Although a bit ahead of schedule, I’ve managed to reach a semi-goal in the book project, and will now take a moment to toot my horn.
Today I hit the 25,000 word mark, which as far as I can tell is going to be the half-way point in this endeavor. To celebrate this monumental achievement, I’ve decided to post an entry from the book. I’m encouraging you (yes, you, that one person that reads this blog) to read and provide feedback. Like screenplay writing, this is the first draft, and it will go through multiple rewrites, so it’s not too early to start.
I have also decided on a temporary title so I can stop referring to it as “untitled 2011 book project.” Here it is:
Flick Your Bic!
The Definitive History & Guide of the Power Ballad
Cool? Sucks? Let me know, I’m open to changing it. With that, here’s an entry, grammatical errors be damned.
High Enough by Damn Yankees
From the album Damn Yankees (1990)
I generally find anything involving Ted Nugent to be repellent, not because of a politics or weapon obsession. It’s just the simple fact the dude won’t shut up. When he does talk, about whatever topic he’s obsessed with at the moment, he does it with the fervor of a crazed television pitchman on QVC hawking exercise equipment or salad shooters.
Now, that doesn’t detract from his guitar playing prowess. Ted’s skills span decades, and he’ll tell you so himself. He’ll mix in how he never drank while everyone around him was going wacky on booze and drugs, and how he’s a master puss hound and such. I can admire that, too many rockers went down the drain too early.
Maybe they shoulda listened to Ted on that one, but couldn’t get past how fucking annoying he is. Maybe they drank to spite him. Being in a band with Ted would probably drive me to drug and drink myself into oblivion.
Whoever had the idea of getting big-mouth Ted together with Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Tommy Shaw of Styx, well that was a stroke of rock genius. Supposedly it was Ted himself, which makes me laugh a bit because Tommy Shaw looks like the effete guy Ted is always railing on about that’s destroying America, but whatever. They got together and made one good and one mediocre album, and one good one is enough in my book to call it worthwhile.
With High Enough you get something rarely heard in the hair/glam metal canon – dual vocal harmonies. Shaw and Blades harmonizing is pretty awesome, and the trading back and forth of vocals is seamless.
But back to Ted. Funny thing is, his guitar playing is pretty tasteful and restrained so that when the chorus hits, you really feel it. However, the hidden trick of the High Enough chorus is the rhythm section.
You’ll notice that the verse and chorus feel like they’re at different tempos, only they’re not. Drummer Michael Cartellone subtly switches from on top of the beat for the verse to behind it for the chorus. It’s the same tempo, just adjusted to make the chorus just a bit more dramatic.
The intertwining vocals, the expert drumming, it’s these sort of embellishments from seasoned and talented players that pushes High Enough out of the middle of the pack into the one-of-the-best-of-the-genre category. And considering the annoying douchebag that is Ted Nugent is involved, that’s even more impressive.
Teachers, what are they good for?
“Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense.”
Wanna take a shot at who said that? Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute. Did you guess Barack Obama? Wrong. Franklin Roosevelt? Nope. John Kennedy? Nice try.
No, the above quote is from Mr. Sam Seaborn, otherwise known as Rob Lowe on The West Wing.
The amount of times I have to reference this show when trying to come up with an example of how I wished politicians acted and spoke increases every year, and becomes more frustrating each time. But this one hits a little closer to home because my wife is a teacher.
In the recent attacks on public workers in states across the country, teachers seem to bearing the brunt of the abuse. And, thanks to the lazy and/or corporate media (I vacillate back and forth which it is each day), any real representation of what teachers face in 21st century America is absent from the discussion. It doesn’t matter that the governor of Wisconsin sought fit to give tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, both of which donated heavily to his campaign, while at the same time calling for the elimination of collective bargaining with the intent on gutting wages and benefits of public sector workers.
Now, some of those attacking teachers would have you believe that teaching is a cake walk. See, teachers get their summers off, and barely work eight hours a day, and are basically just high paid baby sitters, which is funny, because the turnover rate for teachers is this: 50% quit within the first five years.
Let that sink in: 50% in the first five years. Because it’s easy? Because it’s well paid? Hell, the military doesn’t even hit 15% of wash-outs. So what is this really about, this right wing assault on teachers and public sector workers?
Well, obviously, unions. The right wing hates unions. The idea that parasitic “workers” have any rights disgusts them to no end, which is why Ayn Rand is a hero to so many of them, regardless of the fact that her economic policies are proven failures.
The second, less obvious reason, is that the right despises the very concept of “public.” In their demented world, everything is privatized and unregulated, left to the “market” to magically manage. Police departments? Private. Say hello to your friendly, neighborhood Blackwater, excuse me, XE Services LLC, security force. Never mind the fact that they are mass murders, this is about business. And if there is one truism in conservative America, BP and Transocean ignore safety regulations and blow up their workers without a single criminal charge, but try the same thing as an individual citizen. Do not pass Go, report directly to Jail, owned and operated by Wackenhut for a nice profit.
