wild Side" they stopped halfway through more because they were bored with doing it than due to being too drunk to play it, which they weren't. Somebody requested "Fuck School," and obviously Paul declined, saying "We don't play those anymore." In hindsight, they were clearly a band sick of being a band and on the verge of calling it quits, and it showed in both the performance and "All Shook Down." Chris Mars wasn't even in the band by that point.

At the time, I loved it, because I didn't really know any better. Now, a part of me wants to forget ever liking this band, but, at the Cal's show we played last weekend, they played "Let it Be" between bands, and I listened to "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash" the next day at home, and it's impossible for me to write them off. Enough of it holds up to where it's listenable, and enjoyably so ("Customer" alone makes up for the later "smart guy" stuff) as burned out on relatively straightforward rocknroll (and its myriad redundancies, especially in the drums and guitar solos) as I feel these days. Besides that, I still like the drunken heart and soul Bob Stinson put into his solos, and he even ended up playing with Sonny Vincent, a perfect match.

Part of me wonders why I even care in the first place. It's just music, and I'm kinda feeling like, after this year's Blackout, my show attendance rate is going to drop even more than it has in the past year, unless it's a show where I'm drumming. Seeing Gris Gris on Saturday night at Sub-T made me so disinterested I hurled my 3/4's full PBR tallboy at them and stumbled out of there in true Coppens fashion (short of waking up the next day covered in bruises I have no recollection of getting). I was having fun up to that point, but seeing them kinda reminded me of shows I went to when I first moved to Chicago, where everybody just stood there and the bands looked so damn serious and I felt like the only guy not stoned on codeine. I could be missing something. I probably am. Or, maybe I'd rather sit at home with my girlfriend and read a book instead. Or, maybe one of you will pull me out of this musical malaise and make me a kickass CDR mix (hint hint); or the Blackout will renew my interest in rocknroll again. Hearing Frustration and Plasma Drive for the first time this past weekend alone gives me hope.

I don't know. But, to bring it back around to The Replacements: "I hate music/sometimes I don't/I hate music/got too many notes."

A Dorky Thing I Noticed About the Penetrators on I-Pod

When you import the Swami Records "Basement Anthology 1976-1984," the database that retrieves all the song titles also lists the Penetrators' genre as "Gospel and Religious."

My first instinct was to think this was just a joke, but the more I thought about it, the more I'm convinced that that's the genre the Penetrators really are, after too many bouts of workaday drudgery getting eliminated by their music.

If you've heard them enough, you know I'm right.

Quote of the Day, from Todd Killings

This is from the upcoming interview (in its entirety in Terminal Boredom) with Todd and Uncle Ted from Horizontal Action magazine and the upcoming victimoftime.com, applicable to so much more than what we were actually discussing:

"It’s the law of diminishing returns. You don’t want a dozen donuts, you only want one."

That Wacky, Wacky, Edward Gibbon!!!!

It sounds pretty fucking twitty-twatty, but I've been reading me some Edward Gibbon these past few months.

Gibbon is the author of the ginormous 3,000 (give or take a few hundred pages) "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The copy I have is spread out over six volumes. I'm on Volume Two.

No, there are no pictures in it, and the print is at about a 10 point font, but, overall, I find it to be funnier than anything Jimmy Fallon has ever done, and it's not even desperately trying to be funny like Jimmy Fallon.

For example, I don't know, I find this very funny...this quote I'm about to share. The actual beginning of the end of the Roman Empire for Gibbon doesn't start with Caligula or Nero, but it starts with the son of the good Emperor Marcus, a spoiled little oligarch named Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix in the film "Gladiator"):

Here's the quote, telling all about the routine of ol' Commudus:
"His hours were spent in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient historians have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution, which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the decency of modern language. The intervals of lust were filled up with the basest amusements. The influence of a polite age, and the labor of an attentive education, had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding."

There's so much dry wit going on besides just the above, I could make myself laugh here for hours. Hell, it's a 3000 page doorstop, so I'll change "hours" to days.

