Screw it. Here goes.

I have a friend who is rather active in the blogosphere. "I Shame the Matriarchy"(formerly "Paleofeminist")swings a heavy bat at the plate; it is referenced in Wikipedia as a mover/shaker-type blog. I was impressed(though who knows? Lots of blogs may be referenced nowadays...I'm a little behind the nanocurve)and even moved enough to attempt to post comments on her subjects. I discovered one needed a blog of their own to post.(or maybe not...there's lots of ways around everything but I'm a thirty-year-old dinosaur) So, I hemmed and hawed over justifying having a blog by making entries. I must admit I felt dwarfed by the breadth, acumen and importance of posts and posters on Antiprincess' blog(Hi!)so I hemmed and hawed some more. Nothing was done.

Tonight I am mad enough to be creative. I won't be specific as to events but suffice it to say if I came across a special interest group handing out leaflets bearing the words "Ban Marriage Now!" I might at least read it. Humans are the universe's most emotionally irresponsible beings. Most people just aren't ready.

In addition, I have been mad about the state of music for years. Theory geeks are more than welcome here; your thoughts and thinking are sorely underused in composition today(everything's a composition)and it shows in many places. General audience music is like the slowest ride at the carnival you've been riding for years and your body can tell down to how many fractions of a second when that next turn is, what concession stand you'll see coming out of that turn, how many degrees you've turned, what the ride operator looks like, etc. Many rock bands are now exploring semi-virtuosic two-guitar attack but have still not grasped the essence of a song. Film music all sounds like three scores now(one of them was "Braveheart")and has tarnished a few otherwise good or even great movies.(Long aside here..."The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, right. I adore the books and feel, aside from a few changes(Tom Bombadil, Faramir does NOT take Frodo and Sam back to Osgiliath, The Scourging...)I was awed by the movies, all. The score sucked. Flat. Out. Sucked. Perhaps the lamest moment was the introduction of Shadowfax in "The Two Towers". Flabby and ignoble. In comparison to Star Wars ad infinitum it pales because of a lack of truly memorable music. Seeing as how both Henry Mancini and Bernard Herrmann are gone, John Williams should have done the score. This Howard Shore guy is a schmutz.)

Jazz all sounds so safe now. The heady days of exploration that birthed Bird, Trane, Miles, Herbie, Chick, and countless other luminaries seem gone. Most new jazz seems a volcanic exposition of chops or some clinical, overproduced lite-sexy-funk thing. Bring back Rudy Van Gelder and his two Neumann microphones! Rap might improve if real musicians backed artists. I can't take the synthetic digital everything. They should hook up with gospel musicians.

In 662 or so years that bullshit John Cage compostion that lasts 663 or so years will come to a conclusion. The celebration of such vanities simply imply all the good music has already been written. It seems a death knell for classical music as "High Art." Sure, it's still celebrated but the genre's inflated sense of exclusivity draws a socio-economic caste-line much like golf, tennis or skiing do.

I guess I'll stop now. Maybe someone, someday, will read this and say "what a jerk." Please say so!