The Republican Party may have finally found something they can do correctly: destroy themselves. The developments at Saturday’s Utah state Republican Party convention were more exciting than the Jazz-Lakers game- and it was a good game. With three-term U.S. Senator Bob Bennett being voted off the ticket by the growing number of delegates claiming affiliation with the so-called Tea Party, it’s obvious that America’s right-wing is well on the way to the extinction it has sought so vigorously and deserves so completely.
Given their fiscal irresponsibility, total mishandling of 9/11, Iraq, the subprime meltdown, China, Katrina (name your favorite disaster here), and misguided, angry vengeance at anything non-white and non-Christian, the Republicans are saving the rest of the country (the MAJORITY) a lot of trouble by spanking themselves and putting each other out of work.
“I really take my hat off to Robert Sarver and the Suns for taking a stand. You know, living in Arizona for a long time, the Hispanic community, they’re like the fabric of the cloth… (t)hese lightweight politicians in Arizona have no idea what they are doing.”
- Charles Barkley (NBA analyst, former NBA player and Arizona resident)
I’ll say right off the bat that I like Charles Barkley. I liked him as a player and, while he is polarizing and controversial both on and off TV, he’s entertaining. But he’s a good analyst- not only of basketball but of human behavior. And he’s clearly nailed the situation in Arizona. The Phoenix Suns’ management’s move to wear “Los Suns” jerseys to protest the law is brilliant PR and could be exactly the thing that sways public opinion in that state toward repealing what is obviously a discriminatory law.
It’ll be interesting to see how other teams respond, especially in my home state of Utah which is more Arizona than Arizona and where the misguided Republicans here are already considering a similar law. It’s ironic and tragic how right-wingers are rampaging over civil rights, freedom, and common sense claiming to know what’s best for America. Their problem is they simply don’t know America.
You can tell by the dirt on the cover that I’ve played this one a lot since it arrived in 1981. I’d just moved to Denver as a big-shot reporter, disco was dead, and computers, synths and other machines were taking over music. I’d fallen in love with the Fender Rhodes piano almost ten years earlier and owned my second one at that point: the 76-key Stage model with built-in amp and speakers. But when I heard this album, I was totally gassed.
Al Jarreau’s keyboardist and collaborator Tom Canning had received the “Dyno-my-Rhodes” treatment which Joe Zawinul of Weather Report, Russell Ferrante of the Yellow Jackets and a few other West Coast boardmen had gotten a little earlier. It gave the instrument a highly-compressed, hard, trebly sound compared to the soft, watery and bassy sound that made it famous (Ray Manzarek of the Doors’ “Rider on the Storm” comes to mind). Dyno-my-Rhodes defines the sound of “Breakin’ Away” and Canning’s mastery of it with Jarreau’s renditions and tasteful song selection, made it a runaway hit reaching Number One on both the jazz and R&B charts.
Detractors sneer at the heavily-electrified Rhodes sound for “Breakin’ Away” as just more 1980s artifice. But the way it’s incorporated into both the new songs and the covers of old ones- “Blue Rondo a la Turk” for which Jarreau won a Grammy and “Teach Me Tonight” which is featured on this blog below- work spectacularly.
Beyond the sound, the songs remind me of the spectacularly good and bad times I experienced in Denver- getting out of reporting, moving into management, the beginning of the end of my first marriage, my disillusion with TV and exploration into computerization, and a crazy 30-year ride which landed me where I am now.
“Breakin’ Away” is the second album I’ve recorded digitally with Adobe Audition so I can improve the sound quality and throw the old, chewed up plastic one out. It’s a terribly difficult process: akin to killing your friends at gunpoint or telling your mother you no longer have use for her. I chose “Teach Me Tonight” because of Billy Byers’ incredible string arrangement, that it’s a paean to the sad demise of romance in contemporary music, and because it made me smile during a very dark time and made me believe that romance is not just a reaction between people but a feeling that art, unlike most people, can inspire forever.
For people who live in the Salt Lake City area, the only radio station worth listening to for music is KRCL. It’s a community-owned and operated station that lives on donations and I’ve given generously to them. The music ranges from just-arrived-in-the-mail to soul to trip-hop to classic blues and jazz. But it’s all good. They recently changed their format and business structure to eliminate volunteer air personalities during the daytime weekday hours replacing them with full-timers.
There was a chorus of protest from many listeners and a few of the outgoing volunteers not to mention trepediation among the thousands of long-time listeners. I’ll admit some of the volunteer DJs were good but most were pretty amateurish, admitting regularly on-air that they had not prepared their shows and sounding like they just got to the studio after taking their geometry mid-term. The new format has eliminated most of the nervous chit-chat and useless bantering, added more diverse music and made the station even more listenable.
I miss their mid-day public affairs talk show “Radioactive” which I was on last year talking about solar power. But it’s been moved to the evening which makes more sense. I give the changes a big endorsement. I’ve always been a believer in public radio, not necessarily government subsidized but serving the interests of the public- in this case, people who love music, particularly new music- and are, albeit inadvertantly, saving radio from its own greed and mismanagement. Rock on, KRCL. I’m listening- all the time.
