So Ya Wanna Get on the Guest List?

The POV of a Rock & Roll Show Promoter:

My floating you a Guest Pass to tonight's show should be considered a longshot, unless you qualify under at least one of the following tests:

1. You are my Current Employee

2. Your are my Current Business Partner

3. You are my Direct Family Member (as in REAL direct)

4. You are someone with whom I Slept With within the past X amount of time (with X being subject to my discretion) and with whom I am still on good terms (see above about the 'my discretion' part)

5. You are someone with Whom I Am About to Sleep With, and of which this courtesy will move you into the Item #4 camp

If you meet one of those 5 qualifiers, you are then subject to passing BOTH of these remaining tests:

1. You must have actually Spoken to Me within the past two (2) weeks on a totally unrelated matter.

2. You are Dead Broke and would not be able to attend this show otherwise.

If you are still eligible after this exercise, feel free to leave a message on my Voice Mail.

Just call me at the brand new number I just got today!!!!.

(Courtesy Of: Jim Barnett.. thx JB)

WTF Dave?

It doesn't matter where you stand on the 'gun' issue, but I think this question should be in play for all observers:

- What exactly does Albany County DA David Soares have to do with the gun show at the Saratoga Springs City Center?  You'd think it was McArthur setting foot on the Phillipines.

Did I miss a memo about the city seceding-to or being annexed-by Albany? Maybe I'd better get back on the AM coffee wagon.

The Junk Era

We live in what future historians might call the Junk Era. Junk food. Junk Media. Junk housing. Junk goods. Junk news. Junk music. Junk religion. Junk TV. All of it with a goal of appealing to the lowest desires of the largest swath of consumers.

This plague has entered the intellectual arena. We now have Junk Science, junk logic, junk reason and junk politics. On the latter, this results in a system whereby the issues of the day are reduced to slogans, taglines, phony data being published as truth and policy arguments supported by leaps of faith in reasoning.

The current rage on gun control provides easy examples. Take the following beauty, making the rounds as a means of rallying the pro-gun minions:

The problem here, of course, is that this  'A Compared to B' is invalid --  if the concern is validity in the research methodology.  Assuming for the sake of argument here that that quoted fig on death-by-hammer is accurate, the process of then comparing it to a SINGLE MODEL of firearm (the AK-47, in this instance) defies logic and avoids the basic challenge of the topic; i.e., what is the relative occurrence of deaths by guns (or its subset of assault rifles)?

The valid comparison, naturally would be to compare it to a single model of hammers, like the Stanley Model 47 Claw Hammer. But, that wouldn't support the case, would it?

So, where we should be able to engage an easy solution as a means of reducing a  readily defined problem, we get junk as the supporting arguments. Yes: it is thrown at us from all sides of the issue at hand.

No wonder we can't get anything accomplished.  

Rock vs DJs

A good Facebook post I just caught, from a female friend of mine who is involved in a humorous online debate over the relative creativity quotient of club DJ's.  Humorous to us here at the 'burgh, at least.

"What you find personally "fulfilling" is not our concern and not really the topic here, is it? It's all art. Just like me doing my white girl dance to a jukebox is art or tapping my fingers to this song I hear right now is art or my horrible karaoke is art. It's all artistic interpretation and to a lesser extent artistic creativity. I am just saying that your "design my own beats" thing'y is a little closer to my karaoke and finger tapping on the creativity scale than it is to somebody actually singing their own songs and playing their own instruments on a stage."

Touche, girl ...