another sign I was born in the wrong decade

follow me a little bit on this story.

I was viewing a few recent videos by The Decemberists from their tour supporting their recently released album "the hazards of love" (a great album, btw), when I stumbled on a video of them doing a live cover of "crazy on you" by heart which they seem to have been doing in quite a few of their shows. The video of them doing this cover actually gave me shivers by how good this song is. I was feeling pretty pumped about how good this band, The Decemberist is. That's until I went and checked out some videos of the original.


Not. Even. Comparable.
In 1976, the music Heart played put the Decemberists' version to shame. but I can kind of forgive them. I mean, they aren't really a hard rock band. And they're pretty good with what they do.

Now, I remember Heart from when I was growing up. But, I remember "Alone" and "These Dreams" and songs like those from their 1985 album "Heart", which I can't say I remember that specifically, but I think that it was OK with quite a few catchy eighties type songs. I think I even learned how to play "Alone" on the piano. But now as I'm browsing thru a few of their 80s videos, I can't help thinking, "how could a band that played the way they did in the late 70s switch to this type of music?!!"

And it reminds me of something I guess I've thought a number of times: "did everyone just turn stupid for like 6 or 8 years in the 80s?"

reading a bit of the history of "crazy on you", I guess it was inspired by the vietnam war and other shitty things that were going on in the world in the early 1970s. Perhaps, not having any inspiration in the 80s can explain it. Probably it just stems from the natural evolution of a rock & roll band. Once they're huge, they get worse. I don't know. trying to please their fans too much....? just trying to make as much money as possible.....?
case in point: post-"Joshua Tree" U2

What I've been missing

I have to put this down real quick. I'm starting to gradually realize that it has been almost a whole decade that I've been living outside the US.

What made me think of this at this moment? I came across a tidbit of present day culture while casually scanning wikipedia with the main objective of learning about the differences in the common spirits (liquors) and what their ingredients were and methods of preparation. At dinner I told some friends that I thought either gin or vodka was made from potatoes, but I wasn't sure which, because it did sound kind of absurd. I have since discovered that gin is made primarily from grain and flavored with juniper berries and that vodka can be distilled from many things including grain, potatoes and sugar beet molasses.

(I was most distracted by the articles on brewing, as I naturally migrated towards the technique of preparing beer, something that I've done in the past and am looking forward to doing again in the future, as I have a good deal still left to learn about this hobby).

Anyway, I came across an article called "bacon vodka" which inevitably led me to "bacon mania". This is what made me realize that a lot of things are going on back in the place that I consider "home" that I simply am not aware of. I don't quite know what to think of this "bacon mania", but from the outside, my initial impression tends towards something similar to a feeling I have about a lot of the "newest" yuppy craze: annoyance. Does it seem to anyone else that people are a little bit too desperate for attention? Recently a "friend" on facebook uploaded pictures of what I thought to be a nice, although somewhat unusual, saturday evening meal, which consisted of some sort of bacon-wrapped sausage-hamburger-bacon loaf or something. I thought it was interesting and decided I'd comment that according to my mom, my first word happened to be "bacon", as in, "what a coincidence that you like bacon so much, too." Now, I see that I'd been duped, and I'd fallen into the horrible abyss of competing with my fellow yuppies for who deserves more attention. I take back my comment. I don't care if anyone on FB knows that my first word was (supposedly) "bacon". Although, now that I've hung out with a few babies in the past couple years, I've realized just how unlikely it actually is that that indeed was my first word.

Anyway, am I really really REALLY far removed from popular culture? or just a little bit? does this have anything to do with kickball leagues? what am I supposed to think about those things, anyway?

and the last question for which I have no clue whatsoever how to answer: why would anyone drink bacon-flavored vodka.....?

newsworthy translation

Here is a bit of news that I must admit deserves to be translated (for article in original version, see link below):

lunes, 25 de mayo de 2009 17:00h. TERRA NOTICIAS / AGENCIAS - EL GARROFER
Gravely injured after attempting a "lunar landing" into a jewelry store from a bicycle

A man of around 45 years of age, referred to by the initials J.M.D.R., was badly injured when he attempted to rob a Madrid jewelry store by means of “a lunar landing”.

The injured man tried several times without success to break through the storefront windows by smashing himself against them while on an Orbea bicycle until he lost consciousness.

In statements made from the San Carlos Clinic in Madrid, J.M.D.R. explained to the police that he had planned to rob the jeweler with a stolen car, but when it came time, he was feeling a bit lazy to try and break into the car “taking into consideration the additional charge that that could have landed him,” according to what he said. He, therefore, decided to try it “at all costs” with his son’s bike.

