PANTS ON THE GROUND

This is honestly the only American Idol audition that I have ever enjoyed, EVER.

I hope this old dude GETS RICH! GO GENERAL LARRY PLATT!

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DIY: TUNE-YARDS

For a natural sloth-type, I can be quite ambitious. I have so many things I like to do and want to do, from something as simple as cleaning my GODDAMN DESK to much more elaborate creative projects. Some of them, with focus and intent, actually get done and some of them like the desk, well…maybe tomorrow. I admire anyone that can fight off the Sloth Demon and a host of other evil insidious creatures to make the effort to Start, Do, and Complete under their own steam. That said, I bet I’d get my desk cleaned if an angry mob were surrounding me with poisoned spears.

Anyway, my DIY hero today is one Merrill Garbus, otherwise known in the musical world as Tune-Yards. She uses a funky capitalization for that moniker but Word doesn’t like it and I am clearly too lazy to fix it here. I heard this song on SIRIUS XMU about a month ago and it caught my ear big time. Hmmmm, I said to myself, this sounds like a jazzy Roberta Flack in a low-fi indie band! I like incongruities a whole lot, as well as ukuleles and really cool melodies, which “Sunlight” has. It builds nicely; the strong and confident vocals hold it together, all in a lovely distorted soaring mess.



So I figure, OK, I will look into this band. To my delight, this is what I discover: Tune-Yards album “Bird-Brains” is just and only Ms. Garbus AND the entire album was recorded on a hand-held Sony digital voice recorder and mixed and mastered with the free audio computer program Audacity! Well, that is audacity indeed, and I love it. Garbus then released the album completely on her own as well, with a “pay what you like” donation set up on her website. Word-of-mouth spread about the project, she found some others to play live with, and the album was picked up by Marriage/4D Records last spring. Hot damn.

I like what she says about it: “the sense that I had complete power and ownership over the whole thing, no matter where it went, no matter who listened, was really important to me.”

When you have that kind of freedom, you aren’t breaking your bank account over it, and you are willing to just throw it out there and be happy with whatever happens to it, you really can give yourself the space to do what you want with your ideas. “Bird-Brains” is a triumph in that. It is also at times indulgent – it goes on a bit long, overuses the same format and construction, and some of the spontaneity probably made for some choices that did not benefit some of the tracks as creatures with a forever-life, as songs are. It is not always an easy listen, but it is certainly interesting. Would it have been a better record, better songs, with a 100K budget on a major label? I don’t think so, and that is a compliment.

What makes this different than a billion other artists with a laptop is Garbus’ talent and confidence. I think it is marvelous that her work is getting the recognition it deserves, and thank her for poking my internal Sloth as well. I think she gets people to think about music and production and business in a new way, which is so needed. Garbus is headed out for more live performances soon, and if I could attend I would bring her a shiny new set of uke strings and some freshly-baked brownies, with love. And then I would ask her if she could help me clean my desk.

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TODAY'S DEPRESSING HOLLYWOOD NEWS

** A known total trainwreck from its first imagining, Jay Leno’s primetime show is a bust. Now the brain trust at NBC wants to push his 30 minute bore-fest back to the “Tonight Show” time slot, bumping actual funny person Conan O’Brien to Nowheresville. Conan, whose intelligence and integrity is a near-unrecognizable commodity in Hollywood, fought back today and rightly so. He is correct in saying that he was not allowed enough time to rebuild his audience, correct in saying that changing the “Tonight Show” time slot will essentially put the show in the grave, and correct in realizing that he doesn’t have to take what programming scraps they give him. Leno’s stuff is tired beyond tired and struggling media giants like NBC need to look forward, not backwards, to try to grab their share of the very dissipated viewing audience now. It seems that Leno continues to have no difficulties whatsoever stealing material or screwing up of the careers of people more talented than he. Go drive a million-dollar car around, Jay, and give it up already.

** Disney is remaking the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” film. Oh, the pain is real, folks, right in my little heart. How I do not want that little pop-art gem of a film to be re-done, and especially not by the Corporate Rat. But the decades-long film industry trend of cannibalizing and strip-mining continues, no matter what this cranky ol’ Country Mouse thinks. Disney has already secured the rights to the Beatles’ song performances used in the original movie (good or bad news, depending on your take of such things) and Beatles’ tribute band the Fab Four will do the “performance takes.” Four actors that are not the two surviving Beatles have been picked to voice the Beatles’ dialogue –an opportunity to correct what was a disappointment in the original film lost. Oh woot, a stage musical is also being planned. Perhaps a grossly-overpriced theme park or a screeching preteen television show will also coincide. Sigh. The original “Yellow Submarine” was a landmark of animation and perfectly suited to its time. No, it’s not in 3-D and doesn’t have some kind of parental figure dying or missing as is common to the Disney franchise. And I’m not hopeful here that Robert Zemeckis and Mickey Mess will even come close to making something that is as charming, cool, entertaining, relevant, authentic, funny, fascinating, and beloved as the 1968 effort.

** American Idol returns to FOX TV tonight. If that isn’t bad enough, Pimp Simon Cowell has announced that it will be his final season on the show, in order to bring an even worse show to America, his other painfully-formulaic talent show “The X-Factor.” That one doesn’t have any rules on age or type of talent, so ala the old “Star Search” we will be subject to appallingly-precocious children singing “Tomorrow” from Annie or grinding to a Leona Lewis number, breakdancing plumbers, or autistic-spectrum frumps like Susan Boyle. “The X-Factor” relies heavily on the reaction from studio audiences, who seem to like to cheer on the misfit and the disturbingly-cute. The judges pretend to assess the contestants but of course vote for them to continue on in the show only if Cowell thinks he can make a profit off them down the line. Meet the new crap, same as the old crap.

