Obvious

~ susie

Ed
I mean, now that there’s a criminal grand jury, I’d say things aren’t looking great for Christie. Although it won’t happen yet, the only way he may avoid a trial is to resign:

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell say Governor Chris Chrisite is a “non-factor” in 2016 presidential race. Jeb Bush is new front runner he says.

“Not only can Chris Christie not win, I think he may have trouble finishing out his term,” Rendell said Tuesday at the Rebovich Institute at Rider University. He added later: “There’s absolutely no chance that he didn’t know this was going on if he didn’t order it or OK it. So I think he’s not a factor.”

“I mean, I look at it from the perspective as a very activist governor, which I was and he is,” he said. “There is no way that eight people in my administration would be part of something and I wouldn’t know about. There is no way they would dare do something like this without getting clearance from me.”

“And besides that, the trashing of David Wildstein and Bridget Kelly indicate that they are setting up a ‘he said, she said’ battle,” Rendell said. “They’ve trashed her. They’ve trashed women with this idea that she was emotionally unstable because she broke up with a man. Heaven forbid that breaking up with a man would make you do something mentally unstable like closing down four lanes of a bridge.”

Genius

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

http://youtu.be/bbSKYCpOdVM

I just read a bunch of comments on Nirvana on another site, and it’s a real bitchfest of a bunch of old white men complaining. Apparently Yes, Grand Funk Railroad and Moody Blues are better.

I thought Kurt Cobain was a fucking genius. I still remember the first time I heard him. It was New Year’s Day 1991, the local alternative station was playing the year’s best 100 albums countdown when my clock radio went off and I heard this ungodly scream from the speaker. I sat right up in bed and said, “Who the fuck is that?” In a good way.

Like the Beatles.

I sat transfixed for the rest of the album, and the next day went out to buy “Nevermind” — ostensibly for my kid.

I thought he was a genius. Still do.

Fanboys would rather argue that someone else did it earlier or better, but Kurt got the job done. Simple as that. Those arguments are as silly as saying that the Beatles shouldn’t get credit for their sound, it was all in their influences, their sound was a pastiche.

But that’s what artists do. They make stew.

One of the reason I hate the whole “High Fidelity”-like music wars (that movie made me cringe, I know so many fanboys like that Jack Black character) is that so many male fans turn music into a fucking testosterone-spewing Olympic competition. It’s so stupid. It’s like saying one ocean wave is better than another.

It’s art, it’s communication. Does this work communicate something, and does it do it in a completely different way than anyone else has? Well, then.

And the fanboys so often confuse technical competence for brilliance. I’ve played in bands, we always broke it down into “players” vs. musicians. Players could perform technically perfect music — but musicians have the soul. Kurt Cobain didn’t have to be technically proficient, he was a musician.

Finally, music is inextricably tied to memory. A song may be meaningful to you because of the life events to which it was the soundtrack. It’s not the same as the musician being a genius, he or she is only reflecting back your life.

All geniuses are artists, but not all real artists are geniuses. Michael Jackson was an artist; I’m not sure if he was a genius. Prince is a genius. So is Neil Young. Joni Mitchell is an artist. Hank Williams, five chords and a guitar: Genius. Chrissie Hynde? Artist, pure artist.

And what difference does it make? It’s all there for us to love.