Guilty Pleasure

My guiltiest pleasure is getting all bent out of shape whilst reading the comment sections on AOL and Yahoo news features. It's an activity that does nothing but help me lose my faith in humanity.

Today, I read this article about a American Muslim family who was kicked off a plane, cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing, but still can't fly on that airline. That itself is ridiculous, but the amount of commenters saying that the airlines made the right decision is astounding.

Are people so afraid of living that they have lost all sense of logic?

The family was booted from the plane because their conversation regarding the safest place to sit raised the suspicion of some passengers. (I'm telling you, Harold and Kumar are the great satirical characters of our age.) 

I've been on airplanes before and can recall hearing people, or actually having the conversation myself, about the safest place on a plane. People fear flying. It's that simple.

Now, if terrorists were to board a plane in order to wage an attack, it is doubtful that they would be discussing the safest place on the plane. Terrorists, as we have all seen with 9/11 and in numerous episodes across the world, tend to go down with the proverbial ship. With an airplane involved, it would have to be a suicide mission, you can't run a plane into a building or down into the ocean without assuming that you will die. Therefore, the "safest place on the plane" would be a moot point. 

My New Year's resolution should have been to stop reading this nonsense, but it wasn't. 

Eartha Kitt RIP

Sadly, Eartha Kitt passed away today. She was 81.

Below is a small tribute consisting of videos I found on YouTube.

Free Esha

Esha Momeni is a graduate student in CSUN's mass comm department (where I just finished my MA) and has been interviewing women in Iran for thesis. Last week, she was arrested.

Dr. Melissa Wall, Momeni's thesis chair (also, my former thesis chair), is blogging about the situation on her site. Per Dr. Wall's site, there is a petition for her release, as well as an Amnesty International writing campaign. Also, there is a Free Esha blog over here.

This is a very sad and scary situation. Please take the time to show some support.

Ash Tuesday

I live about four miles downhill from the Sesnon fire, which I guess isn't that far, but since it's four miles that include a freeway, several main streets and the other trappings of urban living that work as a protection against wild fires.

A lot of people we know, those who live above the 118 (the dividing line between Northridge and Porter Ranch) have been evacuated.  I dropped a line earlier to a dear friend of mine.  Hopefully, she's okay.

Outside, ash is falling from the sky like snow flakes.  The smell is potent, like everyone in the San Fernando Valley decided to light their fireplaces at once.  The air isn't fit for breathing, it's thick, hot and sooty.  And the wind, which has died down from yesterday (when there were ten power outages throughout the day on my block alone), is still fierce enough to whip ash and debris into unprotected eyes.

Addendum:

Right after I posted this, I realized that I had no soda in the house and then, in my infinite wisdom, decided that it would be best if I walked to 7-11.  That plan lasted for less than half-a-block.  It's really hard to breathe outside.  After five steps, my head began to throb and my throat felt tight and sore. Despite wearing sunglasses, my eyes watered profusely.  I came back and grabbed the car.  Nobody is walking today except for our mailman, who is wearing a mask (although I doubt that helps much).  The 7-11 parking lot was filled with cars, all covered with soot, and everyone in line was also covered in soot.

S. 3325 Needs to Be Stopped

I was incensed when I read this post on Boing Boing about S. 3325, The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Act of 2008.  How could the Senate even think about using taxpayer money to encourage the RIAA's legal pursuits?  Really, it's not about copyright anymore and it probably never was about giving the artists their fair share.  (If that were the case, then Madonna, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails wouldn't have felt the need to pursue other options while the labels' attorneys were busy suing kids.)  No, it's all about bullying whoever they can in an attempt to stop progress.  And if the record industry can't get its act together enough to develop marketing and distribution strategies to work in the Internet Age (something many unsigned artists have accomplished), why should anyone listen to them?  I guess that's the Whineocracy for you, anyone who can throw the biggest tantrum wins.

Well, I'm against it, so I wrote to my Senators.

In the midst of all the hoopla over the elections, and perhaps because our President is the self-proclaimed "Decider," I think we've forgotten one of the greatest aspects of being American.  Our government works for us.  We vote them into office and we can vote them out of office.  That said, if we all email our Senators, they will have to listen.

That said, please read as much information as you fan find on S. 3325.  If you too think it's a load of crap, write your Senators and have your friends do the same.  It's not just about elections, it's about raising our voices all year long.

Secondhand Reports

"Liz, I have never seen so many cop cars in one place before," said C., who has been waxing my eyebrows every few weeks since we were still teenagers.