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1:30AM - 1:30PM

1:30AM: Go to bed. Despite not being over-caffeinated nor riddled with perseverant thoughts, realize I am simply not that tired. Possibly doze on and off eventually.

3:16AM: Smell something burning, then smell something sweet, then hear banging and clanging. Couch Teen baking chocolate chip cookies. Frown in the dark. Doze.

5:09AM: Awakened by loud rain. Frown extra hard in semi-lifting-dark. Get up and pee. Go back to bed and wait for the alarm.

7AM: Alarm goes off, 3 minutes after I finally doze off again. Sit on side of bed and announce to the air, “Well, THAT sucked,” and go to wake up Mr11 and Miss Seven. Miss Seven proves difficult to rouse. “The airplanes kept me awake all night, “ she complains into her pillow, “I hate airplanes!” “Well, whaddya gonna do, “ I say flatly, and help her get dressed for school.

7:15AM: Serve breakfast. Miss Seven complains that Multi-Grain Cheerios taste like peanut butter. Mr11 likes this, and slurps his bowl down with gusto. Dog eyes the kids’ link sausages. I tell the them to eat their blueberries because they are high in antioxidants. No one listens as I explain the benefits of antioxidants.

7:22AM: Dog wants to go outside, looks at pouring rain, balks. She looks at me piteously. “Well, whaddya gonna do,” I say flatly, as she harrumphs to the floor in resignation.

7:24AM: Get dressed in black sweats. Brush my hair and teeth, with different brushes for each, a triumph. Spend 17 seconds on makeup. Frown at face in mirror. Decide not to care.

7:30AM: Clean for the cleaners. Put away leftover chocolate chip cookies left on the cookie sheet by Couch Teen. Put out sheets for all the bedrooms. Find MissSeven’s school folder. Remind Mr11 to pack his laptop. Harangue children to finish eating, brush their teeth, brush their hair, get their jackets and backpacks. Two tasks on the list are completed, possibly. MissSeven complains that all her shoes don’t fit and stomps around because she wants to wear her fuzzy boots instead. I remind her that shoes are required in school. Reprimand Mr11 for teasing MissSeven about her tardiness this morning. Say goodbyehaveagoodday.

7:56AM: Cleaners due to arrive in four minutes. Make a pot of coffee. Start drinking coffee and reading email. Hope to return to bed for a nap by 10AM to fuel the busy runaround second-half of the day.

8:48AM: Notice that cleaners are way late. Frown. Think about calling them, but don’t. Laugh at a funny picture on Facebook. Notice left eye is bothering me. Blink a lot. Start revisiting travel websites for three upcoming trips. Yawn. Blink more. Think harder about calling again. Get caught up in reading the interhoot.

10:06AM: Cleaners finally arrive, apologize for lateness, I say, no problem. Cleaners greet dog for 5 minutes. I get more coffee and return to computer.

11:52AM: After looking at Fodors, Frommers, FamilyFun, FrequentFlyers, Points.Com, Com.Points, Dot.Com, BargainsBargainsBargains, BrainLiquidators, StarwoodWorldMilesPassportGoldHappyFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckVacations and not really getting anywhere, I decide to go upstairs in my now-cleaned bedroom to read. The book is about vacationing with children. Blink more, get up and go to bathroom to see what in the hell is going on with my eye. Spot small bump on inner eyelid. Swear, frown. Put book down to try to nap. Eye still irritated when closed. Pull fuzzy blanket over self.

12:15PM: Awakened by “MARIANNA! WE ARE DONE! WE CLEAN YOUR REFRIGERATOR THIS TIME! SEE YOU!” I yell a hearty if somewhat garbled “THANK YOU!” and try to return to sleep. Rain gets way louder.

12:35PM: Phone rings. Check Caller ID: “COMCAST.” “Oh, fuck YOU, Comcast!” I say to the air. I lie down again. I start to think about travel stuff again, and the pounding rain, and that I need to shower and actually get a few things done before getting the kids.

1:30PM: I give up trying to nap, come downstairs and write this. Well, whaddya gonna do, I say to myself, flatly.

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JAPAN 2

It’s Sunday and I have to do some stuff, so for your amusement today I provide you with more Japanese game show follies. I have a strong urge to try the treadmill ones, even though with my super-charged will and thighs of steeeeeel, I would fail spectacularly at them. And the last one…well, it’s so amazingly cruel and horribly funny that you have to hope the one guy got like a bazillion yen out of it. Oh, Japan!

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WHITE IS RIGHT

No, I am not talking about my pasty race – I am once again talking about that musical mensch, Jack White. Although he is even pastier than I am. Which is fine because that probably means he is working on a new White Stripes or Raconteurs or Dead Weather song rather than lounging on a beach somewhere and NOT providing me with excellent new music to listen to. Work, Jack, work! Jack recently did an interview with Rolling Stone, talking about his decade in the music business, which I found very interesting. On any professional level, he can be considered a great success – he plays the music he wants to play, it sells well despite sometimes being waaaay away from the mainstream, and seems happy about the work he’s done and excited about the projects he will do. He makes, it seems, very few concessions or compromises. How is Jack White getting it right? There are answers in the RS article, which I shall mine and refine for you now.

