This can only be considered a sign of the apocalypse. Seriously?

I highly recommend reading the reviews for some fine, fine satire. Still, there is no way anyone can think this is a good idea.

Call me suspicious, but I am not comfortable that the District of Columbia Police are taking a prominent role in preparation for security at the Pittsburgh G-20 summit this September.

Security planning for the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh is a numbers game driven by questions that can't readily be answered: How many police officers will be needed for thousands of protesters and how many arrests can be safely and fairly processed in courts?

Among other things, security will be beefed up by officers and consultants from the DC Police Department: the same DC Police Department which believes it's authorized to conduct military-style police sweeps and to set up barricaded checkpoints to search people entering suspicious neighborhoods.  The G-20 Summit is likely enough to produce craziness without oversight and advice from a department well known for disregarding the constitutional rights of the citizens it serves.  For that matter, Pittsburgh's own preparations for mass arrests against evil anarchists may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The right to free speech includes commercial speech, but that's lost on some.  If the Chicago Transit Authority were to ban tasteful ads for say, James Joyce's Ulysses, or an art exhibit featuring the work of some modern Robert Mapplethorpe, would that get more attention than a ban of ads for Grand Theft Auto?

On the other hand, some of the worst threats to free speech come from those who exercise their right to "cry wolf," or to proclaim that "the sky is falling."  Witness this story from Christianity Today, in which Ashley Horne of Focus on the Family warns of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act:

if passed, the law could expose pastors to federal prosecution if an attendee of their church committed a crime and blamed it on sermons about homosexuality. The bill does not adequately protect Christians from gay activists, she says. She worries that the prosecution would be based on evidence of motivation.

Poppycock.  The Bill can be read in its entirety here. If passed, the law would punish one who:

willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of … actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability …

Causing bodily injury means just that.  A sermon, no matter how hateful, cannot cause bodily injury, nor could it be deemed an attempt to cause bodily injury.  For that matter, despite Ms. Horne's assertion to the contrary, the bill actually provides more protection for the religious than it does to people attacked because of sexual orientation. (It contains identical clauses criminalizing such attacks, both including religion as a protected category but only one including sexual orientation.  This is what's known as a "blue pencil" clause – if a court strikes the second, which includes sexual orientation and religion, the first, which only includes religion, will remain in effect.)

We've had sentencing enhancements based on gender and age for centuries.  In my state and in every other of which I'm aware, a man who strikes a man is guilty of assault.  A man who strikes a woman is guilty of "assault on a female," and gets more time, because men by and large are far stronger than women.  There are plenty of good arguments against hate crime laws, and there are good arguments against federalizing what should be simple state felonies, but willfully distorting the content of a bill, which is what Ms. Horne is doing, doesn't promote those arguments, and doesn't show a regard for freedom of speech or religion.  I'll exercise my freedom of speech to call Ashley Horne a liar.

On a question of genuine conscience, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education reports on the strange case of Grand Valley State University, which attempted to make state employment dependent on "demonstrated commitment to principles of diversity." An Ashley Horne, who is not demonstrably committed to diversity, could not get the job at GVSU if her beliefs failed to meet the school's litmus test.  This is no more constitutional than an employment offer contingent on "demonstrated commitment to the American Flag," or "demonstrated commitment to the Holy Koran."

What's especially silly about the case is that the job posting which brought the policy to light was "Visiting Assistant Professor of Music (Flute)". Presumably a flute instructor who assaults aspiring flautists based on their diversity would be fired in any event, but the litmus test for beliefs, at a music department, demonstrates the clash between collegiate H.R. culture and the First Amendment.

Suppose a flute professor has mixed feelings about same sex marriage, like Ashley Horne.  Suppose the visiting flute instructor just doesn't give a shit, and grades flute students based on flute talent without regard to flute diversity. Should such an instructor be downgraded in favor a less flautistically inclined, but more demonstratively diverse, visiting flute teacher?