So Commodus had 300 beautiful women, and 300 boys! Can you imagine the material the Jay Leno of Ancient Rome had to work with? Whoever hosted "The Tonight Show" around 180AD must have joked and joked about that for years and years, until one of Commodus's many mistresses helped kill him. (Commudus, not the Jay Leno of Ancient Rome, who, surely, would have been executed for his obvious comedy.)

Okay...so Commodus was handpicked by his father to "assume the purple" even though his grades were notso hotso in spite of getting educated by the elitist of the elite, and when all was said and done, he preferred the "vulgar spectacle" of hunting lions in the Colluseum. He squandered the treasury, surrounded himself with sycophants, executed traitors both real and imagined, and literally fucked around while the population struggled and suffered. Oh, and the Roman Senate rubberstamped his policies.

Don't even think it, dude. There are no comparisons to anything happening now. For starters, I can't think of a single "most powerful man in the world" with a seraglio, right? (Although, from what I'm hearing about Scooter Libby's 1996 novel "The Apprentice," I'm a little bit curious as to exactly how the power elite "lets their hair down," as it were.) Not only that, but Gibbon says Marcus, Commodus's father, was a good emperor whose sole (repeat: sole) weakness was the excessive love of his kids. While some leaders you may or may not be thinking of like to pretend they're rednecks into the same things rednecks like, it's not like any leader was into pro-wrestling while in office (before they were in office, sure, but that's another spiel).

There are no comparisons that literal here. For starters, the decadence of the two ages are nowhere near the same. Lust and sloth are looked upon with a lot more disgust in our society than greed, pride, or gluttony. We have our own equivalents of orgies and vomitoriums, as corny and relatively unsensual as they are, but decadent just the same......all the stupid spectacles...all-you-can eat buffets, commercials, fashion magazines, "American Idol," Michael Jackson on trial.....

But, the comparisons, they start right about.............here:
"Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society, are produced by the restraints which the necessary but unequal laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude."

Gibbon's final kiss-off to Commodus is right here:
"Such was the fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant, who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed, during thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to their master in personal strength and personal abilities."

Basically, from what I've read so far, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is a massive instance collection about power, and what good and bad people do when they have it, and the slow spread of Christianity in the midst of all that power. You see the President James Buchanan's of the Roman Empire; you see the President Abraham Lincoln's of the Roman Empire, all of whom die, and usually in a very unpleasant manner.

We'll let history judge where Bush will be, but the historians of all political stripes thus far are clearly putting him closer to Buchanan, than Lincoln (or even Reagan for those of you who wanna name streets, airports, hospitals, and diseases after him) ('sup, Longwood, FL?!?).

I'll definitely share the wackiness of Edward Gibbon and his light read when I come across it in Volume Two. Just you wait....just you wait!!!

Something I Stand For

Now that much of the nation has gotten its collective head out of its collective ass and put down the remote control long enough to have the gestalt that maybe the political party in power has no idea what it's doing (with the notable exception of massive corruption--and it's funny how it only took the Republicans 10 years of running Congress to become as corrupt as the Democrats after forty years of running Congress) (and it's also highly-amusing to see the number of Republicans in the House running for re-election who promised in 1994 to limit their time in office to 12 years), it's looking like, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, the Congress is going to switch majority parties in one, if not both, houses this November.

However, the only poll the Dems are losing is this: Nobody knows what they stand for. You know what you're getting with the President. It's stupid, myopic, corrupt, and, well, not even all that conservative if you believe that kind of thing, but, dad gammit! He means what he says and says what he means! I don't believe that, but when you have tools like Joe Lieberman speaking for "liberals," you can understand why people might think Democrats don't stand for much.

So, as a service to the millions who read this, I just want to tell you one thing I fervently believe to the very depths of my soul. Here it is:

I believe teachers should be paid more than golf pros. Thank you.

Maybe that's really crazy to some of you. After all, without golf pros, we wouldn't have guys and gals who are really good at a sport a fairly large segment of the population don't give a shit about. Without golf pros, we would have to find something else as marginally entertaining as a golf tournament on Sunday afternoon TV.