1. Control: The pop music business is in the midst of its most rapid transformation since Gertrude fired up the Victrola. It’s everyone for themselves now, and if you want a pro career you have to align yourself with old-style companies that form and market and profit from your product, or you DIY. This means you try to hook up with an independent music company or you REALLY DIY. Jack White knows this, and last year decided to fully flesh out his Third Man Records label into a Nashville-based production studio and store as well. His goal is to create some opportunity and stability for other musicians as well as investing in the nuts and bolts of what he needs to create and distribute his own product. It’s a smart move for him – he’s got enough bankroll, credibility, and reasonable understanding of realities of business to succeed here where others might not.

2. Diversify and Expand: Another smart business principal, and one that has paid off tremendously in the creative area for White as well. He is a multi-instrumentalist (and genuinely very good at each one, whether it’s guitar, piano, drums, vocals, etc.), a songwriter, a producer, a filmmaker, an artist, a financier, a marketer, and a master performer. Instead of leaving most of the work to others or resting on his laurels, he works hard at improving everything he does and takes opportunities to learn and practice. People want to see what he will do next, because he brings something different and interesting to the table. That takes hard work, confidence, bravery, and humility.

3. Go With The Flow: Another quality that makes White’s work exciting is that he is willing to see what happens, what might inspire him day by day, what he can grab from all kinds of sources to make what he makes. That isn’t to say he’s lounging on the beach waiting for the magical muse to hit him; we have already established here via his pale countenance that this is not the case. No, I’d be willing to bet that Jack White is attuned to his surroundings more than most, where rain falling on a piece of scrap metal can become a drum sound, a girl standing alone at a bus stop can make for a new set of lyrics, and watching a modest street performer can renew style and energy. He’s open to the world and pretty sure that it will bring him stuff to think about, therefore he can get the most out of it.

4. Please Yourself First: Most artists start out this way – they write and perform in their natural style, what they like to do. The danger lies in what happens next, and success or the lack of it has everything to do with it. If you are hungry for recognition and sales, the temptation is very strong to modify what you do to fit in with those who are getting the press and the bucks. If you are successful, then you can get caught in the trap of opinions from fans, friends, family, critics, managers, producers, your dry cleaner, the guy at the 7-11 – everyone wants to tell you that you are wonderful and don’t ever change, or that you suck and should quit, or that you are boring, weird, perfect, derivative…pick a term, any term. There’s nothing more true than “you can’t please everyone.” White went through his own period of doubts and difficulty, and then decided just to keep doing his thing, whatever happened or whatever anyone said, and would live with the outcome. It worked.

It’s a funny coincidence – last night as I was driving Mr11 to his martial arts class, “Icky Thump” by the White Stripes was playing on the car radio and he asked me how old the band was. I told him I thought the White Stripes had been around about 10 years, and he was quite surprised. “I thought they’ve been around as long as the Beatles or something!” he said, as I smiled and told him, nope, not quite that long.

To Mr11, the White Stripes are classic. I am sure that would please Jack White a whole bunch.

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WHO CAN COLD CHILL LIKE THIS?

My friend can, as heard in his sublime version of "Jingle Bells." Enjoy!

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LANGE IT UP

Comedian Artie Lange, known primarily to most from his work on the Howard Stern radio show and MAD TV, attempted suicide a few days ago. He has been released from the hospital to “continue his recovery.” As a long-time listener of the Stern show (now a former listener), I am all too familiar with the sad and sordid tales from Mr. Lange’s life – a rough New Jersey upbringing, a father who died a miserable death after becoming paralyzed in an accident, cocaine and heroin addictions, weight ballooning past 300 pounds, an inability to keep the nice schoolteacher girlfriend who hung in there as long as she could, loneliness, pressure to perform, on and on and on. The Belushi/Farley parallels are made often – the good-hearted talented fat funny guy who drowns his “Tears Of A Clown” pain in drugs and drink, throws money at people to try to buy their love, spirals out of control until they finally push it one too many times. Over and over, it seems, Lange has wanted to join that club quite badly, but not quite enough to spare his family from the pain of his ongoing and protracted death rather than the quick one.

I’m not heartless. Artie Lange is an addict and a man with some serious mental issues. I have hoped over the years that with the very substantial personal support he has from kind friends and family, hefty bank account, and some sort of realization of what is so good about his life and being alive would be enough for him to take action and get the long-term intensive help he needs to get well. I don’t hope for that any longer. He has spent his entire adult life veering from catastrophe to catastrophe, entirely of his own making. This is what he wants, as incomprehensible as it seems. If the guy really truly wanted off the planet, a thousand times over he could’ve taken a page from the Cobain playbook and made sure that the outcome was assured. But no, instead he makes the choices that force the people in his life, and those who follow his career, to focus on poor Artie, to clean up his messes over and over and over, to make excuses for him, to invest in his misery.

What kind of “good man” is Lange to do this to his mother? After her husband dies, she gets to spend the rest of her life tortured by her only son, waiting for the final call from the police to tell her it’s over. What kind of decent human being stabs himself nine times, KNOWING it will be his MOTHER who finds him lying there bloody? My sympathies don’t lie with Artie; they are with his mother and sister to have to endure this sheer hell he inflicts upon them. At some point you can’t blame it on his addictions and illnesses any longer. This is who he is, the bottom line.

