A Parable

Three men went out to a restaurant for dinner. One is the owner of a company, another a middle manager at that company and the third a lower tier worker for the company. The company owner ordered lobster tail with  baby vegetables  The middle manager ordered a steak with a baked potato. The lower tier worker ordered a hamburger, fries, and a milk shake. All three enjoy their meals and after finishing they are all quite happy.

The waiter brings the check, however it is not itemized, it is merely a single number on a piece of paper. The three men now discuss how to split the bill.

The lower tier worker says "I can't afford to pay one-third of the bill, but I'll give you what I can and one day when I have more I'll take both of you out to dinner."

The middle manager says "I appreciate that and I remember the days when I couldn't afford to pay as much, so though it will be a bit of a strain for me, I'll split the rest of the bill with our company's owner."

The company owner says "I don't understand why I should pay for any of this meal. I give both of you jobs, you should be paying for my meal as a thank you. Besides, you both ate more food than I did."

Unable to come to an agreement on how to split the tab, the three men turn to the restaurant staff and ask them who should pay how much. The chef, the matre'd, and the waiter go back into the kitchen to discuss the matter. A few minutes later there emerges from the kitchen a bevy of shouts and the discordant sounds of the clanging of pots and pans. Finally the noises ceased and the chef, matre'd and waiter returned to the table.

The chef announced they had come to a decision. "Mr. Worker, we know you don't have much money so trying to get anything from you would be futile on our part. Pay ten percent of the bill and we'll be okay with that."

Turning to the other two, the chef continued. "Mr. Middle Manager, we know you work hard and are the backbone of your company's success and we're sure that you remember the days when like Mr. Worker you didn't have much money, so we think you should pay ninety percent of the bill."

"And Mr. Company Owner, we believe that if we ask you to leave only the tip then you will take what money you would have spent on this meal and invest it in a company that will employ more people and those people will in turn come to our restaurant, thus making more money for us in the long run."

Red in the face from anger, the middle manager pulled out his credit card to pay his share. While the middle manager sputters, the company owner beams, pulled out a wad of bills and plunks down a tip that was way more than the entire bill.

"I don't get it", said the middle manager, "why did you leave such a big tip? That's more than the entire bill!"

The company owner smiled. "Yes, it's more than this bill, but less than the bill I would rack up if I had to pay for every meal I eat here. And I eat here almost every day. If once every two years I have to tip these guys like this, I'm still way ahead."

"That's ridiculous!", said the middle manager. "Those three guys split the bill the way they did only because they knew you'd tip them like that. I'll get them fired!"

The company owner laughed. "No you won't. They are so good at what they do, they can't ever be replaced. Replacing them would only bring chaos and uncertainty and ruin this perfectly wonderful restaurant, this restaurant that makes it possible for everyone to eat well and enjoy themselves. Besides, anyone who came in to replace them would be inexperienced and unsure of themselves and you wouldn't want that in a restaurant like this? Now go on home and have a good night's sleep."

The middle manager thought of the great meal he had just had and how he'd like to bring his wife and kids to the restaurant and how what the company owner had said was probably true. Besides he wanted to get home and see who made it into the next round of his favorite reality TV show.  So he signed his credit card slip and walked off into the night.

But.

That night as he twisted in fits of sleep, the middle manager dreamed of blowing up the restaurant, of watching the company owner roast on a spit over coals lit by dollar bills. And a hole grew in his soul, a hole that could not be filled with anything but resentment.

Why my Dodger fan friends should root for the Giants in the 2012 World Series

Having spent my formative years in the Los Angeles basin I have a number of old friends who are fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers. If ever there were proof that peaceful co-existence between differing points of view is attainable I would submit those friendships with me as exhibit one.  But now I’d like to take that one step further and ask them to root for the Giants in this year’s World Series.

Here’s why.

This year’s Giants are a team of misfits, outcasts, might-have-beens, and over achievers with a few genuine stars thrown in to balance everything out. They have been thrown down to the mat and stomped on more than a few times this year; dismissed, dismayed, and told to disappear and yet here they are, champions of the National League. They came back not once but twice from the brink of elimination and have now won six straight games when facing the end of the season. They have banded together around a rallying speech given by a guy who only joined the team mid-season and that could have been written by Shakespeare. They are in fact the band of brothers and more so they are the dysfunctional family that we all are spawned from, to whit:

The Golden Children: Buster Posey and Matt Cain

The Uncles Who Took a While to “Find Themselves”: Marco Scutaro and Ryan Vogelsong

The Quiet Intense Older Brother: Hunter Pence

The Goofy Foot Younger Brother: Tim Lincecum

The Fun loving Cousins: Pablo Sandoval and Sergio Romo (filling in for Brian Wilson in more than one way)

The Uncle Who Learned His Lesson the Hard Way: Barry Zito

The Happy to be Out of the Abusive Household Adopted Brother: Angel Pagan

The Caboose Twins: Brendon Crawford and Brandon Belt

The Disappointing Son: Melky Cabrera

And they are led by Bruce Bochy, the father who tried to make it but fell just short so he’s turned his eye towards teaching his sons to achieve.

