The Super Hype Part 2: The Daytona 500

Now I admit I am fairly new to this NASCAR thing, having been brought in by playing a fantasy league about 5 years ago, but the amount of hype and pre-race bullshit going on has me depressed. Why the hell do we need Bon Jovi playing songs before the race? Who's the chick up there with them? [I have the sound turned down while I heat up some breakfast and enjoy the new Rosanne Cash record Black Cadillac... did I mention it's fantastic and you need to buy it?]

And 'Celebrity Introductions,' what's the point? So NBC/Fox can pump some more advertising dollars out as Matthew McConeghy or Adam Sandler or Ashton Kutchner, hyping their latest trash, can come out and say Gentlemen, start your engines! Who needs that?

I am starting to see Marty's point about NASCAR overhyped and not about racing as much as personalities. I am not to the point yet where I will tune out, but I see his point. But all sports is becoming that way now. We're interested in CELEBRITY and STARS and PERSONALITY, not HOW THEY PLAY THE GAME and ARE THEY GOOD HUMAN BEINGS. Just like Kobe Bryant scoring 81 points in a game. Great he can do it. The other team played pretty sorry to allow that. But that's selfish to score 81 points in a team game [where were his team mates?] and he's still a man who cheated on his wife, got caught and bought her off with a four carat diamond.

OLYMPIC HOCKEY

Well, I think you can stick a fork in the US Men, though the women can still win the bronze. I watched the women totally dominate for 3/4s of that game and the Swedish goalie just stood on her head and willed the puch to not go in. I don't know how the US did not win the shootout, I saw on the first two shots they could pull the goalie to the left and go back against the grain ala Teammu Sellane, but no one tried that.

Canada ran into the same hot Swiss goalie who beat the US, which proves that can be beat. The Finns are just going gung ho on everyone right now, and Russia is not playing badly. It looks bad for North America in the Men's pool. I picked the Czechs, but Elias and Hasek are out and Jagr got cut pretty bad.

Mario and Hockey in Pittsburgh REDUX:

It struck me today why Mario and the Pens may be having trouble getting their arena. Is this the same Mario Lemieux who played only 24 games for the Pens in 01/02 and shut himslef down after the Salt Lake City Olympic games and declared, basically, that "playing in the Olympics was my goal this year." Is that snubbing your nose to the people who are paying to come and see you night in and night out, choosing a country you left in 1985 over the city that supported you since arriving? Does he think the people have forgotten that?

For the next three weeks or so, I will be stuck inside my little apartment with nothing on TV worth watching, since the NHL is on break for the Olympics. This may turn out to be a blessing in disguise to allow me to focus on some homework for my soul and mind I am doing, but also to catch up on CDs purchased and filed half listened to and catch up on the reading that piles up when one is addicted to sitting in front of the Idiot Box or the Boob Tube as my grandpap used to say.

Ironically though, it is the book I had to finish before this weekend that catches my mind. With Kat and Amanda and fiends coming this weekend, I have to [and do] complete the collection of works by Texas writer Grover Lewis, Splendor in the Short Grass, so I can loan it out. Briefly, Lewis graduated from the University of North Texas [now North Texas University] with Larry McMurtry in the early 60, contemporary of Billy Lee Brammer, Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins and Sherry Kafka. He wrote covering Pop music for the Fort Worth Star Telegram; he wound up doing his most famous work at Rolling Stone during its heady heyday, 1969 – 1973. It’s a good, though fairly short anthology, containing none of Hunter Thompson’s string of lies/half truths or Lester Bangs’ explosiveness; he unobtrusively interjects himself as an observer and story teller.

Anyway, the final article, a Texas Monthly piece entitled Farewell to Cracker Eden, a return to Oak Cliff 30 years after fleeing it for UNT that has grabbed my imagination. Lewis returns looking for landmarks, finding most of them gone or boarded up, condemned and decaying right in front of everyone’s eyes, and visiting some of the few places that have survived, though not unchanged. It’s a nostalgia trip after the bomb has gone off and the area rebuilt in such a way it’s similar but unrecognizable and disorienting. Probably like my parents visiting the places the used to go as teens in the Beaver Valley of Western Pennsylvania; some things are the same and some things so radically different.

The thought it triggers in me is this: nostalgia, the collection of articles of a time gone by, is a physical manifestation of trying to reclaim a time lost in our heads, a physical attempt to connect back to our innocence.