The Stern show is not for everyone, for sure; it is often incredibly offensive and harsh, with moments of great hilarity and long stretches of chat about whatever is going on in the lives of the regulars that work on the show. When you listen to it over the years, you get sort of sucked into the soap opera aspect of the latter, and the (relatively) honest manner in which Stern and Co. speak about their lives, warts and all. They all have their quirks and strangeness, which can be quite funny to explore. But as more and more about Artie Lange’s imploding life became known to the public, it started to become less and less funny, at least to me. Especially disturbing was the thought that Stern and SIRIUS XM see an increase in show listeners every single time Artie has a crisis, and that there is profit to be made in exploiting his sickness. Putting a mic on a snoring Artie in the radio studio is humorous, until you realize he has nodded out from heroin use. To use a show phrase, “it’s not fun or funny.”

I stopped listening to the show some time ago, for a variety of reasons: it sucked up a great deal of my time, it no longer was entertaining me the way it had in the past, it seemed like Stern was bored and rushing to get out of the studio every day, comedy bits were being recycled too much, too many dim-bulb porn girls were used to drive traffic to Howard TV, and the in-studio guests generally were Z-grade after the move to SIRIUS. The benefits to Stern moving off terrestrial radio were short-lived. But that said, I got many great laughs from the show over the years, learned something about how the guts to be honest can connect you to other people like in no other way, and got to see a man having a Brazilian wax. Artie Lange was a great addition to Stern’s world – down-to-earth, quick-witted, with the best laugh. When Artie really laughed at a bit, I would laugh with him; it couldn’t be helped. I always thought that if he had the ability to laugh, to enjoy anything at all, that there would be something for him to grab onto, something worth turning things around.

Whenever it is that Artie Lange finally does himself in, for some it will be very sad, as well as a relief.

Artie Lange as toddler, with his father and singer Frankie Valli.

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EDWARD R. MURROW, 50 CENTS A COLUMN INCH

I am mindful most days to not fall into the “Hell In A Handbasket” mentality. It is so easy to do, especially as you acquire more years on the planet and see things that were comforting or meaningful to you mutate into something else or disappear completely. But the “HIAH” attitude just makes you a crank, and doesn’t get you anywhere. Everything changes, in all directions and at all speeds, all the time. You are just sitting here on the planet for a short time, so it’s better to accept that some of those changes will bum you out sometimes instead of whining how everything blows now and everything used to be so cool while life passes your old ass right on by while you stew in your own stale juices. This very paragraph, in fact, is an old ass cranky whine. Look at my mindfulness in action!

Well, what got me started here was this L.A. Times article by James Rainey (linked on Facebook by awesome Texan writer/pal-from-JKC-days Joe Nick Patoski)about the sorry implosion of intelligent, in-depth journalism, and more specifically the pathetic opportunities for the current freelance writer. You might be surprised given the questionable quality and wacky scope of this blog that I have a major jones for beautiful, professional writing: words that are put together so nicely that the prose just sings, whether it’s a straight piece of reporting or a short story or even a technical manual. But I do, and it pains me to see more and more poor writing as standard fare now. On top of that, no one wants to pay people to write. Living wage writing jobs are going bye-bye by the tens of thousands per year. On top of THAT, the trend now is for newspapers and magazines and their respective websites to court people to write content for them FOR FREE or for pennies. Yes, I am not at all kidding.

How do you convince people to work for free or might-as-well-be-free? Well, it apparently is incredibly easy, because lots of writers are doing it in the hopes of getting their names and skills out there to the public, in further hopes that their writing will be so pithy, noticeable, and clearly superior that the free/cheap jobs will lead to real-pay work. But it isn’t happening. The pay jobs – even the barely-interesting ones – are taken, and those folks are clinging onto them with bared teeth and machetes. There are lots and lots and lots and lots of writers, just like there are lots of artists and musicians who also have no way to make a living. The well-written word is a luxury item now.

In the Information Age, oddly enough, we find that people don’t really want all that much information. It’s all too much to intake, from too many places. The collective lizard brain takes over and says, “Just give me only as much as I need, the basics, and something about Hollywood and a massive freeway pile-up, please.” The media outlets have to make money, and they are desperate for readers now as more of them downsize or outright fold, so it’s Give The Lizard What He Or She Wants. We can’t expect anything else, can we? I can bemoan the state of professional writing all I like as this is America and such, but as this is America and such, the dollar is the bottom line. If people don’t want to read certain kinds of work or read at all, that’s the way it is, and it’s not going to go back to the way it was. Murrow and Cronkite and Sontag and Kael and Wolfe and Woodward and Bernstein, if starting new in journalism today, would be offered $50 to write ten paragraphs on how Brad and Angelina were looking at each other at a red-carpet event, sent out on assignment to report that cheese often tastes exactly like cheese, or convinced that if they spend a year writing for free they could “strengthen their brand.” Worst of all, all of those talented and important writers might never have written anything at all, given up and done something else, and we all would be much poorer for it.

We as a country don’t really care about the quality of so much we choose to bring in to our lives, I guess. Substandard is good enough. There are those who will always strive to do their best no matter the circumstances or the pay; there are those who will take the extra time to find quality even when it is buried in a heap of celebrity gossip and Tyson Chicken Nuggets. There are some writers who will survive and thrive, and some who will end up translating government Hep C brochures into Spanish and working 8-6 at the dry cleaners, while hoping for their big break, handing Edward R. Murrow his neatly-pressed white dress shirts that he insists on wearing while driving a semi for Safeway.

