I tried, I really tried. I simply couldn’t get all the way through Biden’s “state of the union” speech.
Sloganeering, passing the buck, avoidance…it was all there, front and center.
I try to stay out of the political fray, as there are many others much more devoted to the subject but I do try to stay “informed”… Even that is painful these days.
Listening to Biden is excruciating. I try to avoid him speaking as much as possible because frankly it’s demoralizing, but this annual event is supposed to be a big deal. And they pushed it back immensely, from January to March, so I figured they must really want him to come out swinging. Uh, no. It was blather, and self congratulations and honestly just an embarrassment.
That about covers the SOTU last night.
I’m no longer a religious man, but God help us… I can’t imagine how we’re going to make it to ’24 with this administration. And for what it’s worth, I WAS a registered Dem for 20+ years… My disgust isn’t partisan, it’s simply based on competency and what I’m seeing all around me with my own “lying eyes”.
I should have known, with the media slathering praise upon him all week prior, the mask mandates “suddenly” coming down and the disingenuous push that our economic problems here at home are because of Russia. Lolz! When every media lap dog is on your side and you STILL come off as a lying buffoon? Not exactly inspiring.
Yep.
Well, if nothing else we can now put that clown show behind us. A little more worried, a little less confident (which I didn’t think was possible!) and less hopeful, but life marches on!
I’m going to try to make”my world” a little better, and ignore the “rulers”. They haven’t done diddly for us in a long time anyway. I think I’ll just do my best to ignore them for the next 3 years. Not like they are telling the truth about anything anyway.
Tomorrow is a new day. Let’s all try to make it a better one, even when “they” tell us it’s all going to hell in a handbasket.
There is an awful lot of fuss about “hate” these days, as if you didn’t know. I don’t really understand it to be honest.
Personally I LOVE a lot of things, I dislike a lot of things. I’m indifferent to MOST things. But I HATE very little in the grand scheme of things.
If you listen to the “mainstream” you’d be led to believe that it’s an either/or world. Black or white. That is to say, if you don’t love then automatically you must HATE. I call bullshit on that one.
My BS meter is pegged.
The truth of the matter, for me at least, is that unless we’re talking about something that directly affects me and mine I don’t really pay much attention or care about it. Sorry to disappoint.
I’m very much a live and let live kind of person. I’m weird and I know I’m weird, so I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. By the same token, I’m not going to agree with everyone or the mainstream in general. But that doesn’t mean I HATE the mainstream. I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if I personally think their opinions are moronic. That doesn’t mean I hate them. Feel free to think I’m moronic. You won’t be the first or last in that regard. But you shouldn’t hate me for my opinions. Life is full of grey areas.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
For example, I am a big admirer of art – painting for instance. I love the classics, Van Gough, et al and I love surrealism like Dali and Escher and even a lot of modern works. But if you paint a big square, monochromatic, on a canvas and try to pass it off as “Art”… well, not to me it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I hate Art, or the artist of said monochromatic square. I just don’t like it or care about it. It’s not going to make me angry that it’s hanging in a gallery. I’m just going to ignore it and move on to what does interest me. Simple.
This is not to say you should accept or support ideas you don’t agree with. By the same ideal, you shouldn’t demand acceptance and support for all of yours either. A good idea can sell itself, you usually don’t need to force it upon others.
Reducing someone to one simple fact and then deciding to hate that person because of that one thing is beyond absurd. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, you know, for serial murderers, corrupt politicians, IRS agents, etc. but generally speaking most people are complex and don’t fit in to one little box.
For another example, you could say (vehemently) that I do in fact HATE the accordion. Its sound to my ears is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, combined with a cat who’s tail has been stepped on. But that’s just me. I don’t hate accordion players for their terrible life choices, but I sure hate the sound of their instrument on a primal level. By extension, you could say I hate Tejano music, as it features the accordion prominently. But that by no means equates to hating Latino peoples. It means I most likely won’t attend an event that features Tejano music. That’s about it… I’m not going to go around demanding Tejano music be banned because I hate the accordion. I’m not going to scream “cultural appropriation!” <gasp!> because Tejano uses western European styles (polka, etc) as their base. I’m just going to move on to something I DO appreciate.
It feels like the media is trying to whip up this frenzy of hate, but if you look below the surface, most of it is hogwash.
Sure, there are certainly some idiots out there that will lay their blanket of hate over an entire group, whether it be racial, economic, religious, gender/orientation, whatever. In my opinion anyone like that is stunted at best and certainly not playing with a full deck. No matter what club/clique/organization/lifestyle you identify with, chances are there are some major differences between you and the rest of the people in your group. That’s life. That’s humanity. We all need to learn to not take ourselves so seriously, and more importantly not let the media lead you around by the nose, looking for a boogeyman behind every utterance and action.