Fortunately we won't find out, as FIRE reports the university has backed down, opening the visiting flute instructor position to anyone qualified to teach the flute without regard to that visitor's beliefs.

Private colleges of course remain free to require a demonstrated commitment to diversity, as opposed to excellence in flute instruction, in their visiting flute instructors.

Tchaikovsky abused his wife, Antonina Milyukova.  He led Milyukova into a loveless marriage based on false pretenses.  He verbally abused her, calling her a "reptile."  He probably beat her.

And so, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, we should replace children's showings of "The Nutcracker" each Christmas with music by other composers, such as Liszt.  Well, Antonovich doesn't go that far.  He just wants to remove all of Richard Wagner's music from the Los Angeles County Ring festival, and replace it with Mozart.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera discontinue the Ring Festival L.A. planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a, “Nazi composer.”

“To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party,” Antonovich said in a statement released today.

Leaving aside that a Ring festival with out Wagner wouldn't be a Ring festival, Wagner is an unfortunate illustration of the truth that great artists are not always great men.  He is doubly unfortunate in that he shows us that genuinely bad men sometimes have good taste in art.  Although Wagner was by most accounts a gentle man who never lifted a hand in anger, he was a vocal anti-semite, which might have played some role in the attraction Hitler felt to Wagner's operas.

Or it might not have.  As an Austrian German, Hitler also appreciated the work of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, the Strausses, and other composers whose work isn't proposed for a ban in Los Angeles.  Hitler was born six years after Wagner died.  There is no evidence that Wagner's music or librettos played any role in forming Hitler's anti-semitism.

In fact, what are the allegedly anti-semitic elements of the Ring?  Dwarves.  Wagner's Ring cycle, drawn from German pagan / Norse mythology, concerns in part the fate of a magic ring, forged by a dwarf.  According to those who'd ban Wagner, the dwarf is a stand-in, an allegory for Jewish people, because as we all know, Jews are short people who live underground and love gold.

No doubt that's what the Danes were thinking, all the way over in Scandinavia, when they spun the myth cycles on which The Ring is based.  No doubt that's what Tolkien was thinking, when he, like Wagner, drew on these myths to create his own art based around magic rings and gold-loving dwarves.  As did the Japanese, the pagan Welsh, and the Iroquois, all of whom also had myths of powerful but little people living underground.

Or perhaps The Ring isn't an anti-semitic allegory at all.  As a famous dwarf once said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," and sometimes a 14 hour opera about the end of the world is just a silly mythological story with great music.  In either case, I suspect Mike Antonovich is no more qualified to judge Wagner's music by its aesthetic merit than he is the music of Tchaikovsky because the man mistreated his wife.

We'll have to throw out a lot of great art if we judge work by the character of its producer.  We'll start with Wagner, no doubt, but it won't end there.  We'll have to throw out Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Debussy, and more.  We'll move on to literature, pulling Twain, Poe, T S Eliot, Dostoevsky, and Hemingway from the shelves.  Then we'll burn El Greco, Picasso, and Van Gogh.  And so on and so forth.

And finally, when art is purified of bad men, Mike Antonovich and all the good people of Los Angeles can enjoy a county-sponsored exhibition of the works of Thomas Kinkade, followed by a concert featuring the music of Barry Manilow, and a nice glass of lemonade.

If a defamatory statement is made on Twitter, and no is able to understand it, does the plaintiff have a cause of action?

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"The Recording Industry Association of America’s successes in the sphere of eradicating copyright infringement are now being spoken of by everyone. Even our enemies are forced to admit that the successes are substantial. And they really are very great.

It is a fact that by January 1 of this year over 30,000 file sharers throughout the USA had been sued. That means that by March 3, 2009, we had overfulfilled the five-year plan of copyright infringement litigation by more than 100 per cent.