You might have guessed that I don’t support unregulated capitalism, total privatization and various other wet dreams of the right, and you’d be… right. To which I’ll end with two thoughts, one short, one long.
There isn’t a single Fortune 500 CEO or Blackwater mercenary that is doing a job that is 1/100th as important of that of teacher. No one will look back and fondly remember your name the way that I look back on my high school English and Newspaper teacher Mr. May who taught me to explore my interest in writing, even when it got me in trouble with my fellow students for speaking my mind in the high school paper, and ultimately helped me decided to pursue journalism in college.
Like Sam said above, teachers should make six-figures, and schools should be palaces. And those who don’t believe that betray their true feelings about the importance of education, knowledge, free thought, reason and fact.
Second, for any right wing/conservative/tea bagger trolls who may stumble upon this, I leave you with this.
In other words, you are, always have been, and always will be, on the wrong side of history. Enjoy.
A Tale of Two Movies
This weekend I was able to catch films I’ve been wanting to see for awhile, but with two different sets of circumstances.
On Saturday, I hit the local theater to see Duncan Jones follow-up to the excellent Moon, his new sci-fi thriller Source Code.
Now, my excitement for Source Code came not only from the interesting sci-fi concept (quasi-time travel to thwart a terrorist attack), but also because I read the original spec script over a year ago thanks to the ScriptShadow blog. I was really interested to see how the finished movie compared to the draft the script that made it onto the 2007 Black List.
As with any movie that goes through the studio system, changes are made for better and worse. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are differences. Relationships are adjusted, plots points are shifted and changed, even the genders of characters are different. But when I had a chance to go back and reread parts of the script, while I found things to be different, I didn’t think they were bad, just alternate choices, which I guess for this movie is appropriate.
On the flip side, I also (finally) saw The Shawshank Redemption. Now, that’s not to say I was completely unfamiliar with the movie, or hadn’t seen parts of it. I had just never sat down and watched the whole thing straight through in one viewing. When it comes to my “blind spots” in movie viewing, I have a quite a few I’m not proud of.
Some are of the blockbuster, everyone-has-seen-it-what’s-wrong-with-you-variety. Stuff like There’s Something About Mary, Schnidler’s List and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Some are on my I-have-zero-interest list, like Titanic, the Twilight films and the Harry Potter films.
And some are missing from the you-need-to-see-these-to-be-serious-about-films. Classics like Seven Samurai, Metropolis, Rashomon, The Bicycle Thief and Wild Strawberries, to name just a few.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m a total ignoramus. I’ve seen The 400 Blows, Casablanca, Rear Window, The Third Man, Chinatown and other “important” films as determined by folks at places like IMDb. It just means I need to quit my job and watch five films a day to caught up. Anyone want to pay me to do that? No, didn’t think so. So, I’ll trudge my way through a few movies a week when I can, and hopefully by the time I’m 80 or 90 I’ll be somewhat film literate.
On Saturday, I hit the local theater to see Duncan Jones follow-up to the excellent Moon, his new sci-fi thriller Source Code.
Now, my excitement for Source Code came not only from the interesting sci-fi concept (quasi-time travel to thwart a terrorist attack), but also because I read the original spec script over a year ago thanks to the ScriptShadow blog. I was really interested to see how the finished movie compared to the draft the script that made it onto the 2007 Black List.
As with any movie that goes through the studio system, changes are made for better and worse. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are differences. Relationships are adjusted, plots points are shifted and changed, even the genders of characters are different. But when I had a chance to go back and reread parts of the script, while I found things to be different, I didn’t think they were bad, just alternate choices, which I guess for this movie is appropriate.
On the flip side, I also (finally) saw The Shawshank Redemption. Now, that’s not to say I was completely unfamiliar with the movie, or hadn’t seen parts of it. I had just never sat down and watched the whole thing straight through in one viewing. When it comes to my “blind spots” in movie viewing, I have a quite a few I’m not proud of.
Some are of the blockbuster, everyone-has-seen-it-what’s-wrong-with-you-variety. Stuff like There’s Something About Mary, Schnidler’s List and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Some are on my I-have-zero-interest list, like Titanic, the Twilight films and the Harry Potter films.
And some are missing from the you-need-to-see-these-to-be-serious-about-films. Classics like Seven Samurai, Metropolis, Rashomon, The Bicycle Thief and Wild Strawberries, to name just a few.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m a total ignoramus. I’ve seen The 400 Blows, Casablanca, Rear Window, The Third Man, Chinatown and other “important” films as determined by folks at places like IMDb. It just means I need to quit my job and watch five films a day to caught up. Anyone want to pay me to do that? No, didn’t think so. So, I’ll trudge my way through a few movies a week when I can, and hopefully by the time I’m 80 or 90 I’ll be somewhat film literate.
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