Archives

February 15, 2007

And the winner is ... wrong

Allow me to paint you a picture. Right now, it's 8pm Wednesday night. About an hour ago, Michele IMs me. Turns out we're one article short for today's FTTW. Baby Huey to the rescue. I mention I've got a rant in mind about the Grammies and I could probably squeeze a post's worth of blood out of that turnip. I sit down to write it, and just like that. Writer's block. Ain't that a bitch? I pour myself a big ol' glass of scotch, and the juices -- and words -- start flowing. This post works well with just a little drunken rage, so I'll use that to my advantage.

I'm on the radio. Most of you know this. A slightly lesser-known fact is that I don't like listening to the radio. The real gems are college radio, but most of it just isn't my cup of tea. Don't get me wrong, I love that we, in college radio land, promote local bands and artists that'll never see the inside of a Virgin megastore. It's usually music I just can't get behind, but god help me, I respect it. This is not true for most everything right of 92 on the dial. It's slick, mass-produced pap full of so much mindless banter that it makes me want to stab someone in the face all the time forever.

This lowest-common-denominator bullshit spills over into the rest of the industry, and ultimately, its awards as well. The Grammies were this Sunday, and I didn't even know because I don't pay attention to that shit. However, a friend sent me the list of best Heavy Metal Performance nominees as well as the winner. And surprise, surprise. They fucked it up. Again.

The nominees for best Heavy Metal Performance are:

Stone Sour
"30/30 - 150"

Look. I'm not even gonna talk about this. One of the guys from Slipknot put together another shitty band. It sucked. Shouldn't have even been nominated.

Ministry
"Lies, Lies, LIes"

I'm on a mission to dig up the truth
You think we're stupid and there's no proof
Well let me tell you that the time has come
To pull the trigger on the smoking gun

Ministry is finally back. In 2004, they put out Houses of the Mole, which was their best work, in my opinion, since Psalm 69. Then back in May, they put out Rio Grande Blood and got even better. "Lies, Lies, Lies" is a smart, dark, vaguely tin-foil political song. I really enjoyed it and I wouldn't have been disappointed if it won.

PS. This nominee holds the distinct honor of being the only song nominated that is actually the best song on the record.

Lamb of God
"Redneck"

So goddamned easy to write this,
you make it spill off the page.
So drunk on your self, self-righteous.
The laughing stock of your own fucking stage.

The first single from Sacrament, this nominee holds the dubious distinction of being the funniest video of last year. Check the YouTube video up there for it. This song is the slickest on the album, for sure, and I think there are better songs on the album. That being said, "Redneck" was definitely Lamb of God's coming out party. Ashes of the Wake certainly cemented them in the heavy metal aristocracy, but Sacrament was the album that stormed the mainstream and made it cool to be metal again. If the Grammy were solely my choice, this is the song that would have won.

Mastodon
"Colony of Birchmen"

Run with death
Run with death
Gone away
My heart's gone away
Taking everything
My heart's gone away
Take it now

If I'm being completely honest with myself, this song should probably have won. The album is brilliant, but is rather inaccessible. Not that that bothers Mastodon. From the NPR article:

Brann Daillor, the band's drummer, says his genre has grown into something that fosters innovation.
"There's this preconceived notion that if you want to be successful and be on the radio, you have to dumb it down," Daillor says "Just give them a four/four, the song has to be three and a half minutes long, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge, and that's it. Besides jazz, there's the possibility with heavy music to be really technical and really push yourself as a musician."

Mastodon, which came together in Atlanta during metal's commercially lean years, unapologetically embrace the genre's grandiose beginnings. Each of their albums tells an epic story — Leviathan, from 2004, is a retelling of Moby Dick; last year's Blood Mountain is about a quest to climb a mountain made of blood to capture a crystal skull.

"Imagery and storytelling and the art of the whole thing is interesting to us to write about that stuff and have the artwork on the cover. [It's] the mystique of it all," says Bill Kelliher, one of Mastodon's guitarists.

"For us it has to be epic and it has to be a giant something or other," adds Daillor. "A mountain. Something monolithic. A giant squid, a giant whale. It makes for really bad-ass T-shirts, too."

- from Feb 11th's All things Considered

That's better than I can say it.

Slayer
"Eyes of the Insane"

Got to make it stop
Can't take it any more!
Death's face keeps haunting me
And just keeps coming back for more!

