Flaming Pablum

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Image courtesy of Todd Alcott Graphics. 

Status Report

It's Still Here

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security just because mask mandates have been relaxed.

This morning, my son Oliver — far and away the most careful and COVID-conscious member of our family — woke up feeling off, so he took a test and came up positive. Just to be sure, he took a second test, which also came up positive. Despite being fully vaccinated and boosted and still diligent about staying masked indoors, etc., he has contracted COVID. Oh joy. 

Mercifully, my wife and daughter are away in London (and hopefully staying safe and responsible), so it’s just Oliver and I here at home. Thus far, I’m still testing negative.

This isn’t over.

Two Years

Hey there, all. Sorry for the relative slowdown, but it’s been crazy busy on the work front. I promise to have more inane crap for you to bitch about here soon.

That all said, I was struck today by something when I glanced at my calendar. This coming Saturday, it will be two years to the day my office, my wife’s office and both my kids’ schools sent us all home to work and study remotely. The advisory at my office was appended with a sort of “it’ll probably only be for, like, two weeks, tops!”

We all know what happened next, of course.

According to my phone, I took three photos on that day. One on the way to work, one of my office as I was about to exit, and then one on my way home from work … of what I thought looked like a an aptly broken planet in a garbage can.

Status Report

The Mask Makes the Man

This might seem like a poorly timed post, given that the indoor mask mandates have been largely lifted around New York City, but the point still remains.

I have a deliberately annoying-but-tenacious habit of trying to impose my will on certain friends by questioning their masculinity when they fail to agree to whatever stupid plan I’m proposing, usually to the tune of: “Let’s go get beers – a man would say “YES!””

I say it *BECAUSE* it’s a stupid thing to say. I’m being *KNOWINGLY* idiotic when I do it. Anyone who alludes to what “real men” do or do not do when striving to make a point is wading into a sickly bath of hopeless misogyny and antiquated thinking. For comedic purposes with certain friends, however, I think it’s fine, because, to my mind, it’s so obviously goddamn ridiculous. It's abundantly clear that I’m not being serious.

That all said, it should go well without saying that not everybody thinks the same way I do (and this is entirely true for a wide and varied host of diverse and divisive topics). Lots of folks take their preconceptions about what is and is not acceptable behavior indicative of their gender very seriously, and if you want to really hit one of these people where it hurts, you call them on it, I guess.

To that end, as part of the efforts of the anti-vax/science-skeptical crowd to discourage consensus and sew division around the topic of COVID-19 health protocols, they’ve coated parts of New York City in a sticker campaign. Some of the stickers are slightly more nuanced than others, but this one seemed pretty brazen, aimed squarely at a certain demographic pathetically insecure about the accepted behavioral norms of their gender.

This is the level of intellect and maturity that is impeding a meaningful management of COVID-19.

Museless

I don’t know if it’s the time of year, the 23rd month of the pandemic, the political climate or Mercury being in and out of retrograde, but I have pretty much lost my muse.

I have nothing to say.

Until I do, … enjoy this photograph of steam escaping I took in TriBeCa last week.

The Damage Done: A Nutshell Encapsulation

 

Just a follow-up from this post. 

 

Joe Rogan has been given a massive bullhorn by Daniel Ek and puts that bullhorn in front of people who say things like “STICKING STEAK KNIVES IN YOUR EAR CURES DEAFNESS” and “YOU CAN HEAL CANCER WITH MAYONAISE” and “NEVER MIND WHAT TRAINED, PROFESSIONAL DOCTORS ARE TELLING YOU!” Strangely, lots and lots of people seem to enjoy listening to this.

People like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, India.Arie et al. don’t want to be associated with the same bullhorn that is spreading all that dangerously false and irresponsible bullshit that Rogan’s guests (and Rogan himself) are espousing.

Other artists are worried of following suit, because hey – that bullhorn also plays their music, and most people seem to listen to the bullhorn.

Daniel Ek, the person that actually *owns* the bullhorn, just wants all your money for listening to the bullhorn. Don’t expect him to care about the misinformation that’s spewing out of the bullhorn.

Neil Young & Co. just wants the bullhorn to be taken away from Joe Rogan so as to stop the flow of the irresponsible bullshit.

 

Joe Rogan is not a martyr for "Free Speech." To borrow a page from Spider-Man, he has great power, but he is not recognizing that with great power comes great responsibility.