I’d love to see everyone just calm down a bit. It’s OK, not everyone is going to like you or what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean they hate you. But trying to force your will on them, might make them turn that corner. And besides, hate is exhausting. It takes effort and dedication to TRULY hate someone. Talk about wasted energy! To quote someone I can’t recall: “Holding onto hate is like taking poison everyday, in hopes that someone else will die from it.” Wise words…
Another thing, and I say this as delicately as possible… Over-use of the word “hate” will eventually render it meaningless. Much like what happened with “racist” over the last few years. Now, because “racist” lost its power, it morphed into “white supremecy”, which has caused yet more friction, division and anger. But that’s a story for another day…
While I don’t believe for a nano-second that “words = violence”, words DO have power. Using them incorrectly diminishes that power and inflames people. Not a great habit to get into.
Just something to think about. Thanks for reading!
It’s been a long, long time but we FINALLY got to make it out to a San Jose Earthquakes game again!
I am not at all interested in team sports, EXCEPT for soccer. I haven’t watched an NBA game since Jordan was the dominant force in the sport, and the last NFL game I went to, Joe Namath was still QB for the 49ers… As for “America’s Passtime”, baseball? The first and ONLY major league game I attended was back in the 1970’s with the Oakland A’s. Generally speaking I find team sports to be a great cure for insomnia, but little else.
But soccer? That is a whole different story! I love the game, the pace, the non-stop action on the pitch. Luckily for me, both the Mrs. and our daughter love the game too, so we’ve been to many, many MLS games.
Today our Quakes took on the New York Red Bulls at their home field in San Jose for the season opener. The tickets were a Christmas gift from our daughter (Thanks again Kiddo!), so we’ve been sitting on the tickets for awhile and the anticipation was high, to put it mildly.
It’s our first time back to the stadium since before the Plague, and the excitement was palpable!
I’ll be honest, I don’t exactly “follow” the league… We don’t have broadcast/cable TV at home, so we don’t actually watch games that we aren’t physically attending. I’m not even sure who is on the latest roster – sports, even soccer, has been the last thing on my mind over the last 2 years. I love the Quakes ‘cuz they’re my “home team”, and have been going to their matches since the “old days” when they played their games at San Jose State University in the red uniforms back in 1975/76! But I don’t care about statistics, rivalries or any of that stuff, I just genuinely LOVE the game. In fact, one of the key drivers in my quest for a place to relocate is a town within a couple hours of a MLS team’s home field. Don’t really care who. Well, except for Real Salt Lake, I loathe that team as they have a habit of playing dirty, in my experience.
The crowd was a little thin at first, but things filled out once the teams took the field.
The Quakes won the toss and got the first kick off and it was GAME ON! The teams were pretty evenly matched and there was a good back and forth throughout the first half, but much to our dismay New York managed to put ine in the net at the 45th minute, right before the whistle. Bummer.
In the second half, the Quakes tied things up in the 69th minute, but it didn’t last long. New York popped in another just a few short minutes later. To ad insult to injury, they grabbed at 3rd goal in extra time.
Sadly, a victory for our home team wasn’t in the cards tonight.
But all things considered, we had a really fun time. It was great to get to out to a game again after such a long absence. Besides, we’ve got a long season ahead of us and some impressive players on the field, I think its gonna be a good year!
A quote from Tulsi Gabbard from the CPAC (?!?! a bold and shocking move for a Democrat) yesterday in Orlando. “Those in power see themselves as the high priests in a secular theocracy. This explains why they see those who disagree with them as heretics. So it’s not surprising that those who reject their leadership, these are the people who were targeted by Biden’s attorney general as domestic terrorists simply for holding anti-authority views,” she said.
I’ve never understood the “frothing at the mouth” political movements in the Land of the Free. These latest “progressive” movements are every bit as Oppressive as the so-called “Moral Majority” back in the 80’s, which is obvious…but the loudest voices of this “movement” weren’t yet born or at least weren’t old enough to be aware. I just never connected the dots. Makes sense to me now that I see it explained in this way.
I walked away from religion in my late teens, and I certainly don’t need to replace it with worship of government.
Tolerance and inclusion goes both ways. Agreeing to disagree doesn’t mean you “lose”. EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinion, even if yours is divergent from the “norm”.
Back when I was a kid music was going through some serious growing pains. It was the early 1980’s, Disco was D.E.A.D., Top 40 music was horrendous and punk rock was being diluted by “New Wave”, and I mean no offense by that. With but a few exceptions, New Wave music has held up better over the decades than a lot of punk has, but I digress…
New Wave was a blanket term that covered a lot of sub-genres. You had the synthesizer pioneers like Depeche Mode and Eurythmics, the New Romantics like Adam and the Ants and ABC, the grittier guitar-based bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements and all sorts of combinations and mash-ups along the way. Rockabilly made a comeback in the EARLY 1980’s, due to the Stray Cats bursting onto the scene, and they somehow got embraced by the New Wave crowd as well. It seemed there was a band with “Cats” in their name popping up every 7 minutes, you couldn’t keep track of ’em all!