C. got stuck in the 118 traffic leaving the Valley after the shop closed last night.  She was driving with one of her co-workers and they had heard something about an accident, but weren't sure exactly where it was or how bad it was.  So they drove towards Chatsworth.  Streets were closed, but through a string of back roads, they ended up fairly close to the crash site.  She said it was so much worse than anything she expected.  

The two girls waited it out in a restaurant for five hours, until the roads had cleared and they could get back home.

"All we could hear were ambulances and helicopters."

Today, the helicopters are still hovering above us.  Amtrak is closed going from Chatsworth towards San Luis Obsispo.  The southbound trains from the Valley seem to be operating normally.

Train Crashes

Every five minutes, sometimes less, there are helicopters overhead.  There's no point in leaving the house because virtually anywhere we would go would be along the route from Chatsworth to one of the two local trauma centers and who wants to get in the way of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars.

ABC 7 hasn't veered away from the train wreck.  I wish I could change the channel, but I can't.

If you're from the Valley, this story hits really close to home.  The Metrolink runs from Ventura, through the San Fernando Valley and then into Burbank and Glendale before it hits Downtown.  I've taken it before.  My brother rode it every day until very recently and my father also took it frequently.  

According to news reports, there were 222 people on the train when it crashed.  That's after it stopped at the last Valley station, so let's estimate that altogether, there were over 400, maybe even over 500, people on the train-- everyone from salarymen to students.  Since its inception, and particularly since the recent hike in gas prices, the Metrolink has become crucial for people trying to get somewhere between the Valley and Downtown.

What struck me as strange throughout the evening, was that the reporters seemed sort of astounded by the concept of people riding trains.  One asked, "Are there seatbelts?"  If anyone has ever seen a seatbelt on a train, let me know because I certainly haven't seen them in L.A. or any of the other cities where I've hit the rails.  Plus, the Metrolink is a commuter train, meaning that it's standing room only at the busiest times of the day. 

Then there was some tangent about homeowners Chatsworth disliking the railroads because, to paraphrase the report, the noise and traffic of trains really don't gel with "a nice neighborhood like this."  So now, we have this horrible accident that resulted in a still-unknown number of deaths and severe injuries, where people are still trapped inside the cars, and people are trying to bring the homeowner groups-- organizations that are often cited in conversations with locals for contributing to the  abysmal state of public transportation in the Valley-- to politicize the situation.  That's sort of tasteless. 

Corporate Schoolyard

David Kravets at Wired wrote this interesting news piece regarding musicFIRST on behalf of the recording industry versus the National Association of Broadcasters.  (Read the article before the rest of this post if you have the chance.)

Now I find it hard to believe that an industry so reliant on publicists actually pulled this stunt.  Hasn't anyone advised them that if your industry on the whole has already pissed off the bulk of the U.S. by a) releasing overpriced albums with one good song; b) suing kids for downloading said crappy albums for free and c) not properly compensating artists with settlement money (that's just the short list), it probably isn't a good idea to go after the radio stations for "a form of piracy"?  

This isn't to say that I'm on the side of the NAB.  Certainly, that organization has it's own agenda.  And, after spending three years studying the history of radio for my M.A., I have come to learn that the NAB is responsible for a myriad shady dealings as well.  Basically, what we have here are two umbrellas for various corporate entities fighting like schoolchildren until big daddy government steps in to try and make things all better.

On the one hand, you have the record industry, which is clearly suffering from a soon-to-be-fatal case hubris, the latest symptom of which is denying the promotional aspect of radio.  As you are probably aware, the people who supply music to the radio stations are called "promoters."  That's their job title and their job description includes sending albums to the music director and program director and checking in with the two to see if their stuff will be played.  These are also the people who arrange for live performances at the station, interview sessions, radio contests, etc.  All of this is done to ensure that Band X's album is played as frequently as possible on the grounds that the more popular it is on the air, the more popular it will be in the store.

While the relevance of terrestrial radio has waned over the past decade, there is no doubt that is has traditionally been crucial to breaking a band.  Those of us who grew up in L.A. can tell anyone willing to listen that the reason why Depeche Mode was able to sell out the Rose Bowl back in the '80s and the reason why it still has an incredible following here is because of the heavy airplay the band received on KROQ for years.  More recently, and on a smaller scale, Silversun Pickups' popularity outside of Silver Lake could also be attributed to frequent spins on Indie 103.1.