It is a travesty that this song won. This song isn't even the best song of this ALBUM, let alone this YEAR. Christ Illusion wasn't Slayer's weakest album, but it was definitely in the bottom 3. They're shells of their former selves. This is akin to Jethro Tull winning in 1991. That is not to say that Slayer isn't metal -- Slayer is metal defined. However, this is yet another case of a band winning on name and name alone. I think that Slayer should have won in the past. Seasons in the Abyss? THAT should have won in 1991. Divine Intervention? Probably could have won in 1995. Christ Illusion? Not so much.

I'm drunk, I'm tired. I've said all I can, and I can't says no more.

Baby Huey doesn't care that much, he just wanted yet another excuse to rant drunkenly

January 5, 2007

The Old Better Catch Up With The New

The following content does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editors of Faster Than The World.

In my blog, I wrote that one of the best things in the tech world in 2006 was the level of competition amongst all the players which has resulted in great products at a lower cost to consumers. While purchasing a 50" plasma HDTV may still be out of range for some consumers, a 37" LCD HDTV or a 40" plasma HDTV is certainly doable. LCD monitors, laptop computers, mp3 players, digital cameras, and other electronic gadgets have all come down in price over the last few years despite the fact the products have improved and have more features. I recently purchased a new Dell computer. For $150 I was able to upgrade from a standard 19" LCD to a 20" wide screen LCD that has USB ports, a DVI input and can be used for the Xbox or Playstation. Four to five years ago, that would have set me back $400-$500. The tech players know the deal, and they're benefiting from providing the public with good products at great prices.

The same cannot be said for the movie and music industry. They are still stuck in the past, losing money and customers as a result. The problem is, they see piracy and users of BitTorrent and P2P file sharing programs as the enemy and as the reason for their failures. Yes, illegal downloading of movies and music as well as pirated DVD's cost the industry money. But the notion that all of their troubles can be put at the feet of those who illegally downloaded the latest Weezer CD or uploaded the gayest video ever made to Youtube is nonsense.

This is not a new tactic from these two industries. Just under 30 years ago, the video cassette recorder and the cassette audio tape were the new inventions that would supposedly bring the movie and music industry crashing down. Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA said this in 1982:

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

That was not a tongue in cheek quote. That was what Valenti said in testimony before Congress.

The music industry was able to have a royalty tax imposed on every blank audio cassette in the 70's and 80's because the RIAA was convinced all of the music being released would just be copied and handed off instead of purchased. That was also nonsense. One can examine this list to see how many records were produced and released within those years selling tens of millions of copies. So not only did the RIAA makes tons of money, they made more money every time you bought a new blank cassette tape. The RIAA is now convinced that pirated music costs them so much money, that they have asked panel of federal copyright royalty judges to reduce royalties paid to publishers and songwriters. That's in addition to the almost 400 lawsuits they have filed against people who have downloaded music. I wonder which genius decided that the best way to capture the hearts and minds of a younger generation was to hit them with lawsuits demanding $3000 in damages.

There are several ways both industries can make money and appeal to the hearts and minds of a generation that want their music and movies.

1. Put out a better product. How many good artists and bands are left to use self-promotion with their recordings because a record label wants to spend money on a Paris Hilton or Kevin Federline project? What good movies are not getting made because some pinhead at a movie studio gave the green light to a Larry The Cable guy film? Or Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo? The movie industry does have a tougher battle because HDTV and HD DVD (or Blu-Ray) with surround sound is bringing the theater experience to homes and unless people cannot wait, would rather watch on their 50" HDTV than spend $40 for tickets and snacks at the local theater. The movie industry is going to have to adopt a Moneyball type approach to their business model.

2. Find a better and less expensive way to deliver the product to us. Some people would say that 99 cents is a cheap price to pay to download music from places like iTunes. Others say paying $15 a month for a service such as Rhapsody which allows unlimited downloads to your computer and portable devices is worth it. That may be true, but it could be better and less expensive and they would still make a lot of money. While 99 cents is not a lot of money, it still gives me pause to download and buy a particular song. But if the price were 25 cents, I wouldn't hesitate at all. I tried Rhapsody on a trial basis and I liked it, but not for $15 a month. They could easily offer it for $5 a month and gain that many more subscribers and still make money. I'm a capitalist. It's not as if I don't want people to make money. I do. And they will, despite the lower prices. It's all about the content and how it is delivered.

It is more difficult for the consumer when Hollywood and the music industry are in bed together, but the Internet age has made it easier for the consumer to fight back. Blogs, podcasts, and the immediate free flow of information around the world doesn't allow for back-room deals to made as easily as they used to.

To their credit, Disney is one of the first big companies to recognize that suing people is not the path to victory. They actually recognize piracy as a business model and as such have started to offer episodes of their ABC lineup on the Internet after they air on television. It has been a success for them and shows have not suffered in the ratings as a result.