It is a fact that on February 28 of this year the lawsuits targeting infringers had already succeeded in collecting upwards of a figure in judgments which cannot be disclosed at this time, for legal fees not unreasonably exceeding the amounts collected, which is more than 90 per cent of the plan. It must be admitted that the diminution in revenue earned by RIAA-member labels over the past five years — compared to that which was forecast before the implementation of our five year plan to eliminate illegal infringement — is a tremendous achievement.

What does all this show?

That a radical turn of the American public toward respect of copyright may be considered as already achieved."

(With apologies to the estate of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin for any infringement of that author's copyright in the speech, Dizzy with Success – Concerning Questions of the Collective Farm Movement)

And then he'll settle down, in some quiet little town, and forget about everything.

It has become something of an internet sport to speculate on the fate of Gerry Rafferty, famous as the singer of "Baker Street" and "Stuck In The Middle With You."  Rafferty disappeared in the middle of 2008, checking himself out of a hospital into which he had been placed after a horrific incident in which he wrecked a five star hotel room so badly (by soiling himself) that the authorities had to intervene.  Rafferty then … vanished.

Until now. Fortunately, it appears Rafferty is living the line quoted from Baker Street, above.

The Bucket Boys, of Chicago, recorded in June 2008:

In rare circles, the Bucket Boys are quite famous, but that hasn't crossed into the mainstream.  For instance, they do not have a Wikipedia entry.  Nonetheless, they play the bucket like no men alive.

Guns 'N' Roses new album Chinese Democracy hits stores on November 23.

Something tells me that the moment has passed.

For various and sundry reasons I am not attending the last of several last reunions of the band in which I was once a member.  All of these things happened to me at one point or another during this band's weird existence.

It was fun though.  Pine State forever.  And if you've got money to burn, consider donating to the medical fund for Cy Rawls, a total stranger to you, but a sweetheart of a guy, for whom this show is being given as a benefit.

The Britich Broadcasting Corporation sends word that it has located hundreds of hours of tapes recorded by the late Delia Derbyshire, one of the pioneers of electronic music and sound effects. For anyone with a wide-ranging interest in the music of the past twenty years this would be akin to finding lost tapes of Miles Davis or Hank Williams. For those interested in the history of advanced electronic sound, particularly movie and television sound effects, it's the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recording with the BBC's radiophonic workshop from the 1960s to the late 1970s, Ms. Derbyshire, a graduate of Cambridge in "maths" and music, is best known as the actual performer (not the writer – that's Ron Grainer) of the science fiction television show Doctor Who, but her influence goes far beyond that, as the theme itself and her work of the same period, most created without and before the commonplace appearance of the synthesizer, has been a huge influence on the course of contemporary dance music and what came before, including techno, house, trip hop, and the work of the more adventurous pure "scratch" DJs. Contemporary sci-fi and television theme music, not much advanced beyond the theremin wailing of Alexander Courage, has yet to catch up to what Delia Derbyshire created in the 1960s, with lamp shades and tape recorders.

This is amply demonstrated by the second sonic piece on the linked BBC story, which could be played in a modern club without any changes if extended, and would have people dancing.

I look forward to owning some of this, if the BBC intends, as it says, to release it commercially soon. Anyone interested in modern music more advanced than pop should read these stories.

I was most pleased to learn that the original Iron Chef, the Japanese version which is only improved by the dubbing, is running on a spin-off of the Food Network, known as the Fine Living Channel. I can't stand the American version of the show, because it lacks that je ne sais quois. BUT…

I can barely stand this version either. It has everything it needs, with one exception. It has undubbed Takeshi Kaga. It has Dr. Yukio Hattori. It has Ota continually bursting in with "Fukui San!" It has live animals being slaughtered on television. It has "Allez Cuisine!" It has the strange judges like Korn, the actresses, or from unusual professions like fortune teller or "Rosanjin Scholar" (As an aside, if I were still musically inclined, I'd start a band called "Rosanjin Scholar.") Most importantly, it has Chen Kenichi, Hiroyuki Sakai, Rokusaburo Michiba / Masaharu Morimoto, and Masahiko Kobe.