 

I say we destroy the bullhorn.

The Damage Done

In the wake of the events of the past week, it shouldn’t be a mystery as to where I stand on the issues (as if that matters). But, this is my weblog, so to recap…

Estimable rock legend Neil Young decided to up the ante on the growing pushback against Spotify for continuing to provide Joe Rogan with the expansive, lucrative platform he enjoys wherein to disseminate deeply irresponsible misinformation about COVID vaccination (and myriad other hot-button topics). Young warned Spotify that they could either have Neil Young on their platform — arguably the largest streaming platform out there, if I’m correct — or Joe Rogan, not both. Spotify, for their part, crunched their numbers and deduced that removing Joe Rogan’s program from their offerings was not a cost-effective move for them, despite the groundswell of public outcry. Had Spotify consulted, say, Graham Nash, Steven Stills and David Crosby, they’d have gleaned that Neil rarely makes idle threats. Sure enough, Neil made good, and his catalog was excised from Spotify a day or so later.

Then the fun stuff started. Joni Mitchell, an artist I’ll gamely admit that I’ve absolutely NEVER liked, demonstrated her moxie and support for her fellow polio-survivor and Canadian by also removing her sizable catalog of insufferably cloyingly twee music (sorry, … old habits, y’see) from Spotify. Shortly after that, erstwhile E Street guitarist Nils Lofgren followed suit in another show of solidarity. Rumors started swirling about other prominent artists doing same. Suddenly, it’s a trend. Honestly, I’d love to see more of my favorite artists pull the same stunt, but if Spotify doesn’t think losing the catalog of a rock elder statesman is a problem, I doubt losing the oeuvres of Killing Joke, SWANS, DEVO and the Sisters or Mercy would even catch their attention.

Spotify behaving in a dispassionately avaricious manner is certainly nothing new. Since their lucrative advent, they have been fleecing artists left, right and center, paying fractions of pennies in royalties to songwriters struggling to maintain even meager livelihoods as full-time music creators. They are evil money-grubbers. It begins and ends there.

On a personal level, I’ve always been pretty vehemently anti-streaming (although, in the interest of transparency, I do have a long-neglected Spotify account, in much the same manner I have a largely dormant Twitter account). Any artist that sees fit to stick it to quintessential supervillain/Spotify chairman Daniel Ek is a-okay with me. I’m also a longtime Neil Young fan. I also think Joe Rogan is a completely idiotic douchebag for routinely spreading demonstrably false statements about bona fide life or death matters. I expressed as much on a friend’s Facebook feed, about three weeks back, and she blocked me. But people apparently do indeed care what that horrible “bro” has to say. That’s the scary part.

So, given my unwavering allegiance to the physical manifestations of music, my loathing of streaming, my admiration for Neil Young and my abhorrence of slackjawed, wingnut science-skeptics and self-appointed arbiters of “free speech,” I hope Spotify goes all Hindenburg as a result of all this.

On a side note, however, I was bemused to spot an article in The Guardian, this morning from a woman lamenting the difficult choice of quitting Spotify, citing that her Spotify playlists “tell the story of her life.” As if. Honestly, her problem can handily be sidestepped by simply writing down the tunes in her playlists and simply replicating them on whatever next platform she joins. It’s not exactly a crisis akin to the devastation of the entire subculture of music fans who formerly sated their needs via a once-robust network of independent record and disc shops.

If you’re serious about your music, you don’t rely on streaming services. If you’re serious about your health, you don’t listen to fatuous boneheads like Joe Rogan. If you’re serious about defeating COVID, you don’t tolerate misinformation.

COVID Comes Calling

Hey all. Apologies for the relative slowdown, but … as might have been inevitable, depending on which news source you give your patronage to … the Flaming Pablum household has been touched, this week, by the sickly tendrils of the coronavirus.

Fret not, we’re all fine, but safety protocols have dictated some emergency measures involving half the family staying put and the other half temporarily sequestering elsewhere. The afflicted party had previously been vaccinated and boosted. As such, they are a bit fatigued and mildly congested, but should be perfectly fine. The other three are testing regularly and remaining vigilant. It’s more of a logistical hassle than anything else.

It’s real. You should probably expect it.

I’ll be back when life calms down, a bit.