Hell In A Handbasket? No. Just Sad In A Satchel.

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GO AND ROCK AND GO

My mind has been thoroughly taken up with GOING AWAY that last few days. This is utterly normal for this time of year as it is up to me to figure out and plan and book family vacations . The kids have both February and April school vacations because of the common need for Seattle people, if able, to SEE THE SUN for a few days. I think you can get numb to the rain and the grey instead of totally miserable over it, but it seems healthy to take an opportunity to touch base with Friend Giant Gasball. So I start thinking about what would be fun and also reasonable to the pocketbook. I often fail on the latter, but you can’t take it with you, eh? Don’t mess with my rationalizations; I’ll f you up, man. Heh.

There is nothing more exciting to ME than to travel to go see ROCK AND ROLL. Seattle has a truly superior music scene, and look what I have booked already just through the first week of March: Phoenix, The Soft Pack, Wilco, Mavis Staples, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club! Oh mah gawd, I am pretty excited about this all. Last year was a fantastic year for shows; 2010 is looking SUHWEEET too. Another opportunity to travel and rock has occurred and I am taking it. Dave Davies of The Kinks will be playing a handful of small shows in February, and I am going to fly completely across the country to see two of them. Is this crazy? Well, I hope so, because crazy is often quite fun. This is the first time that Dave is taking the stage since a devastating stroke he suffered in 2004, and I am going to be there to cheer him on. I also get to hang out again with two of my bestest oldest pals in the whole world, which makes it a total treat. My pals are both nine years older than I am, which gives me the delightful opportunity to be the leaping sprite of the group, which I enjoy to no end because I get to poke at them mercilessly. I hope this can continue well into advanced old age for us all.

So 30 hours or so after I return from that, it’s off to California again with the kiddies, this time to the L.A. area. I have such mixed feelings about Los Angeles, maybe more than any other place I have been. There’s loads to do, there’s the ocean, it’s funky and funny and weird and elegant and unique, which is all good. I guess what bothers me is the almost-tangible feeling of endless possibility enmeshed with disappointment and failure. There are so many reminders of the haves and have-nots, of those who come to be something and end up not getting what they wanted, surrounded by pretty flowers and palm trees and the shining sun. Los Angeles is the Beach Boys and Charles Manson and Mickey Mouse and Gidget and Octomom all at a dinner party that you may or may not want to attend. I RSVP’d “yes” for February. Please pray for me, you prayer types, that I can convince the kids that the Santa Monica Pier is way way cooler than Disneyland.

The April break is still in the shaping stages, but it looks like we all shall be returning to Washington, D.C., a year since the rather-difficult experience Mr11 and I had there. Yes, I remember that this is a dumb time to go there because of all the school groups and it’s friggin’ Cherry Blossom time and all, BUT…BUT! Two of my favorite bands are playing there then, so this is a major decisive factor, because I BOOK THE TRAVEL. One of them is Vampire Weekend, a major fave of MissSeven as well. She just about popped with happy when I told her that it was looking good for her to attend her very first concert ever. And as it so happens, two days later BRMC is playing! I would see them every night if I could so that’s a DONE DEAL.

I have no air tickets. I have no hotel. I have no planned schedule of educational day trips. But I will, and everyone will be happy. I was so frustrated last year that there were so many cool things to see in DC, but we didn’t have time. Mr11 is already saying we must go to the Spy Museum and MissSeven wants to go to the National Museum of Women In The Arts. Throw in maybe a little sun, the rocking and rolling, and we have a vacation! I am so glad to be able to do this for the kids, because they do seem to really appreciate it. We only have a few years to Do Stuff together, because they grow up, you know. And there’s also the whole depleting the pocketbook thing. Everything comes to an end. Om.

Because this post primarily was just a means to organize my thoughts, for your entertainment I bring you a compilation of the best viral videos of 2009, courtesy Stereogum. Enjoy.

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YOU WANT A COOKIE?

Ellie is such a good dog. I think she buried that cookie.

This got me thinking about one of my favorite areas in psychology, which is behaviorism. Why do people, or animals, do what they do, and how are actions shaped? What motivates? What reinforces behavior and what extinguishes it? In some ways, it is an incredibly simple and common sense thing -- people like things that are pleasurable and avoid things that are uncomfortable, duh. But throughout a zillion controlled conditioning studies over last hundred years or so (thank you Skinner and Pavlov, you sexy devils), it is always this ringer that I find so salient: the inconsistent reward produces the strongest behavioral response. Ooh.

Let me take the Ellie/cookie thing and very briefly explain what I mean. We have one dog, and a cookie. The dog has to be hungry and like the cookie for this to work, the underlying concept here is that the strongest motivators are what you need for survival and that you have to like something in order for it to be a reward. Fifi down the block might not like Ellie's cookie, and therefore would not be motivated to do squat for it. But Ellie really likes the cookie, and she is willing to do stuff for it; this is clearly established.

If I ask Ellie to sit, and then immediately give her the cookie every time after she completes the command, she will very reliably continue to repeat that behavior. If I tell Ellie to sit and never give her the cookie, she is less likely to even come over in the first place, much less sit, even though she would anyway because she is a good dog, but you get my point: no treat ever = screw you, lady. But if I sometimes give her the cookie for sitting and sometimes don't, this drives her dog brain WILD with POTENTIAL and POSSIBILITY and increases and sharpens her response. Even getting the cookie every time tops out -- at some point, she becomes full, the cookie is no longer a need, and she gets bored with so much pleasure. It's too easy. When she is unsure if she will receive the cookie or not, her need is psychologically heightened and she scrambles to figure out how to make the sometimes-cookie happen. Is is the quality of my sit? Do I need to look more humble? Should I not lick my lips or drool? What if there's a cookie famine and this is the last one ever, AAAAAAA! COOKIE!