One of the smaller sub-genres of the day was sort of a rockabilly/New wave/southern rock & roll hybrid, called by some “Cow Punk”. Personally I never really cared for that moniker, it seemed derisive and frankly there wasn’t a whole lot of “punk” to their music, other than a high energy and a quick tempo. Nonetheless, for a good 5 years or so, these cow punks kept slippin’ out the barn and winding up on college radio, where I became enamored of the sound. Big shout out to KSJS, KFJC and KSCU, those crazy college kids opened my ears and my mind to SOOOOO much amazing music back in the day…
So without further adeue, I present some of my all-time favorite “cow punk” tunes, or as I refer to it – that Twang Sound! Slip on your boots, straighten up the Bolo Tie and Enjoy!
Starting the work week on a Wednesday this week. Feeling a little discombobulated.
It was great to get away and I certainly have no regrets taking a couple days to help celebrate the kid’s birthday. Surprisingly, I feel like my batteries did get a little recharge, in spite of all the driving and poor sleep in the hotel. Today is actually the best I’ve felt since catching the Plague a month ago, so I’ve got that going for me!
Nothing terribly exciting to share today. I’m going through my backlogged stack of books to decide what to read next and I have a few shows coming up in March, so there will be more reviews forthcoming over the next few weeks.
Trying to get “caught up” is a never-ending task when more comes down the line daily, regardless of what is already on the docket. It ain’t dull, I’ll tell you that!
Today is our daughter’s birthday and to celebrate with her we’ve taken a trip up to Napa CA, the *world famous California Wine Country.
Personally, I don’t drink wine with the occasional exception of sparkling wines, so Napa comes in at about #437 on my Top 10 places to visist. But it is pretty, I’ll give ’em that.
Not too shabby…
The Mrs. and I are thrilled that at this age she still wants to hang out with her parents on her birthday and are happy to be here with her, we just can’t help but wonder how our kid ended up liking such sedate, boring stuff!
Nonetheless, it’s been a really nice trip. This town has one thing down to a science, customer service. Everybody we’ve encountered has been extremely helpful and nice. If we were more into wine we’d probably make more of an effort to come here, but it is a pretty nice (and quiet) place to spend a couple days.
Good food, good drink (from what I’m told) and a friendly atmosphere, what’s not to like? Nine thumbs up for Cole’s Chop House. The best pork chop I’ve ever had, hands down.
Happy Birthday kiddo! Hope you enjoyed your time up north!
Ah, the historic Fillmore in San Francisco! What a place! One of those “…if these walls could speak!” kind of places.
Just oozing with music history…
Countless legendary performers have graced the stage there since the equally legendary Bill Graham started booking acts there back in 1965. The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, even Frank Zappa! The list goes on and on of the pioneers, the all-out musical legends that have played there. To say it is a special venue doesn’t even come close. That being said, it’s been a LONG time since we’ve had an excuse to visit the Fillmore. As memory serves, our last show there was Dogstar back in 1997 or so (which was an epic show actually) Regardless, we were excited to get back there and share the place with our daughter who’s never had the pleasure.
I was surprised to learn there was a opener for the opening band, a Jake Pinto, who also happens to be “the new guy” I mentioned in my review from last night’s show. He started the night off with a half hour solo set, just him and a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano. He was quite good. I liked his songs, some more than others of course. But as I said to the Mrs.; I like his sound, but it really isn’t conducive to a live music setting. Just a little too mellow. I’m absolutely going to check out his recordings, as he’s a fine musician with a nice voice, but in a live setting his music was more appropriate to a dark lounge, where you’d be dropping in for the drinks, not the show. But, new discovery for listening AND solved the mystery of who the new guy with MCH is, so I give it a thumbs up!
Jake Pinto. Solamente.
Bay Ledges was up next and Wow! What a difference from the night before! They looked better, they played better and their energy level was off the charts. I was pretty impressed this time around. They definitely won me over and now they too are on my follow-up listening list to check out their recorded work.
Bay Ledges, killin’ it!
Magic City Hippies came out with essentially the same set as last night. But with the bigger stage to roam and a bigger crowd to vibe with (and the vibe of the room was ELECTRIC!), the boys just let it RIP!
The Hippies’ guitarist John Coughlin was in rare form, I think the best I’ve ever seen him. In my opinion this guy is the best guitarist nobody knows about. Seriously. The way he so effortlessly blends so many styles together- rock, funk, jazz, reggae – is impressive and his slide work is spectacular. But then, he’ll go and play a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even seem like sounds POSSIBLE from a guitar! The only other guitarist I can think to compare him to is Adrian Belew, who is a living legend.