Just as our grandparents railed against the coming of rock and roll and told us stories of the depression, the same way our parents hold onto their Motown collections and tell us punk isn’t real music, someday we will tell [or maybe we are telling our kids now] how Judas Priest and Def Leppard, that was real music and it was best heard on cassette through massive tiny speakers that covered the WHOLE EAR, not just little ear budlettes. “In my day, we got our ear damage the old fashioned way; we went to concerts and put our ears right up against Joe Perry’s amp.” It scares me to think that there are people who think of Aerosmith the way I think of the Stones; the grand old men of rock and roll who go out, play two songs from the new album and a then unleash a string of hits dating back before I was born. And the new stuff all sucks.

Music collectors [book collectors also, I am sure] are funny in that we are more turned on by something obscure than popular. I am sure my conecentration on music from the 70s and 80s is my grab at trying to regain my youth and innocence and things I MISSED the first time around. Finding something like the BoDeans’ Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams or the Call’s Modern Romans or Roxy Music and moaning Nobody told me! Why didn’t someone tell me sooner! The same way my beloved Michael Leone [elitist completist] compiles all the Beatles and Stones and Monkees and moans that Rare Earth Live, only bought by him and his brother in law the FIRST time it was out isn’t on CD.

Still, I am now sure a return to Charleston WV would be an exercise along the lines of Cracker Eden. The physical sites of childhood memories, ball fields, houses, apartment complexes, schools and stores, may still be there, but what made them special was the times and the time of my life. Back when there was still magic and super heroes and the promise of … well, I am not sure what the promise was. But the idea that I could be ANYTHING or ANYBODY was still alive. There was magic in fireworks and delight as simple as a ballgame in a lot or a bike ride with your buddy.

I see people today and there are things I don’t get. Driving their SUV up my butt at 75 MPH, cell phone in one hand, kids with the DVD player in the back trying to get somewhere they should have been ten minutes ago. People at work with their cells text messaging, answering the phone in one ear and their i-Pod hooked up to the other. I don’t get the music today, probably the same way my grandparents didn’t get Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Alice Cooper. I feel sorry for the kids so bombarded with stimulus to keep their attention away from boredom [and I guess the thinking and searching one’s soul that silence will bring on], all so connected by the internet and cell phones but still trying to make the basic human connection with parents more concerned about bigger houses and cars and better things FOR their kids than the kids themselves.

Call me old fashioned, but still there’s nothing like just sitting around with friend having a nice card game or Trivial Pursuit or dinner and talking and sharing point of view and just making human connections. I forget sometimes, I get busy and lock myself behind my walls and don’t answer phones and wonder months later why I feel so alone. But it’s something I need to re-learn and I am working on it.

Also, go and buy Rosanne Cash’s Black Cadillac CD. It’s FANTASTIC.

Peace.

Continue the Soapbox:

I saw part of The Last Waltz also yesterday, [how The Band do such great Americana songs when they're all Canadians except Levon helm?] specifically, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Where do Southerner's get this idea things were so great and the defeat of the Confederacy was such a tragedy? And don't they remember who started the war?

The Civil War was not about slavery, it was about economics and states rights and the South ouwld have a better chance seceding now with oil and industry based here. But it points out a problem: We didn't LEARN from our history, we're still allowing it to divide us. Americans allow our DIFFERENCES to divide us until someone knocks America: A Bin-Laden, an Ayatollah; then we're all for one and gung ho.

I don't know if it got much national play, but two girls caused a stir at Marty and my alma matter by carrying around purses or backpacks with the Confederate Battle Flag on them. Suspensions, controversy over 'displaying my proud Southern Heratage' ensued... now granted, Burleson is a back-ass-wards hick town where the KKK probably still does a bang up business, but what the f?

Virgil Cain is my name and I served on the Danville train

Til Stoneman's calvalry came and they tore up the tracks again

in the winter of 65 we were hungry, just barely alive

By May 10 Richmond had fell

It's a time I remember oh so well

The night they drove old dixie down...

Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me

Virgil quick come see, there goes Robert E Lee

Now I don't mind chopping wood

And I don't care if the money's no good

You take what you need and you leave the rest

But they should never have tsaken the very best

The night they drove old dixie down...

Like my father before me I will work the land

Like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave

When a Yankee laid him in his grave

And I swear by the mud below my feet

He can't raise his cane back up when he's in defeat

SOAPBOX DERBY!!!

Super Hype Out of Control

Jumpin' Jack Flash I am glad the Super Bowl is over again. TWO WEEKS of build up for this shit is just out of control. Even when it's your team in the game TWO WEEKS of this dominating every damn sports channel and sports broadcast and just HYPE HYPE HYPE... it's ALMOST as bad as the Christmas ads starting two weeks before Thanksgiving.

And I did see someone making an interesting comment this week on one of the "news channels." You've got the Super Hype in DETROIT this year. Now there's TWO American cities known for MUSIC: Nashville and Detroit. Home of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, MOTOWN, or even Ted Nugent or Bob Seger if you must. But who's the half time entertainment? The Rolling Stones, who are not even AMERICANS.

