New.
Clear.
NewClear.
Nuclear.
Easy, ja? 2 little happy sylables.
NewCyewLer it ain't.
It just kills me that someone as smart and talented as, well, little ol' me is having such a tough time negotiating his way through something as relatively pedestrian as law school, and our illiterate potato-head president went to Yale.
Yale. Kind of diminishes the entire Ivy League, doesn't it?
An open letter to Mr. Morford, columnist at SF Gate, "journalist," hack supreme:
================
Mark,
I've been trying to hold this back for some time, but after reading your installment about Hunter S. Thompson I just can't anymore.
Please. I beg you. In the name of all that's grammatically holy, please stop writing. Take up a nice lucrative career as a pastry chef, or perhaps go command a nuclear submarine somewhere. Run for the White House in '08, where they pay talented people to write for you. I'd happily vote for you if you just please, please, please stop writing. You are to SF Gate what Tucker Carlson is to TV. In fact, on more than one occasion I've involuntarily attached his grating voice and mannerisms to your insufferable chicken-scratching, resulting in my wanting to poke out my eardrums with an ice pick.
Alternatively, at least please take a remedial English class, or a crash course in punctuation and sentence structure. Yes, your "style" is obvious. But you're not half as clever, funny, witty, or urbane as you think you are. You're self-indulgent in the extreme, shamelessly derivative, pecking away only to draw attention to your hackneyed "style" without a shred of regard for your poor suffering readers. Worst, your angry-freshman-at-the-college-paper tapeworm-like sentences are, to paraphrase John Stewart, hurting us all.
Do the right thing. Please stop. Please, please stop. HST would thank you.
Very regrettably,
Eric Friedmann
Solana Records, San Francisco
solanarecords.com
ericfriedmann.com
==========================
Let's see if he answers...
OK, so Hunter S. Thompson was a raging frothing gun nut and an unapologetic devotee of sauteeing his brain in the most horrific ways imaginable. If all that adrenochrome crap is true, well...shit. Anyone that lives on a "compound" in Colorado obviously was born without a couple important bones in their head. Plus Colorado has no breatheable air, as we all know. The brain-addling effect on its citizenry is unavoidable and well-chronicled, but, thankfully, that's another story.
We need more people who don't just rant, however eloquently, against presidential administrations and their assorted crimes, but who do so uniquely and colorfully. It's one thing to say, "Here are the issues espoused by Bush Inc. that I loathe and so should you and here's why." It's far better in the long run to say "Here are the issues espoused by Bush Inc. that I loathe and so should you and here's why, and WHERE DID ALL THESE FUCKING BATS COME FROM?!?!?"
A theory. No, not a theory. A sticky flypaper-like thought that made me go hmmm. Maybe he saw down the road the America and the world born from George Bush's terrifyingly irresponsible and reckless Master Plan that literally scared the living piss out of him. I know I look down the road and see potential legacies of the goddamn Bush dynasty that positively freeze my blood. And Jeb is next in the chute.
Nixon was easy to make fun of because he fucked up so badly, and no one did it better than HST. But Nixon looks like the Artful Dodger next to Dubya, a bona fide war criminal, bulletproof liar supreme, and terrorist who makes bin Laden look like a girl scout. Is it possible Thompson thought that, compared to another four years, a gunshot wound would tickle? Perhaps so much damage has been done that satire, even journalism, in its most sublime or outrageous forms has been rendered not just unfashionable or obsolete but extinct? Maybe that the country he loved so was, as he might have said, finally being sold down the shit river at the expense of The Silly and The Doomed? Bush has killed us all? Hmmm.
You were a complete nutburger, Hunter S. Thompson. I'm glad I never met you, because I'm sure you would have brutally annoyed me in person no matter what your self-made credentials. But, by gum, you did indeed stomp on the terra, and for that I thank you.
Go rent "Where The Buffalo Roam" with Bill Murray. Better than "Fear And Loathing" with Mr. Depp.
My right-hand man Steve Schneider, Lucky Rube Emeritus, has just digitized The Blue Tape by The Jones Band, our triumphant and super-fun college band. Recorded at Soundtek Studios in San Jose, run by that joker Robert Berry. They kept our 2-inch masters and refused to give them up for reasons I still don't understand. What I wouldn't give to have them back.
Steve and me on guitars, Bill Rushing on bass, Will Strickland and later Dino Nickolas on drums. "Son Of The Milkman" is still among the greatest songs I've ever had anything to do with. I'll send you over to Steve down at The Ranch to tell you more... Take it away, Bwana.
Enjoy.
The Super Bowl, as per usual, was a bust. At least for everyone not living in Boston, which is now probably on fire. Actually, Philly is probably burning right about now also.
But for once, the halftime show didn't make me want to shave my head with a rusty cheese grater. In fact, I'm astounded to hear myself admit that I was completely transfixed. Not a whole lot to say really, other than Sir Paul continues to update the book (which he helped write) on songwriting and classy performance. "Drive My Car" never sounded so good. Paul was always my least favorite Beatle demeanor-wise, George being my favorite. But his performance made all others look like kids. No cheezy-ass choreography, actual singing (!!!!), super world-class band. Justin Timberwho?
Wendo has suggested that I am a music snob, and she's completely right. I am a total snob. Poor girl; I try not to vent too much.
But, goddamnit, I decry and bemoan in the loudest possible voice the utter absence of actual musicianship and theoretical savvy in most of today's popular music. If that makes me a snob, fine. Paul's performance completely validates me. One of my New Year's resolutions was to be more open-minded and less venomous in my appraisals of modern music. I want so much to find some hip hop that doesn't piss me off, or at least bore me stupid, something that upholds what the form really can be and doesn't just bitch at me. I'm positively parched for a really, really great pop band that doesn't stare at their shoes and sing about how miserable everything is. Would it kill you to write a non 1-7-6 chord progression? Have you absolutely no imagination?
I'm determined to find new music I like this year. Until I do, Sir Paul and The Beatles remain untouchable, 41 years after they stormed the Ed Sullivan Show. The very highest of watermarks for what we do, fellow victims of the terpsichorian muse. There he was with the old Hofner bass, as good as ever in his 60s, making everyone else look like rank amateurs including Earth, Wind, & Fire. It begs the question; what if John and George were still here? Sheesh, how I miss that band.
And it kills me that a knighted Brit is called upon to play at the greatest and most shamelessly flamboyant of American sporting events, just to thwart the danger of any televised boobs a-flyin'. What better way to give it a spot of dignity and taste?