Okay, that's true, but did Tiger Woods teach you how to spell "neighborhood?" Did Nancy Lopez learn you all about your multiplication tables? Was it Lee Trevino who taught you to read?

But Rollie, you say, that's the marketplace! That's how it works! People want to pay good money to professional golfers, and there you go. Isn't it magical and wonderful and bountiful! It works so well, so leave it alone, Mr. Govmint Man!

That's the marketplace. Those who do the most amount of good for society make substantially less than those who hit a little white ball around.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm against that. Now, this isn't a platform any political party is supporting, but call me a koo-koo krazy lefty, but I really believe that the best teacher out there should be paid more than the best professional golfer.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm acting out of my own rational self-interest because I'm a teacher. I've only been doing this for about five years, so maybe I could just be paid as much as the average professional golfer, or maybe even a little below that, and hopefully I can supplement my meager high five, low six-figures with some endorsement deals with Mead Notebooks and Elmer's Glue and Houghton-Mifflin textbooks.

So there you have it. It's a radical overhaul of society, but it's a lot less absurd than the ridiculous amounts of cash the sacrosanct marketplace pays its professional golfers.

If anybody knows of any candidates running for office who also share my view, I will gladly support them.

What Almost Was: The Midwest Disneyworld

What follows is the stuff of legends: A true story with ramifications effecting me and pretty much everybody I grew up with and around.

It's a story you hear in Central Florida from time to time, but it's in Richard E. Foglesong's book "Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando" where the legend takes shape.

In November of 1963, a dinner party was held for Walt Disney and his people by the local bigwigs of St. Louis, including one Auggie Busch Jr. The excitement was mounting: the local St. Louis economy would be rejuvenated, and Disney's imagineers were already in the early stages of developing themes based on local folklore (presumably defanged Mark Twain-related Americana). Unlike Disneyland, way out in Anaheim, this newest Disney themepark would be right in the middle of the country, and much more accessible to the East Coast.

It was at this party when Busch, a little tipsy on the beer that made his fortunes, said the following to Walt:

"Any man who thinks he can design an attraction that is going to be a success in this city and not serve beer or liquor, ought to have his head examined."

According to Foglesong, "Walt Disney didn't say anything. He merely raised his right eyebrow in response to the offending remark."

The Mayor of St. Louis and the city's denizens apologized profusely, but to no avail. Disney immediately flew back to California. St. Louis bankers flew out no less than three times to try and change Walt's mind, but had no success. The St. Louis Disneyworld wasn't to be; instead, a huge plot of land was purchased south of Orlando for the cost of a song (song, hell: more like the first verse of a very short song), and, well, we all know the rest of this story, don't we?

This happened nine years before I was born. My parents were teenagers in St. Louis at the time. My Dad ended up in construction, ending up in Central Florida, where his company helped build much of the Disneyworld expansion of the late-1980's all the way to the present day, including many places where they do serve alcohol.

And that's really just a drop in the bucket of the literally billions of things that changed for so many, over one stupid beer-soaked remark from a St. Louis aristocrat. Anecdotes like that, you start to question how much control you really have over your life, and how the silliest little comments and gaffs from people "large" and "small" ripple outward until the effects are insansities like St. Louis up there with Vegas as "Vacation Capital of the World" and Lake Buena Vista as just another gator-populated body of water surrounded by orange groves. Or, vicey-versey: as it really is.

A story like that reminds me of when a man came to the soda factory my great grandparents owned in New Jersey. He offered to buy their factory and buy out the company for a decent sum, with stocks in the company he represented and a solid stake in the company's future, even offering them the chance to be the North Jersey bottlers of this new product. The man represented a rival soda firm, and the deal was off when my grandmother's aunt (I think) took one sip of the rival soda and thought it tasted like medicine.

The rival soda, as you probably guessed, was Coca-Cola. They put Kelly Beverages out of business anyway, and we were out a fortune that could have made me the biggest, most trust-funded bastard you'd never want to meet.

I feel more proud for the ancestor who turned down Coke for her integrity than anything else, but many in our family still share that nagging sense of "What if?" Nevermind that she was right about Coke, especially compared to the high-quality pop Kelly Beverages made, as I've been told at family gatherings. We could have been millionaires! Billionaires! I'd have been a polo player instead of a drummer!