BUT… Copyright control caught up. It doesn't have the soundtrack to the mediocre film "Backdraft" anymore. A most wonderful soundtrack, for this show, bombastic, melodramatic, overblown, everything that the soundtrack to a show about men in outlandish costumes cooking for a panel of Liberace-lookalikes and Japanese lower house members should be. Instead, it has a soundtrack that sounds as though it came from a bad videogame made in 1995, programmed by a tone-deaf teenager on a Mac. As great as the original is, the unwelcome substitution of scores makes the show near unwatchable.

A pity. Here's Iron Chef, as Chairman Kaga meant it to be heard:

Brother Cesare Bonizzi rocks like a big dawg.

I'm in deadly earnest about this.  I'd link to a Youtube video but it's the BBC so you'll have to visit the external link.  He's no Lemmy Kilmister, but who is?  He's better than 99% of the "singers" who front metal bands.

Ditch your band of lame Italians, Brother Bonizzi.  Hire some Brits or Scandinavians or Americans or someone who understands metal, and you'll be a star for the Lord.

We've previously covered the ridiculous lengths to which people who believe they suffer from nut allergies, in particular peanut allergies, will go. People like Dr. Tehmina Haque of Long Island, who sued American Airlines when her son was not hurt, and her lawyer Kenneth Mollins, who evidently makes his living suing on behalf of people who were not injured, but could have been.

Today's nut allergy story, however, concerns a tragedy. An important person was not seriously hurt, but could have been. That's right. I'm talking about David Lee Roth of Van Halen. Evidently Roth isn't suing anyone, but he should and we'll cover it as soon as he does.

You've heard those stories about Van Halen? No not the ones about the gerbil, or the stomach pump. I think that's Rod Stewart. I mean the stories about Van Halen and their stringent requirements concerning M&M candy products served backstage: No brown M&Ms; no peanut M&Ms. But M&Ms must be present. Now the mystery is solved.

Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth was pulled over by two Canadian police officers, who approached and quickly realized the rock star was in anaphylactic shock due to a nut allergy.

That's right. There's a reason for those nutty contract provisions rock stars insist upon. Every time David Lee Roth dipped into a bowl of M&Ms, he was taking his life into his own hands and mouth. Because that's the rock and roll way.

I once represented a country singer, whose music I dislike but who is a pretty nice guy, in a civil suit based on frivolous allegations that his bus had run over some insignificant person's head or something. I forget, but anyway, after his deposition, I asked him about the meticulous provisions contained within his venue contract concerning the number, color, thread weave, and dimensions of the towels that must be present backstage. He replied that it was there for two reasons: that he always had to know where his towel was;

Yes!

and that it was just to make sure they were paying attention, because if they met the towel requirements, they'd probably meet others he didn't have time to check.

Let's all be thankful that the Ontario police took the time to check on David Lee Roth. A star was almost added to heaven's firmament.

It's called Blue Wrath. It's performed by I, Monster, whatever that is.

Play this video, a Youtube adaptation from the film Shaun of the Dead, three times. Turn up the volume on your computer. WARNING: the video has a BAD WORD at the start, a word so bad I won't say it, ever, and there may be gross things in it.

If you're still with me, play the video three times, and listen to the song each time. You can ignore the video, though zombie flick fan that I am, I think the movie's brilliant.

Now, try to get that song out of your head. It's been stuck in my head for two weeks.

The National Hollerin' Contest is being held today in Spivey's Corner North Carolina. All devotees of Americana and southern folkways, as well as those interested in dying cultures and dying arts should see and hear this spectacle at least once.

I try to make it to the Hollerin' Contest when I can, and so keenly regret that I'm stuck in the office this afternoon, because I'm missing some great barcecue and some great entertainment, and the weather is perfect.

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