In the movie 'Wall Street' there is a scene where Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is showing Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) a hand held color television he bought for his son. He says to Fox, "We're going into a new age, pal." That new age has arrived. People no longer just want their MTV. They want their MTV fast, inexpensive, and want the ability to move it from device to device without having to jump through hoops or make multiple purchases to do so. The technology world and the audio/video world heard what Gekko said and have responded. The result is a bustling industry with people rushing to take it all in. The problem is the content delivery. The movie industry and the music industry haven't heard what Gekko said. And unless they do something about it, they will slowly fade into irrelevance pretty much like the 2 inch color television Gekko was showing off to Bud Fox.

Jay Caruso writes daily at Pop And Sports.

The Editorial Page is open to anyone. If you would like to submit an editorial for future publication, please write us a fttw.submit@gmail. com (att: editorial column).

December 29, 2006

Pimping Victimhood

The following content does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editors of Faster Than The World.

Agriculture subsidies. Affirmative action. Diversity policies in school admissions. Universal health care. Welfare.

What do all of these things have in common? They're all examples of how liberals use victimhood to achieve their agenda. Confused? I'll explain.

You see, liberalism is something that has to be sold to the American people, for no independent citizen is going to agree to pay heavy taxes to have a big, bloated, invasive government. Most citizens, if asked generically, would undoubtedly rather have a small government and lower taxes.

So that's where the language of victimhood comes in. In order to convince Americans to vote for big-government, high-tax liberal policies they must be convinced that big-government, high-tax liberal policies are what they need. They must be convinced that they cannot do without these policies and that those who would tell them that they can do without such policies don't really care about them.

Consider affirmative action hiring and admissions policies, for instance. Liberals insist that affirmative action, basically race-based hiring favoring minorities, is necessary because minorities are victims and cannot succeed without such favoritism. To illustrate this, consider Michigan's efforts to amend that state's constitution (Proposal 2 in the last election) with the following language: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Seems pretty straight forward, right? The law, as enacted, would prevent state employers and educators from showing favoritism to any race, sex, ethnicity, etc. Yet despite the clear common sense of this law, it was opposed by so-called “civil rights” groups from across the nation including groups like the NAACP and others. Why? Because those groups don't want the preferential treatment for their constituencies to end. Obviously they didn't phrase their opposition to Proposal 2 in that manner because it wouldn't have gained a lot of traction with voters, so instead they used the language of victimhood. They claimed that the proposal would hurt minority groups. That it would prevent them from having the same opportunities as everyone else since, without government help, these minorities can't get ahead on their own.

Which is complete balderdash. The key to helping minorities get ahead is to give them better opportunities for education (see: school vouchers, another policy “civil rights” groups oppose), not to deny education opportunities to “majority”students. Yet many minorities remain convinced that they cannot get ahead on their own, so they continue to vote for liberal interests who promote things like affirmative action.

Many working in the agriculture industry have bought into this same line of thinking.

Farming is a tough job, with a lot of risk involved. Thus, many farmers have fallen on hard times when the growing season has gone poorly. So to “help” the farmers politicians have instituted policies that subsidize their industry with billions upon billions of tax payer dollars. Now many farmers have been convinced by these politicians sending them all the money that they cannot get by without subsidies.

Again, the language of victimhood. These farmers are “victims” who must be helped because they cannot help themselves.

Which, again, is complete balderdash. These farmers could help themselves by changing their business models and using different growing strategies. Many farmers could band together and form business groups to farm the land. Such groups would allow them to share resources like equipment and money, more easily diversify crops and allow them more leeway to absorb losses during tough growing seasons. Yet in some states (like North Dakota) such business arrangements are actually banned. Why? Because the politicians like it better when farmers are dependent upon the government to get buy. It makes it easier for those farmers to be manipulated for votes.

Which is really what is at the heart of all this “pimping victimhood” the big-government types do. When people are convinced that they need government assistance to get by they are more inclined to vote for the people who will provide that assistance. Yet who is that most beneficial for, the people getting the assistance or the politicians using the assistance to buy votes?

I'd say the politicians.

There is an old proverb which states, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” What that boils down to is the idea that we should help people help themselves.

I think that's the approach we need to utilize when it comes to government assistance. Rather than simply giving people things (like preferential treatment for minorities, or endless subsidies for farmers) we should be looking at policies that encourage them to succeed on their own.

School vouchers, for instance, would do wonders for minority students. It would allow their parents to get them away from the shoddy inner-city public schools that do them such disservice and get them into better schools in other neighborhoods, or even private schools.

Ending bans on corporate farming and ending many of the most burdensome regulations on the agriculture industry would go a long way toward allowing farmers to adapt their business models to changing markets and survive lean years like any other business.