According to witnesses, you could hear the insistent dinging of a bicycle bell from Jose Ortega y Gasset street near the intesection with Serrano. It turned out to be a man coming down the hill at full speed heading straight for the storefront of the watch and jewelry store, Omega.

The store possesses two steel posts in front to prevent the “lunar landing” of cars. Moreover, the storefront windows consist of armored glass 5 centimeters thick. The cyclist passed between the steel posts at about 15 miles per hour and smashed headlong into the door without making the slightest mark on the glass.

Several bystanders came to his aid, as it seemed like it had been an accident. However, the robber refused help and returned up the hill with the bike only to launch himself down once more and crash headlong against the glass again with the exact same result.

After the third attempt, J.M.D.R. remained on the ground not able to move. Within a few minutes, the local police and paramedics arrived on the scene having already been notified by a witness. The frustrated robber was detained and has been diagnosed with a severe concussion.

Herido grave tras intentar 'alunizar' con una bicicleta en una joyería

Is it really bad for EVERYONE to not modify loans that are going into foreclosure?

I've been listening to the planetmoney podcasts from a couple weeks ago and have heard mentioned a couple times that not helping home buyers who are on the verge of foreclosure to modify their loans so they can continue to stay in their homes is bad systemically. It's bad for the home owners, it's bad for the lenders. The banks lose more money in foreclosure proceedings. They're stuck with a house that they don't really want and cannot sell. And above all, it kicks people out of their homes. But, I tend to think that there are a lot of players in the economy that you are not taking into consideration here. I agree that perhaps so many foreclosures are bad for borrowers and lenders of "bad" loans, but what about the rest of us. I, for example, do not have a mortgage, owe very little (except for a fair amount in student loans for my college education), and am not looking to take out a loan from any of those financial institutions that are suffering so dearly in the immediate future. I just want to see the economy recover (more on this towards the end). And I will wait patiently for that to happen.

I believe that making big efforts to help modify and thus save bad mortgages is hurtful in the long run. For all new home buyers who were not affected by the housing crisis, foreclosures inevitably mean a drop in real estate prices. This is GOOD for people looking to buy a home. Perhaps it's not great for people who own a home for housing prices to go down, but hey, they already have their home. And for all those that purchased before the pricing boom, saw the value of their homes double and sometimes triple in the early to mid 2000s, they will now see the value go back to perhaps what it should be at. And, tahdah!, they still have their home which in reality is worth exactly that. It's worth is not the dollars they spent to buy it or the dollars its value supposedly reached at the peak or even any dollars at all. It's worth "a home" to a family. True, some people bought homes when housing prices were highly inflated. But not everyone.

Secondly, financial institutions such as banks and mortgage brokers who made "bad" loans that drove the spike in the housing crisis will not be "punished" for making those bad loans if they are bailed out. And more importantly, financial institutions that did NOT make "bad" loans (i.e. checked potential buyers credit, analyzed home pricing before offering financing, etc.) but were actually financially responsible with their lending will not benefit from the suffering of their competition if their competition does not suffer.

Now, naturally the argument exists that all those "bad" loans got packaged together and ALL the financial institutions have some amount of investment in these mortgage backed securities, so there's no differentiating between "good" lenders and "bad" lenders. But, I disagree. Sure, to try and cure the ailing global economy the financial institutions can generally be grouped together as "needing help" on a systemic level. But at a local level, after this recession works itself out, and all these securities are revalued and taken apart and resold, the paper trail is going to show who is to blame. And I'd guess it's going to happen faster than we might think. The sound financial lenders, should benefit from their sound decisions. And the poor lenders should suffer. And here we touch on what you guys love to bring up on planetmoney which is "who is to blame." Yes, all those bad mortgages have gotten packaged together--that was bad, and yes, the securities rating agencies either were ignorant of or failed to properly report the risk that was being created--also bad, and yes, all the big financial institutions leveraged too much--REALLY bad, etc. But the real heart of the matter (call it "blame" if you want), lies with people taking out credit that they couldn't pay back and lenders giving out credit that wasn't going to get paid back.