The inconsistent reward is evil, and highly effective. It convinces the subject that the item of need is even more scarce than originally thought, and therefore even more desirable and worth putting in extra effort for. Now let us apply this concept past dogs and cookies, to humans and relationships and the case of Myron and Helga. Myron is interested in dating Helga, for the obvious reason: Helga has lady parts that appeal to him. Here are the outcomes of the three reward scenarios:

1. Consistent Reward: Myron asks Helga out on a date, Helga says yes. Myron asks Helga out several more times over a few months, and she agrees every time and also offers some lady part usage to Myron. Myron is eventually sated, figures out that Helga talks too much, sees a woman named Crystal with bigger boobs, and tapers off dating Helga. He subconsciously has filled his manly need to chase and conquer, and also figures any women who so easily gives it up to him is not all that hot anyway. Helga tells her girlfriends that Myron is a jerk.

2. No Reward: Myron asks Helga out on a date, and she says she is really terribly busy. He asks a few more times, and she says she is super extra amazingly busy, is seeing someone else, doesn't really like him in that way, and finally just says NO. Myron asks two more times, then never asks her out again, figuring she must be a lesbian or frigid, saving his battered ego from further torment.

3. Inconsistent Reward: Myron asks Helga out; she says ooh, I am really over-scheduled this week, maybe next week. Myron asks next week, Helga says, ooh, can't do it, my cousin's in town, maybe next week. Myron asks the next week, and Helga agrees to meet him for 15 minutes for coffee. Myron texts her immediately for another date as Helga leaves the coffee shop; Helga texts back that she will have to check her schedule, but she just luuvvvved their talk. Myron waits three days with no response and then leaves Helga a message that he wants to take her to a very fine dining establishment. Helga says she's feeling conflicted about dating at this time in her life, but that she finds him very appealing. Myron begins to drool, because Helga has now become the most-attractive woman in the universe. Helga accepts the expensive dinner date a month later. Myron texts her for another date when she goes to the bathroom. She texts back that she is committed to pooping right now, and isn't sure about anything else. Dates and denials of dates continue until Myron is so frenzied with desire and the need to win that he makes an offer of marriage. Depending on her agenda, Helga accepts and continues yanking Myron's chain for life, or declines, and she begins dating Crystal Big Boobs.

The inconsistent reward is essentially the idea of hard-to-get; that the thing that you need or want is sometimes there and sometimes isn't, so you'd better make sure you are on your toes when the opportunity presents itself, making you hungry. And oddly enough, the brain prefers this to even bloated predictable comfort. Living things have a need to strive, to hoard, to out-do, to win. Notice how the inconsistent reward plays out (let's not even get into gambling here) in many situations. Ooh.

As for Ellie, sometimes she gets a cookie for her sit and sometimes just some hearty praise and a pat on the head. That's why she loves me so.

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WHAT ARE YOU GOOD AT?

This is the question the kids often ask me, as Mr11 did again on the very foggy dark drive to his martial arts class this evening. They like to talk about what they think they excel at, and what they aren’t so good at; it’s part of sorting out where you fit in the world. They ask me, I think, as some kind of an adult baseline, someone to compare themselves with or relate to. For grade school kids, what they are good at and not good at is a simple definition of who they are, not really much different from the basics like their hair color, if they live in the city or country, or how many pets they have. For them, it is only just beginning to have the depth that affects self-esteem, and the choices made throughout a lifetime.

As a parent, my job is to listen attentively and to try to answer their questions with as much relative wisdom and reasoned brevity as I can, without veering off topic like Abe Simpson or running into the back of another vehicle as I endlessly pontificate. Many times, when kids ask you something, it’s really just them wanting to talk about something on their minds, but they don’t know exactly how to do it. I suspect this was where Mr11 was coming from this evening, after his first day back at school after the long holiday break. He had been slacking off at school pretty seriously prior to vacation, and got to receive the Pissed-Off Mom Spells It Out For You talk complete with the addendum of Your Consequences Look Grim, Pal chat. It was necessary, not at all fun to deliver, but that’s another part of my job sometimes. I said it, then said nothing more. You can’t keep hammering down the nail without splitting the wood at some point.

When I saw that I got an email today from his teacher, I cringed. Those usually mean there are MORE ISSUES and STUFF TO DEAL WITH. But surprise, surprise, instead she said that Mr11 had a spectacular day today, with a great attitude and great work. Well, I thought as I smiled at my computer screen, go, Mr11,go. I have enough years in as a parent to know that there’s going to be plenty more ups and downs, but when you know the kid CAN do what needs to be done, there’s always hope that eventually it will all even out and turn out pretty well. I told him that I was really proud of him for his Good Day, and it was a pleasure to see him relax, and smile back.