When I started this blog in 2005, I was like everyone else who was doing it: I thought I could make money at it. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that unless you do it 24 hours a day and dedicate far more of your life to it than is really healthy that it becomes like everything else that’s overdone: boring. I dedicated 30 years of my life to making the world better by being a “journalist”: a word which now and for decades has meant nothing to anybody outside of “journalism.” Now, I’m a businessman and love what I do. And I still think I’m making the world better, especially after seeing how corporate media is actually making things worse.
So this blog has taken on new meaning for me over the years. But one old rule that still applies: bad news sells. Negativity sells. Being a nice guy, not skewering the privileged and arrogant, pretending everything’s OK and will stay that way as long as we wake up smiling and do as we’re told are fairy tales. And my blog stats bear that out. After establishing my identity and purpose, Schreiner’s Media Landscape now gets about 2,000 hits a day as the chart indicates (Sunday’s still in progress). Yes, it’s loaded with a lot of ranting and ugly facts about how stupid politicians and corporate leaders are all the nasty things we continue to do to our home, Earth. But as I and every other media goon have learned from experience, that’s what people want. It’s what they need- not all the time- but probably once a day. Any more than that, and you’re a candidate for therapy.
If you’re one of those who think this blog and most of the millions of others out there are too negative, too critical, depressing, discouraging and otherwise not worth your time: sorry. It’s an awful job but someone’s got to do it. Be thankful that I don’t write much about politics (except Bush) and the presidential campaign anymore, sports (except the Jazz), celebrities (except Lindsay Lohan) and focus on nice things like Nature, video, Tibet (it is really a nice place, the Chinese just screwed it up), renewable energy and the corporate media (hey- everyone LOVES TV!).
Now that the economy has become more important to Americans than the Iraq War, it’s quite clear, apparently even to our sorry chief of state, that there isn’t anything his administration hasn’t f****d up beyond all recognition. Of course, true to form, Bush takes on the growing crises in virtually every facet of American domestic and international life by doing what? Pursuing Middle East peace.
If you look down the list of issues Americans are concerned about, there is not a single one that Bush has handled well, to any kind of resolution, or without confronting conventional wisdom or real world conditions with his trademark fantasy assessments. Never has an elected official messed up so often, been hopelessly clueless (cluelessly hopeless?) about what’s going on around him, and had an uncanny knack for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. The only question now is: when we look back at the Bush Regime, will we laugh, cry or vomit?
One of the attractions of Utah is the abundance of things you can do all year ’round both indoors and outdoors. This past weekend was particularly Utahish because of the unseasonably warm, sunny conditions (a little too warm for us increasingly nervous skiers). It started Friday night at the Deseret Foundation’s bi-annual quilt auction/fundraiser at Little America. My wife, an avid quilter, refurbished or “mothered” an old, 1930s quilt (left) back from the dead and it sold for more than the asking price. The whole evening was a colossal success with some quilts going for around $8,000. Saturday morning, it was the annual buffalo auction on Antelope Island (right). The turnout gets bigger every year. You hate to see these magnificent wild creatures sold like cattle until you have a buffalo burger at the No Name Saloon in Park City. The good news is the herd is healthy and culling is essential because there are no predators on Antelope Island. Saturday afternoon, we went to the Utes’ wild wrangling of Wyoming 50-0 then took in the Jazz at Energy Solutions Arena and watched them maul the Memphis Grizzlies. It was terrific to see so many people downtown late Saturday night. Sunday, we took off to feed our geek muse: programming the new nano iPod I bought my wife for her birthday. We found a way to share files through our wireless network which might be a violation of several laws but the Apple police will never find us here in the hills. When the weekend was over, I felt a new appreciation for Salt Lake and Utah. Despite our environmental and growth controversies, it’s the unique combination of our pioneer past, our technological future, our fantastic weather and the talent and dedication of its people that make Utah one of the best places in the world to live: a place worth saving.
One of the attractions of Utah is the abundance of things you can do all year ’round both indoors and outdoors. This past weekend was particularly Utahish because of the unseasonably warm, sunny conditions (a little too warm for us increasingly nervous skiers). It started Friday night at the Deseret Foundation’s bi-annual quilt auction/fundraiser at Little America. My wife, an avid quilter, refurbished or “mothered” an old, 1930s quilt (left) back from the dead and it sold for more than the asking price. The whole evening was a colossal success with some quilts going for around $8,000. Saturday morning, it was the annual buffalo
auction on Antelope Island (right). The turnout gets bigger every year. You hate to see these magnificent wild creatures sold like cattle until you have a buffalo burger at the No Name Saloon in Park City. The good news is the herd is healthy and culling is essential because there are no predators on Antelope Island. Saturday afternoon, we went to the Utes’ wild wrangling of Wyoming 50-0 then took in the Jazz at Energy Solutions Arena and watched them maul the Memphis Grizzlies. It was terrific to see so many people 
downtown late Saturday night. Sunday, we took off to feed our geek muse: programming the new nano iPod I bought my wife for her birthday. We found a way to share files through our wireless network which might be a violation of several laws but the Apple police will never find us here in the hills. When the weekend was over, I felt a new appreciation for Salt Lake and Utah. Despite our environmental and growth controversies, it’s the unique combination of our pioneer past, our technological future, our fantastic weather and the talent and dedication of its people that make Utah one of the best places in the world to live: a place worth saving.