The point is that so much is predetermined over decisions (many of them, on the surface, silly and capricious decisions) made well before we were even thought of, and as much as we like to think we're "self made" and "blaze our own trail," the past and its (to use Robert Penn Warren's word in "All the King's Men") Burden laid a template that is difficult to break, assuming you want to break it in the first place.

This grip on the past and the desire to break it surely had an effect on James Joyce, Richard Hell, Bob Dylan, Warhol, and Madonna, among others I'm too stupid to recall right now. It has surely inspired many a move to Florida, or the proverbial Big City. Such moves just lessen that unbreakable connection.

I'm just fascinated with it more than anything.

The New/Old Busch Stadium

"We just got back from playing a show in St. Louis...man, that is NOT a rocknroll town."-- a friend in a band.

Went to the new Busch Stadium over the weekend. If the inside had even 1/2 of the baseball/St. Louis heritage it has on the outside, it will be decent enough. It's still a work in progress, as evidenced by the gaping city-block sized hole visible from our upper deck seats on the other side of the stadium where the old Busch used to be. Had they waited 10 years or so, the old Busch Stadium would have been "retro," and I'm convinced that around 2015, one of these teams will build a "retro" replica of the Astrodome, and that'll be popular with the fans and therefore all the teams will follow suit and tear down the "retro" stadiums they have now. I miss the old Busch, and I don't give a damn if it was cookie cutter or not. Something about it also makes me think of when I went to Disney World as a kid, and how now, ironically enough, their vision of the future, a sterile tourist trap with every move preplanned by corporate visionaries, was more accurate than any of us could have ever envisioned.

I like St. Louis. I was born there and I have a lot of family there. However, I've always felt very much like an outsider looking in, probably more so than anyplace I've ever visited. They tell me it's parochial. The cynic in me sees most of the people who live there as being like the mutant strain of the Master Race: ubermensch Aryans who let themselves go to seed from too many Budweisers. Busch Stadium by the 7th inning is the kind of uniquely American puritanically decadent scene only Ralph Steadman or Mac Blackout could accurately convey through pen and paper.

Punk rock never quite took hold here as far as I can tell; Little Feat and Rush can still fill arenas. There's an inscrutability about it that I've never been able to quite crack...like it's Winesburg, Ohio writ large...or like it's everything Sinclair Lewis ever wrote about: right there, in your face.

You never see any punk rockers--even Hot Topic types--like you do in similar-sized cities. That's not a bad thing (after almost 10 years in and around Wicker Park, I welcome any respite from "indie"-anything), but I remember something HST said about St. Louis, that it's one of those places people leave as soon as they're old enough to do it: Quintron, T.S. Eliot, Burroughs.

But you can drive around the city, and the neighborhood's aren't getting torn to shreds like they are in Chicago. The pizza's fantastic. The Hill has some of the best Italian restaurants anywhere. The people, for the most part, are friendly, although I almost got in a fight with the guy behind me at the game for yelling "Down in front!" at my sister and girlfriend. (Luckily, my dirty looks are very very dirty, bordering on psychotic, and people tend to assuage their dipshittiness when they see them.) It's Middle America, and it is what is; the problems of St. Louis are the problems of America, and unlike many cities, St. Louis has yet to have that rebirth of people flocking back...the suburbs are pushing out further and further...some even 60 miles away.

I'm always glad to visit, but always glad to leave. If I moved there, I'd end up as one of those middle-aged guys with a basement where he keeps his old drums, his old records, his old fliers, his old memories, and nobody would find it the least bit interesting. Especially me.

But who knows...maybe St. Louis will experience a kind of renaissance with relatively affordable city housing and vacuums just waiting to be filled. The potentiality is there, moreso than similar Midwestern cities. You can see it when you look west from the new Busch Stadium, out over the abandoned industrial buildings and empty downtown streets...all the way to the mountains at the end of the horizon promising something more out there somewhere. Baseball, and then some.