We talked about how it is natural for all people to be better at some things than others, and that no one excels at everything and no one is completely without merit, and that it is normal for people to avoid doing things they don’t like or think they don’t do well. There is no “best” or “worst.” What makes the difference is when you can put the same effort and diligence into your weaknesses as your strengths. That not only assures that you can build up your skill set as best you can, but you build your character as well. These ideas are just starting to become less abstract for him, and to have more value. It sometimes takes a great deal of time and experience to fully appreciate how much power you have to shape your world. It certainly did for me, and I am still learning. I hope I am always learning something, as I hope the same for my children. When you give up trying to make something better, know more, solve a puzzle, improve your little corner, you’re just hanging out waiting to die. The hell with that.

The Official Results Of The What Are You Good At Self-Assessment Poll, Taken By Mr11 And Myself, January 4th, 2010 In The Acura RSX Driving On 85th:

Mr11 -- Bad At: Organization, Writing/Good At: Balance, Flexibility, Strength, Videogames

Me -- Bad At: Math, Organization, Driving On Highways/Good At: Writing, Pain Tolerance, Sweet Vertical Leap

If I were a really excellent role model I would get myself “Math For Dummies” on CD that I could listen to while driving down a busy highway, in an orderly fashion.

"If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards." - Joe Pass, jazz guitarist

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ANCIENT VALENTINES

My mother, who is in a 20-year process of "cleaning out the house," often sends me UPS boxes filled with stuff. One never knows what this stuff might be, and I mean never. She is a pack rat; a tidy and organized pack rat to be sure, but this is someone who has a whole lot of issues with getting rid of stuff. So I get cut-out Wall Street Journal articles form 1987, ball-point pens with the names of long-defunct businesses on them, soap bars, and yes, YES, once she sent a packet of rectal suppositories dated 1964. After I stopped laughing about 5 years later, I asked her WHAT she was thinking of with that latter item. 'Well, they still must be good, right? You could use them still!" I started laughing again and have yet to stop. It's becoming a personal difficulty at this point.

The best things my mom sends are things she saved from my childhood. They have been long packed away, most of them -- some still in boxes from when my family moved in 1971, some from when we moved again in 1982. Today as I was going through my own 20-year cleaning process, I looked at something from a recent package -- a scrapbook I made in 1st grade, primarily filled with the Valentine's Day cards I received at school that February.



I vaguely remember doing this,thinking that the cards were so lovely and the expressions so flattering that I could not bear to just throw them away. People liked me, they really liked me! This is how you think at seven years old, like the person who gave you the Valentine was really saying how they felt about you. It's terribly cute. Anyway, opening the scrapbook and seeing these cards is a stark reminder that a full 40 years has passed, because they look SO OLD they might as well date from the Victorian Era. They are charming and a little scary, which is how I like stuff to be.

Ha ha, long-faced dude with a crewcut = "square!" It's true.



This is pretty much what all little girls looked like in the late '60s -- a perky dress, a wide headband, a flip cut, and we played demurely with kittens all day long.



There's something I really like about the juxtaposition of this demure polar bear next to the beat up nasty spiral wire and water damaged paper of the scrapbook.



I'm pretty sure these two had something to do with Nazi Germany.



She doesn't look like a kid to me. She looks like a chipper-but-slightly-butch lesbian talk show host.



This just looks like everyone's mom.



The ones with the raised silver sparkles made me feel extra WOW.





Oh look, it's the Small-Town Ho. I hope it wasn't this kid's mom.



The Isadora Duncan Valentine.



LOL, a corded phone.



Damn beatniks!



Aw, look at my role models.







Oh, dear. An overly-enthusiastic eggman. Goo goo ga joob.



And finally, proof that no one ever spells my name right.

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RESOLVE THIS

I am not really one for New Year’s resolutions, but I think I am in the minority. Most people really like to assess and ponder at the change of the calendar year, and attempt to gather fresh strength to have a better year than all those that have come previously. Where resolutions usually go wrong is that people take on too much, or too little. If you are 40 pounds overweight and think Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are an acceptable form of breakfast protein, it might take you some time to realign things, and certainly more than the 6 week timetable you give yourself on January 1st. On the other hand, vowing just to buy bigger pants in 2010 is not really addressing the issue. You probably won’t be able to get off work to take that 3-month backpacking trip through Europe, but driving across town to a different Costco is not an “adventure vacation.” You won’t become fluent in Chinese this year, but you could learn how to pronounce “nuclear.” Everything is balance.

I think what is probably most common with Resolutionistas is some kind of free-floating anxiety that they should be doing more, that life should be better and bigger and happier than it is, but they aren’t sure what to do about it that seems reasonable and actually fun. People don’t really like to do things that aren’t fun, you know, or at least pleasantly satisfying. Sometimes the place to start is somewhere unexpected or small. Here are ten things you could do in 2010 to change your world a little bit: doable, and if applied consistently, may add up at 2011 to be much more than you would think.

1. Take one TV show off your regular line-up and replace it with a book. Doesn’t matter what the book is, whatever interests you, but go to your library or bookstore and get a stack ready to go. Spend that 30 minutes or hour reading.

2. Once a day, choose the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator. Park your car away from the closest entrance, whatever it is you can do to get a few more steps in. You will be irritated by this at first, but then, you won’t.

3. Get in the habit of taking a small camera with you. It can be a cell phone or regular camera. Now use this camera to take only one kind of photograph as you go about – just macro close-ups, just architecture, just flowers, just sunsets, birds, bugs, people’s butts, anything, but only one thing. At the end of the year, you will have a nice collection of themed images and you will have trained your eyes to see your world in a very different way.

