His rise has inspired me to start a new project, called “Give Katy Perry Some Material To Write About By Sending Her to Somalia for a Month.” Basically, I have heard various Katy Perry songs and have become concerned that she has no well to draw from. So far, we have learned that she can be moody (”Hot ‘N Cold”), that she has some interests in exploring her sexuality (”I Kissed a Girl”), and that she thinks girls like her from California are the best (”California Girls”). To get her career to the next stage and provide some longevity, and more importantly, to fill the free airwaves with more stimulating and enlightened music, I think we need to plot a societal intervention to get Katy where we need a public artist to be. Keep an eye out for a Pay Pal donation link coming soon, where for just a few dollars a day, you could provide Katy Perry with the life experiences to really write some amazing songs.

The sold out part was surprising but real. It did seem like there were more people all 3 days than I’ve ever seen. Even earlier in the day, it was tough to walk the polo fields. One major change this year was the increase in relay speakers. You could now hang out several hundred feet back from the stage and get a major sound experience. In years past, it was always very obvious where the radius of sound ended because a large, dense ring of people crowded to be inside this radius. Behind the radius of sound, the crowd was lean. So this year, with several rings of relay speakers, people were more evenly spaced out and there was less pushing to just hear the show (on the 2 main stages at least - the Gobi & Sahara tent still have amplification problems).

As for the music, I saw a variety of excellent performances. Friday, I saw:

Hockey
Yeasayer
She & Him
Dillinger Escape Plan
Passion Pitt
Grizzly Bear
Imogen Heap
Ceu
Jay 7

I had to elave She & Him early because they were really boring. Dilinger Escape Plan, on the other hand, blew my mind and my ear drums. Grizzly Bear sounded weak on an outdoor stage, and could not create an intimate performance when the other stages were bleeding through. They need an intimate performance space, or a different performance for festivals (see the Decemberists for how to do this properly, and see Jose Gonzalez for another example of flacid festival performance).

Jaz Z killed it - his band was awesome. I’m usually not a fan of hip hop performances, but this ranks as one of the best. To an extent, I will have trouble appreciating Jay Z at a club - he needs a live horn section every time! Beyonce’s guest performance during encore was incredible - google “Forever Young” to see their duet.

My only regrets for Friday was missing Echo & the Bunnymen, deamau5, and the specials.

On Saturday, I saw

temper trap
gossip
edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros
the xx
hot chip
parts of faith no more and mgmt
muse

Edward Sharpe woke me up from a nap I was taking in front of the Outdoor Stage, and I really got into their hippie groove. I had never heard of this band previously but I will definitely be checking out their recorded tracks and keep them on my concert radar. The XX were incredible, but the audience seemed rather bored. Hot Chip more boring than I would have guessed for a dance band.

On Sunday, I saw:

florence and the machine
jonsi
yo la tengo
miike snow
orbital
thom yorke

I wish I could’ve stayed to watch the Gorillaz, who I heard were incredible. Some said they were the highlight of the festival. Florence put on an incredibly high energy set that left us wanting more. Jonsi started slow but found his groove mid way and produced an incredible sonic experience. Orbital was excellent until the covers of Guns and Roses and etc. Thom Yorke plus friends was amazing - great backing band with much livelier and rhythm interpretions of the Eraser album. I had to leave midway to get back to town for work, but I wish I could’ve heard some of the non-Eraser material, including some Radiohead songs.

All in all, another wonderful weekend. I’d hype Coachella, but now that it’ll probably sell out, the festival doesn’t need my promotion.

There is no denying that there is a large amount of arbitrariness in what is taught in history and civics classes. Every historian will have their own interpretation. But at the least, a historian would have some credentials to pick and choose, whereas these school board members are layman with a clear ideological bias. The problem is that while local jurisdictions should have control over education content, textbooks are expensive and need to be standardized. The TX problem could cause textbooks be rewritten even for areas that have no desire to adopt the right-wing curriculum these board members decided on.

A more conscious effort should be made to 1) defer to experts on decisions of curriculum and 2) utilize a wide spectrum of ideology in designing texts. In leui of these obvious fixes, however, there does seem to be a more useful fix. Students should be explicitly taught that history is not objective, but interpretation and selection based on evidence. They should be provided with examples of where an established history was written, but was wrong. And these examples should be directly related to the history the students were learning in front of them. With a philosophy of critical thinking, it wouldn’t matter what was included in the textbooks, as long as students knew the process of writing history, the power of controlling inclusion of certain histories, and the intent of ideologues.

Since this whole discussion stems for a crass desire to control the ideological narrative, this solution isn’t likely! but it would be a good idea.