On the other hand, though, you have the radio industry, which has done increasingly little to help promote music in recent years.  Sure, you have a handful of stations, mostly of the non-commercial variety, whose reputation relies on breaking artists.  Those stations, however, are in the minority.  If the radio industry did really see itself as a source of record promotion, it probably wouldn't rely so heavily on computer-generated playlists consisting of songs that have been market-tested for a narrow demographic.  In other words, if promotion were key to the game, you wouldn't have to hear all of greatest hits from your cousins' weddings humming in the background at work.  Add to this the fact that other media must pay royalties to the artist and label, while the NAB doesn't, and one might be inclined to-- gasp-- side with the record industry for a split second.

So who is right and who is wrong in this situation?  I don't have an answer for that and, perhaps, an answer isn't necessary.  After all, both record labels and terrestrial radio stations are losing in the new media game. Maybe the two entities should stop fighting with each other (and dragging our policy makers, who should have better things to do than referee this round of bickering, into it) and start working on creative solutions that will benefit both business and art.  That might be a bit too mature for corporate America, though.

A Tale That Had to Be Told

The slaying of teenager Lawrence King has been on my mind of late. As such, I wanted to share the following incident.

Brian* was the only openly gay kid at my high school. He wasn't the only gay student, but he was the only one brave enough to come out before graduation. Brian was two years younger than me, a sophomore, but we had a crew on campus that crossed grade barriers, mostly on account of the fact that we were all sort of strange-- goths, punks, nerds, hippies, whatever-- and we hung out on a the grassy area of the mission where our school was moved after the earthquake.

There were two cliques that hung out on the grass. In the other clique were a bunch of guys who all had the same first name. We often just referred to them by pluralizing said first name. For the purposes of this story, we'll call them the Jakes.

The Jakes hated all of us, one even threatened to beat me up for making a crack about his lame-ass tattoo, but they saved most of their rage for Brian. Now, to his credit, Brian had a mouth that pissed off everyone at some point, but the Jakes didn't hate Brian because of his knack for unintentionally insulting people, they hated him because he was gay. I know this because I was there the day that they tried to kick the shit out of him.

I don't remember how it started. After all was said and done, I had to recount the story to the girls' dean over what seemed like the rest of the afternoon.

We were just sitting on the grass-- me, Brian and two of our friends-- when they came towards us. The blond one, the one who would threaten me a few months later, walked towards us with his gang a few steps behind. He called Brian a "faggot." I remember the exact word because I had to repeat it as the dean quizzed and requizzed me as if she thought we made up the story and was trying to cause me to slip.

"I'm telling you, that's exactly what he said," I answered.

And then Brian mouthed off to him.

"He was just standing up for himself."

And the Jakes pounced Brian and he fell back or started to fall back but didn't quite hit the ground.

"It all happened really fast."

And then the two girls jumped to Brian's defense.

"Because everyone was freaking out."

And I ran over there too, and I tried to get everyone to stop, but then the deans hit the scene and we were all dragged over to the office-- girls with one dean, boys with the other.

And the girls' dean kept the questions coming, like she was totally convinced that this ordeal was our fault, like she couldn't stand the thought of having to expel the Jakes, which was the general punishment for a fight.

"Look, I already told you, they called him a faggot, they tried to beat him up."

I can't remember if I dropped the word hate crime or gay bashing, it was whichever was most commonly used on the news in 1994.

"And I think, just on those grounds, you should let my friends and I off the hook."

The dean looked stunned. Just goes to show that I did pay attention in Youth and the Law.

The situation ended up being a wash We didn't get into trouble. I think some sort of punishment befell the Jakes, just enough to keep them away from Brian for a while, but they weren't expelled. We went on hating each other until that June, when the Jakes and I graduated and we never saw each other again.

Just so that you know, this didn't happen in some stereotypical middle-of-nowhere town. It was the San Fernando Valley, a place where the LGBT community lived more openly in the mid-1990s than in other parts of the country.

I've thought about this incident a lot throughout the years and I imagine that it must have shaped a lot of the views I hold. I feel like it might seem as though I'm over-reacting if I say it was traumatizing, but when you see a gang of kids pick on another kid because of something he can't change, well, it makes an impact.

I know a lot of people have and will continue to say that there needs to be a focus on teaching tolerance in school. I humbly submit that this is a naive solution. You can't teach compassion in the classroom. If that were possible, then Brian wouldn't have been targeted on the campus of a Catholic school, where, by 12th grade, the Jakes would have heard the "love thy neighbor" routine enough times for it to sink in to their thick, nearly-shaved heads. No, kids learn by example and senseless murders like that of Lawrence King will continue until us adults start practicing peace.

* names have been changed