4. Attend some kind of live performance once a month. The energy given out at a live concert or play – even if its just a bar band or a kids’ school play – is invigorating, and a nice change of pace from the brain-sucking passivity of TV, the ‘net, and your iPod.

5. Stop eating when you aren’t hungry. You aren’t as hungry as you think you are.

6. Get rid of your crap. You can’t take it with you, you know, and most of your shit is shit that you don’t really need and weighs you down. Decide what goes in the Dumpster or can be used by others with more need. Once a week, one hour, move stuff out.

7. Bake some delicious treat a few times a year and give it to someone else. You may lick the pan.

8. Dig into your State. America is an amazing country with fantastic variance and beauty and strangeness. People can live all their lives in one place and never really fully discover all the cool places to visit, restaurants to dine in, views to view, and people to meet. Venture out once a month to somewhere new, whether it’s a weekend at a remote lake, a Cuban diner in Shelbyville, or a museum that you keep saying, “oh, I really should go there sometime.”

9. Save every last bit of loose change you have in your purse or pockets in a jar for a year. Do not count it until New Year’s Eve, then donate it to a charity or buy yourself something you normally wouldn’t. Not crack, though.

10. Make something. It is fundamental to human nature to create things, did you know that? It is, but many people stop making things after childhood because they think they are not good at making things and they leave it to others. But that doesn’t change the need to build, design, shape, or grow. So, whether you think you can or should or it will be any damn good at all, at least once this year…

…grow an herb garden;
…write a haiku;
…scribble a portrait of someone at a park;
…make up a song and sing it to your cat;
…write down a funny, sad, or strange story of something that happened to you;
…bake an outrageously-elaborate cake;
…go to a local create-n-bake pottery place and make a bowl for your kitchen table;
…build something functional out of wood;
…organize your kid’s school art into a bound book;
…do your own landscaping;
…go through all your old makeup and make a self portrait on paper with it with your fingers before you toss it out;
…make your favorite meal from childhood from scratch and have a dinner party;
…sew or knit something someone will carry or wear;
…make yourself a tin foil hat and wear it to work one day.

In the spirit of Attempted Hope and Good Intentions and Thank God That Year Is Over, I hope you are able to make your world wider, brighter, more interesting, healthier, and definitely more fun. Go you!

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NEW YEAR, NEW WAYS TO SCREW UP

As CNN.com kindly reminded me today, 40,697 laws were gently and expertly crafted in 2009 by our fine American public servants in Congress and elsewhere. January 1st, 2010, which is today as I understand it, is when many of these squalling newborn legislations take effect. Now, those of you whom have been arrested or those of you whom have cleverly avoided incarceration know that ignorance of the law is NO DAMN GOOD EXCUSE. No one in the justice system gives a rat’s hemorrhoid if you didn’t know there was no turn on red, that you weren’t entirely sure if you could smoke at a day care center or not, or thought it was pretty likely that you could kick a guy because he made fun of you attending Comic Con. You gotta read up on your laws, people, all extra 40,697 of them, or risk being taken down in 2010 by THE MAN. I could make a sleazy double entendre with that last sentence, but I would never do anything like that. Anyway, let’s look at some of the new laws that CNN kindly selected for us to know about:

-- Sorry, Texan parents, you have to wait until your child is 16-and-a-half years old to bake melanoma into them now. That’s right, at halfway through your child’s 16th year of life you can then go with them and sign consent for him or her to use a tanning bed. Although it does just say “with an adult” so maybe the 16.5 year old’s creepy 30-year-old significant other could take said teen. And Texas, WHY 16.5? Is there some magic reason that halfway through that year cancer rays become OK? This is really gonna hurt the Texas kiddie pageant circuit. There’s really nothing that says, “WINNER!” more than a fake lineless tan on a 3-year-old.

-- California is now limiting the use of nasty trans-fat oils in restaurants, which is good. Now how about limiting the massive portion sizes and servers who spit in the salad? Just a thought.

-- North Carolinians can no longer smoke in their state’s bars and restaurants. And as the top producers of death-inducing tobacco in this country, to them I say, “HA HA!”

-- Nineteen states now prohibit text messaging while driving. All the other states apparently like their drivers with a hefty side serving of needless accidents and road rage. Your “LOL, no U!!!” can wait.

-- Louisiana, long known for its stellar record protecting the health and welfare of women and children, will no longer allow cigarette lighters that look like toys to be sold. Oh, thank god – all those poor, undereducated, underfed, underhoused kids can stop lighting themselves on fire now. Bless you, Louisiana – you are leaders of merit.

-- Oregon says that kids have to wear a seatbeat while riding on an ATV or car on public property. Private property? WHEEEE!

-- New Hampshire has finally put down its collective foot on human trafficking. New Englanders find it distasteful.

-- Hey, registered gang members in California! Get away from that school! If you were told to piss off and you come back around sooner than 72 hours you might get fined or go to jail a little. But for what you’d make in drug sales, it still might be worth the risk. Or just make it 72.5 hours.

-- New York says THE MAN can drug test any racing horses that are in competition on a New York track. I wish they had to do it while the horses are running, because that would be funny.

-- California does not want you to chop off a cow’s tail, unless a vet says you should. There go those pesky gang members again.

So, Americans, enjoy a fresh new year: pale, greaseless, with clear lungs and non-sore thumbs, non-charred, non-ejected, not being imported nor exported for your sexual favors nor hard labor, free from persistent gang members impeding your education, ‘roided-up racing equines, and tailless cows. Cheers!

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