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what’s best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who’s fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She’s playing with her jewelry
She’s putting up her hair
She’s touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnng jacket……

I want a girl who gets up early
I want a girl who stays up late
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who used a machette to cut through red tape
With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

She is fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She’s touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnng…. lonnng jacket

I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
I want a girl with good dividends
And at the city bank we will meet accidentally
We’ll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cupholder arm rest
She wants a car that will get her there
She’s changing her name from Kitty to Karen
She’s trading her MG for a white Chrysler La Baron

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnggggggggg jacket

What is the follow-up of my optimistic outlook on 2009? Much as predicted. I think it says everything that needs to be said that Obama had to make a deal with the pharmaceutical industry that they would only be asked to give up 80 billion over ten years (so, no dice on drug reimportation). This smacks of back door dealing and wheeling, and in fact, it is exactly that. But without a deal, the drug industry would employ is massive strength in public relations and manipulation and would successfully sink any chance of passing a bill. So Obama made the deal to expand coverage, which is undoubtedly the morally justifiable action. Powerful interests are entrenched, and reform will not happen overnight. Storming the castle head on — attempting to destroy pharma’s incredible profit margin — would result in devastating defeat. And this is just one example of the many power centers in American society.

So trudge on, we will, while upsetting many in the process. The true merits of this approach will only be judged in retrospect, many years down the road.

In 2000, McCain seemed like a reasonable guy, and someone that socially liberal folks could get behind. Apparently, McCain decided that particular incarnation of him had no chance at winning in 2008, so we get the Karl Rove-GW Bush Republican mold running, and really, there isn’t much appealing about this incarnation. He doesn’t have any strong policies, he doesn’t have a positive vision, and he picked a really terrible vice president. So clearly McCain is the greater of two evils.

But looking at the Democratic opposition, it is clear we do not have a Kerry or a Gore. Instead we have a real progressive who is in a climate where comprehensive health care can be enacted, corporate control/lobbyist influence diminished, and climate change policy enacted. So there isn’t a lesser of two evils mentality here. Obama genuinely seems like he could be a very good president to tackle some of these major issues.

There is concern amongst the net roots that the $700 billion bail out will handcuff Obama’s ambitious plans, but Robert Reich disagrees. Essentially, he claims that our deficit as a percentage of GDP is low (3%), and that the best cure for a recession is spending programs to rebuild infrastructure and get the country back on track, as WWII did for the depression era. Given an era when the investment class is calling for more government intervention in the financial markets, and not less, and when middle class America is worried about their retirements in 401K, among other issues, it seems like a good time to enact Medicare-for-all. Despite the heated jeers of “socialist” by McCain supporters, these folks seem to be a small reactionary group. Or at least I hope so. Because these policies are not socialism.

It is clear we need government intervention into the health care market, which is spiraling to a demise. And it is clear that government has a big role in science research in alternative energies, and implementation of clear energies in the private sector. Companies are very hesitant to spend huge sums of capital for solar panels, for example, when the return on investment comes in 20 years. Government tax breaks and credits are the key to making these technologies fit into a company’s timeline.

On another note, did things really have to be so lopsided in this year’s presidential election? McCain was the only Republican candidate that stood a chance of winning, but he blew it. He had to turn hard right to win his party’s nomination. But what if he had gone straight to the center after the primaries, like Obama did. What if he had picked a social moderate as a running mate - perhaps a pro-choice woman. The social conservative base would be pissed, but would folks like myself have to think twice about the ticket? Perhaps. It clear that McCain is getting blown out, and even without the economic crisis, Palin is wearing thin (and guilty of abuse of power in Alaska), and his overall electoral prospects looked weak. Rather than embrace his “mavericky” self, he embraced the “Agents of Intolerance” whom he previously condemned. And as a result he casts a light on a dying ideology.

It is too early to take an Obama win for granted. The race will probably tighten up. But I look forward to 2009, with the first act of a new President Obama to draw up a 16 month timeline to withdraw our forces from Iraq.

I saw Beck last night, performing with his father and string orchestra conductor, David Campbell at the Hollywood Bowl. The show was well designed. He started off with Loser, the song that propelled his career, to get it out of the way, and raced through 3 minute arrangements of Odelay, Hell Yeah, Timebomb, and other classics. The orchestra came out for 4 to 5 songs, to wonderful effect. I was disappointed before by the last strings/band collaboration at the bowl, when I saw Belle & Sebastian and the Philharmonic in 2006. In that case, the music was just too diffuse and the melody and vocals were washed away in over-orchestration. But not so, with Beck, probably because David Campbell did much of the original orchestration for the Beck albums anyway. And finally, I forgot about the ability to put on great light shows at the Bowl, and the Beck producers took full advantage of using light to amplify the effects of the music.

Billy Mitchell, as an awkward teenager, set the high score in Donkey Kong in 1982 that stayed intact for 20 years. As a dark horse competitor appears on the scene, from Seattle, in 2005, this documentary documents Billy’s descent to ridiculousness to defend his title. It is clear that this record is what provides Billy the confidence to run his own hot sauce business, to dress in a unique style, and is the basic pillar of his self worth. To watch Steve Wiebe, the challenger - a school teacher with a passion - nip at his heels with grace and cool, is a display of total unbalanced competition between two competitors who barely compete in the same moral sphere. And did I mention that this is a documentary?

To understand the complete context of Mitchell’s actions, one must watch the bonus materials, as Steve, Mitchell’s best friend, describes the paranoia surrounding the Twin Galaxy’s officiating society. And did I mention that this is a documentary?