Since we came so close to the armegeddon last September, and we realized that what was going to tear our economy apart was the lack of lending between the banks because of a loss in trust between them, it seems like our focus in the last 6 months has been entirely on this aspect of the downturn: the banking system. But, as I heard briefly in the intro segment to episode #39 in which Adam and a woman are heard to "raise their voices" at each other, I'm not sure, but it seems that her point was exactly what I'm saying here. "Having a functioning financial system is a necessary but not sufficient condition of a healthy economy." Precisely. And the economy is much much broader and contains many many more components. Including banks that made sound lending decisions and us first time home buyers who want to see the housing market fall from the outrageously absurd levels that they have reached. Because if they don't, we're not going to buy. At least I hope we won't. Because if we do, we're just destined to repeat this entire bubble cycle again.

Baby Boomers (those bastards)

I wanted to post a response I made to my friend Dora who shared a recent documentary with us called "Man on a Wire".

Here's what she wrote to me (reproduced entirely without her permission. If she doesn't want her opinion to be heard, than I'll remove it, but until then, it's necessary to put my email into perspective):

I wanted to ask if you guys ever watched that movie Man on Wire. I wonder what you thought?

I have to say I was totally disappointed. It was really hyped up as this amazing documentary, and I found it kind of boring and not that interesting at all. Of course the story in and of itself is really interesting, but I dont think the firlm did a good job.

Anyway, I was just curious becaseu I remember Maria really wanting to see it.

And my response to it:

yeah, we saw it and I totally agree with you. Maria fell asleep about halfway into it, and I was nodding off for about a half hour of it in the middle. I think it won some awards or something, but it didn't really spark my interest. don't know. maybe it appealed more to people who were adults in the 70s and 80s and can remember specific events from back then. and those are the people who make the decisions about the awards and who occupy all the "official" film critic journalist positions.

You know, our lives are going to be eternally influenced by the baby boom generation whether we like it or not. Those fuckers are going to decide what is "good" culturally, artistically, politically, etc. and then when they all want to stop working at the same time, the world is going to go bankrupt. Here's another example for you. I came across a link on the internet when reading about Janis Joplin saying one of her albums was ranked number 100 or something out of Rolling Stones list of the greatest 500 albums of all time based on voting by all music critics in 2003, etc. So I went to that list to check it out and I'd say that about 90% of the albums were from the 60s and 70s. Beatle albums occupied 4 of the top 10 spots. Then all these random bands that you've never heard of. Of the top 50, the only ones that could be considered from our generation are:
17. Nirvana - Nevermind
20. MJ - Thriller
26. U2 - Joshua Tree
46. Bob Marley - Legend
48. Public Enemy - It takes a nation of millions to hold us back.

The more I look at it, the more incredulous it gets. that's 5 out of 50. And in that top 50, there's at least 5 or 10 that no one who wasn't alive in the 60s has even heard about. And of the 5 we could consider from our generation, 4 of the 5 came out before I was 10 years old (only Nevermind is less than 20 years old).

So you could look at this and think, "damn, the 80s, 90s and beginning of the 00s must have sucked musically-wise". But I look at it and think "what? does no one under 55 read Rolling Stone?" Who do they think we are?

It just goes to show, we don't have control over anything. And by the time all those fuckers die, we're going to be too old for anyone to pay any attention to us. the power is going to skip from our parents generation directly to our kids.

oh well, at least we can live in europe!!

Jimi Hendrix - Villanova Junction (1969)

And this....

if you don't like 60s rock solo guitar improv, at least skip ahead to 4:55 for one of the greatest instrumental riffs of all time. I put these last 3 min on all the mix tapes I made. (the original video I put up here had the first 4:55 min of improv. this one starts Villanova Junction at sec 0:10)

On the video you can tell that this is one of the first times that this song has been performed live or even rehearsed among the current band members. As Jimi goes into the main verse, you can see him make eye contact with bassist Billy Cox and show him what the chord progression is as he goes along. But despite the song's unpracticed quality (or perhaps precisely because of it), it turns out as an incredibly beautiful and inspiring song that only Jimi could have created and performed.

If I could travel in time, I'd go to 1969

I was just thinking about my childhood and was curious about how I could have been such a Woodstock fan but I mean to a really extreme extent. To the degree that was kind of ridiculous for a young kid in the late 80s. I mean I didn't think of myself as a hippie or draw peace signs all over my notebooks or anything. I just remember being a huge "Woodstock-lover". Strange, I know. I guess, apart from Hendrix being my all-time idol (far and above any profession athlete), things were just different back then (the late 60s, I mean). Perhaps it has something to do with how much media promoted the concept of the "generation of the 60s" and everything, but that can't explain it entirely. I don't know. But I just found this, and honestly I can't think of anything that I've heard, read, seen or witnessed recently that effects me to such a great extent. Honestly, it's 8 minutes that makes shivers run through my whole body. I can't help myself. It gets me every time.