John. Guitarist. Extraordinary.
And this is not to diminish Robby Hunter’s guitar playing. He’s such a compelling vocalist and front man that I always forget what stellar guitarist he is until I see him on stage. He takes the first lead section in the song Modern Animal and its a scorcher! And when he and John solo in harmony? Nothing finer on a stage, let me tell you.
Robby Hunter, starting fires!
The rest of the band was on point, solid as a rock as always. It was another great night of outstanding music, played by outstanding musicians, leaving everything they had on stage. And further reinforcement of Magic City Hippies being our favorite live band, ever.
There have been a lot of things over the last 2 years that have really taken the wind out of our sails. This “plague” that they’re still trying to convince of us nearly destroyed live music, but thankfully it’s starting to trickle back and last night we got to see one of our favorite live bands, Magic City Hippies!
Full disclosure, I (and my family) LOVE this band! We’ve got all their CDs, I’ve got everything they’ve put out on vinyl, the Mrs. and our daughter both sport their t-shirts…our Spotify libraries are chock-full of their music, the girls follow them on IG, and we’ve been to every Bay Area show they’ve done. If there was a fan club for them, like in the old days, one of the 3 of us would probably be the president of it! So yes, I am biased.
The Catalyst in Santa Cruz is *somewhat legendary. It’s been around for DECADES. I’ve been catching shows there since the 1980s and in fact even played a gig or two there myself way back when. I still love it there. Very cool vibe, great bands coming through, cheap drinks…what’s not to love?
To say we were anxiously awaiting this show would be the understatement of the century. We got in a groove of seeing roughly 20 shows a year, then Covid hit… and boy, did we need a fix!!! We’d been sitting on the tickets for months, and this show is our scheduled kick-off for a plethora of shows we’ll be attending over the next several months.
The opening band was Bay Ledges. I’d never heard of them, but MCH has had some great opening acts in the past, so our hopes were high.
The band was a two piece outfit, a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist. Right off the bat, the odds are stacked against them in a live music setting. It’s tough to put on a compelling show with only two people up there.
Bay Ledges
I’ll give them this, their songs were pretty good. As a two piece they are relying on a lot of samples and loops to fill out their sound. For a drummer, this is an arduous task, as you’re locked in to a computer generated tempo that does.not.deviate. Bay Ledges’ drummer was rock solid in this regard and literally didn’t miss a beat. The vocalist had a decent voice and was not bad on guitar. He also spent a lot of time tapping pads and tweaking knobs…much like watching a DJ, which is slightly more fun than watching paint dry. That is honestly my only point of criticism for these guys. They played live music, they did NOT put on a show. They presented themselves as though they’d just returned from a day of checking out garage sales and they just generally lacked charisma. It had the feel of watching a couple buddies practice… The good news is that is easily overcome. With some effort and more gigs under their belts I’m sure they’ll become more entertaining.
Then the Hippies hit the stage. They opened with “Diamond”, one of thier newer tunes, and the crowd was drawn right in. Until this point I had wondered how they would pull off their new material live, as it is much more “studio-esque” than their earlier stuff, but I had NOTHING to worry about! The room was enthusiastic and in high spirits, and the band was simply on fire. They had a new guy sitting in on keys and guitar, and he fit in seamlessly.
That’s the new guy, far right.
The Hippies ripped out a solid 90 minute set, which unbelievably contained the entirety of my personal Top-10 from their catalog. Wrapping up the set with my all-time favorite song of theirs “Fanfare”, was the cherry on top of an unbelievably excellent show!
Close enough to the stage that I was able to capture the set list!
Then after the shortest break ever, they came back and just knocked it out of the park with the encore, rounding out my Top 10 by including “Indiana”, perhaps my favorite song from their Modern Animal album.
This show allows marked the return of their original drummer Pat, who’d (for reasons unknown to me) sat out the first portion of the tour. Pat is a fantastic, if unconventional, drummer and it was great to see him at the kit. The guys were obviously stoked to have him back on stage with them and they all seemed to be having the time of their lives.
Pat is BACK!!!
Magic City Hippies are one of those bands that, in my not-so-humble view, are BETTER live than on record. And their records kick ass. There are only a few bands I’d put in this category, and they’re all heavy hitters – U2, Dave Matthew’s Band, and Primus come to mind… That’s pretty good company.
Overall, I can’t say enough great things about this show. It was exciting, it was a great vibe, and it showcased some spectacular musicians at the top of their game!
Welcome back to California MCH! Thanks for an amazing night! We can’t wait for the next one, which thankfully is TONIGHT in San Francisco! We’ll see ya there, front row like always!!
The Boring Old Man 