These are common sense solutions that would allow these “victim groups” to succeed without unduly burdening tax payers. Yet liberals will have none of it, and they'll give a litany of reasons why. They'll talk about how callous it is to deny help to those who need it and accuse those who oppose government handouts and entitlements of being cold or uncaring.

Yet what they'll never want to talk about is how cold and calculating it is to create and promote government dependence among citizens.

- Rob

December 22, 2006

A Loss Of Innocence

Welcome to the newest FTTW feature - The Editorial Column. FTTW has, for the most part, been free of politics, current events and the like. That all changes with this new column. Every Friday, we will feature a guest editorial. A weekly soap box, if you will. We start off today with an editorial from one of our writers, Pat.

The following content does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editors of Faster Than The World.

-------

This past summer a man I have known for 34 years came back from a tour in Iraq. He was 50 when he shipped out, 51 when he came home. I'd like to say that he came back in one piece, and physically he did, but he lost an essential something when he was over there. He lost his innocence.

You see, my friend was born and raised here in Vermont. We were both the tail end of the hippie generations. We grew up in the whitest state in the Union, so we were never really exposed to racial prejudice - it was real easy to be liberal, there was no reality to test our philosophies and assumptions against. We believed in the innate goodness of humans.

Over the years we both got knocked around a bit. I moved out of state a couple of times, and got exposed to a lot of things I'd never encountered here at home - I stayed a liberal, but a more informed one. He stayed - got married, had some kids, joined the National Guard first to help make ends meet and then later to help pay for nursing school. He's a registered nurse, works with the local home health agency, going to the homes of the elderly and disabled. He's a funny, caring, loving man.

Then "they" sent him to war.

He came to see me a month or so after he was back. We talked for a little while about what it was like over there. He talked about the constant 24/7 drone from the base generators - he said everyone comes back with hearing loss, not to mention how noise like that can make the sanest guy a wee tad crazy. He talked about how terrified our soldiers are, when they go out on patrol, because there's no way to tell the bad guys from the civilians, no way to tell if someone approaching you is a threat or not, no way of knowing if the next bump in the road is the trigger for an IED. He looked horrified when he told me that woman and children really are used as human shields and cannon fodder. His eyes are haunted. He'd learned to hate.

I saw his wife a week or so later. We cried together for the man who came home from this war, stripped of his innocence.

He stopped in again on Thanksgiving. He's back at work now, and seems a bit more "here", but his eyes are still haunted.

I've seen that look before. I was it in my father's eyes, when he finally deemed I was old enough to have the photos in his war album explained. He had pictures of buildings in Manila, where the Japanese had herded Philippine civilians, told them the building was rigged with explosives, and then shot them as they tried to leap from the windows. These stark, black and white photographs of public buildings, partially collapsed from the explosives that were finally set off, riddled with bullet holes, brought that same look to my father's eyes.

Thinking about them this evening, I realized that the greatest difference between the wars fought by U.S. soldiers before 1940 and the ones fought after is that before 1940, all our enemies were European or European colonies. Until the Pacific Theater of WWII, our armed forces never faced an enemy from a truly foreign culture. Since then, we have faced nothing but that... and we haven't learned. open hand174.jpg

We haven't learned that all our expectations are based on a very Euro-centric philosophical and ethical system. We haven't learned that before we set foot into one of these wars, we really, really need to know and understand the culture of our enemy. In Somalia, to show someone the bottom of your foot is a deadly insult. Our soldiers used to fly over the city with their feet hanging out of the helicopter - until one was shot down and the soldiers in it mutilated. In Iraq, a hand held up palm facing outward means "hello", not "stop". Our soldiers at checkpoints haven't been briefed on the correct gestures for that culture to stop a car - so pregnant women die.

We haven't learned that we need to understand the history of a region before we go in and disassemble the current government, or we won't be prepared for what happens when the existing order is erased. Prior to the Russians and then the Taliban, regional warlords ran Afghanistan, and opium poppies were the biggest cash crop. After getting only half the job done before getting diverted by Iraq, why are we surprised that it has reverted to warlords and heroin production? In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's regime enforced religious tolerance and stifled sectarianism. After the American invasion, the first people to get out of Iraq were the Iraqi Christians, because both Sunnis and Shiites were after them. Sunnis and Shiites have been at each other's throats since they buried Mohammed; why did we not anticipate the civil war?

We haven't learned from our mistakes, so yes, we are doomed to repeat them.

So we will send more of our men and women, boys and girls, into places and situations they are not prepared for; and we will get back body bags, cripples and forever haunted eyes.

Pat