Then there's the GAME DAY. Coverage starts TWO AND A HALF HOURS before the [Scheduled] kick off time. "think your team's gonna win?" "we respect our opponents, they're a god team, but yeah, I think we're gonna win." Talk to a bunch of guys who have played in the Super Bowl before. "Nothing like this." Game starts at FIVE, right? No, there's the CEREMONIAL COIN TOSS, complete with introductions and a complete history of the players involved. Then introducing the starting line ups. Then the National Anthem, rolling out a stage and a gospel choir and a five piece band and special guest and nine part harmony and ariel photography.

The halftime is just as bad. Roll out a stage that covers half the field [though I gibve credit for being able to whip it up and get it down in a hurry]. EXTENDED half time... some band whips out two warhorses, in the Stones case, Start Me Up and Satisfaction and something off the new album. Fireworks, people dancing, yadda yadda... GET BACK TO THE GAME!!!

Hype, hype, hype and we LICK IT UP, because there are people who watch this game for COMMERCIALS. Any other time you see commercials, you roll your eyes and hit the clicker, but not today! Bunch of cows....

And usuallt the game is pretty anti-climactic, though in recent years with NFL parity at an all time high/low, the games are better. This one was pretty interesting, though my team was playing. I actually watched about half of it, for a change. But the people who run the other channels have learned that nothing is going to beat the Super Bowl. What were my choicxes? Simpsons re-runs, Family Guy [BLECH] re-runs, poker, figure skating, Little House on the Prarie, Gunsmoke... when is that Lingerie Bowl thing???

Who Do We Know at the PUC?

The news item of the week that caught my eye was TXU reporting a profit of 1.6 BILLION [note, that is with a B] dollars for last year. It's bad enough the oil companies were all making their Billion dollar profits last year on the back of a spike in prices due to a TEMPORARY [and I told SOME PEOPLE this at the time... gasoline never did reach $ 4.00 a gallon, did it?], but TXU rammed home a massive electric rate increase, ALSO based on a TEMPORARY aberration in supply of natural gas for firing its plants. In case you have forgotten, TXU rammed home an immediate 23% increase and negotiated an additional 12% increase that took effect in January as part of an agreement not to ask for another increase until May [I think]. And the PUC jumped the gun and agreed to this, never taking into account that this would be a short term price spike!!! Per the FW Startlegram 2/03/06, the rate increase was based on a price of $ 11.50/ Mcf [thousand cubic feet] "on a 45-day average, which was taken during the September-October period after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita when outages in the Gulf of Mexico drove natural-gas prices to all-time highs." Now the gas rate had dropped below $ 9.00/ Mcf, but you're still paying a rate based on a price 27% higher. Think TXU is going to refund or credit or lower your rate without prodding from the Public Utility commission? FAT CHANCE.

I said the Government did not need to step into regulate gasoline price gouging in the wake of the hurricanes. Yes it went on and the market eventually corrected itself. Are some of Exxon, Shell, Chevron, et al's record profits going to have to go for repairs to refineries, drilling platforms, shipping terminals, etc? Yeah. But they will get to WRITE OFF those costs, too. Did TXU have to make massive repairs in South Texas in the wake of the hurricanes, too? Yes, and again they will get to write off those repairs, or charge them back to the consumers anyway as part of a 'Service Recovery fee, all nice and legal.

I still say it's not the government's job to regulate prices. Even in a case like this. But it makes me mad because no one on the PUC has the brains God gave a goat to say "temporary spike." I nominate Alan Greenspan to take over the PUC ASAP! Not as challenging as The Fed, Alan! Keep a few bucks in your pocket, Al!

Flying the Cheapest Skies

And while I am up here on the soapbox, SOUTHWEST can fly out of DFW ANY TIME THEY WANT. I am no fan of the Wright amendment, but fair is fair. Southwest [and American if they wish] can continue using Love for local flying -- hell, I encourage it to get American Eagle out of DFW. Let people going to New Orleans or Albuquerque or Houston go to Love to fly and let Southwest take on American at DFW for REAL COMPETITION for routes. Will American have to cut routes for non profitability? Probably. Tough rocks. That's where new carriers can come in and pick up the slack. And don't give me 'high fuel costs causing losses.' Southwest is paying the same for jet fuel as you and they're turning a profit! Cut management waste, cut corporate fat and see where you wind up. "We have to pay corporate officers competitive rates to keep them from going elsewhere." BULLSHIT. Let them go elsewhere! Whatever they're doing now ISN'T WORKING, is it?

That's what I got. This soapbox rant brought to you by the NFL, TXU, Folger's coffee and a lotta free time.

WAY TO GO, STEELERS!!!!