In other words this Giant’s team is a microcosm of the American family. And how they have achieved is a lesson for America. They have had every break go against them this season. Before the season even began pitcher Guillermo Mota was suspended 100 games for using performance enhancing drugs. They lost their ace closer Brian Wilson in the second game of the season. Early in the season they could pitch but not hit, then hit but not pitch. Tim Lincecum would look like the two time Cy Young Award winner he is one day, then pitch like he just didn't care the next. Pablo Sandoval had the hamate bone in his wrist broken and then surgically removed which is odd enough but it’s the second time in two years that has happened (fortunately humans only have one in each wrist so he can’t have another removed next year). Yet they were still in the pennant race, so they swung a couple of deals at the trading deadline; one bringing in a big bat (Hunter Pence)  at the expense of a fan favorite (Nate Schierholtz we hardly knew ye) and the other a slightly odd move to acquire a second baseman fan’s didn't know we needed (Marco Scutaro).  In response, Major League Baseball allowed the Boston Red Sox to trade not one, not two, but three starting star players to the Dodgers after the trade deadline (Note to Bud Selig: Bowie Kuhn would NEVER have allowed that).

And then there was the Melkman.

Melky Cabrera was a first year Giant having come over from the Kansas City Royals in the off season. While all other members of the team were having their ups and downs, Melky was swatting out hit after hit, leading the league in average and number of hits. His achievements inspired a group of fans to start showing up in old fashioned milk man uniforms, all white with orange bow ties. The Melk Man was born. It reached a fever pitch when he won the MVP award at the All Star Game and league MVP talk ramped up. It all came to an end when it was revealed that he was taking performance enhancing drugs and then clumsily tried to cover it up with a bogus internet drug store scheme. He was suspended for the rest of the season.

By all that is reasonable the Giants should rolled over and allowed the Dodgers to overtake them. Instead they came together as families do in a time of crisis. They pitched like there was no tomorrow and seemed to get a key hit whenever it was truly needed. The bullpen by committee that had not been working all season suddenly started to click. They not only held off the Dodgers but accelerated and won the division going away.  The playoffs were a miniature version of the season. Cincinnati got to within one game of winning the series only to have the Giants come back and win three in a row to take it. The same thing happened to St. Louis. And in a rainstorm the likes of which we NEVER get here in the Bay Area, the second baseman we didn't know we needed caught a pop fly off the bat of the guy who five games earlier tried to take him out on a questionable slide and the Giants became the champions of the National League.

Now it’s the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. This is a Tiger team owned by the richest man in baseball. They have the soul of a corporation. Their dismantling of the New York Yankees in the American League championship wasn't so much an athletic achievement as a hostile takeover.  They are cold, methodical, and are heavy favorites against the Giants. It’s the chain pizza restaurant versus Sal’s Pizzeria, the mega-mart versus the local bodega, the “corporations are people too” versus “no one got where they are by themselves”.

So come on my bleeding Dodger blue friends, for one week you can don some orange and black and root on your cousins from up north. We’re all part of the same family and even though we might fuss and feud; we’re still National League kin. They've been devastated and decimated, tried and tested and still they go on. They represent you, but more so, they are you.

Dear Safeway

Dear Safeway:

I have a suggestion for you. Along with your express checkout lane and it’s strangely arbitrary 15 item limit and your “Family Friendly” lane with its promise of healthy snacks and no candy for kids to annoy their parents into buying, how about adding a “No Bullshit” lane.

In this lane the following rules would apply:

1)   There would be no “amicable” chit-chat between the checker and the customer. I am there to buy something and the checker is there to take my money.  That’s it, that’s all. I don’t want to know what she thinks of my purchase, or how my day is going, or if the White Sox have a chance at the Series. I want to get in, I want to find what I need, and I want to get out. Smiling and nodding of heads will be allowed, but extraneous, and more importantly obsequious conversation will not be tolerated. 

2)   I will not be asked if I need help out with my purchase. I am not 80 years old, I do not have any physical restrictions, and I walked in here all by my lonesome, walked around your uber-gigundo store and only have one item.  A corollary: I promise not to sue you because you asked the 80 year old one legged grandma with a shopping cart full of food if SHE needed help and didn’t ask me. The milk of human kindness demands you ask her. The law firm of Slash and Burne demands you ask me. Don't think I don't know the difference. 

3)  Your checker will not attempt to read my name that you so kindly have decided to print on my receipt so the homeless guy who picks through your garbage can find out I have a preference for French Roast. As if it’s not sad enough that she’s having a hard enough time finding it on the paper (really, can we talk about an optical plan in your health insurance package?), I have a distaste for hearing my last name mangled out loud. Someone who really knows me knows how to pronounce my name. 

4) In the same way you will not accept barter or services in kind as payment, I will not use the ancient form of payment known as the cheque. I will give you either cash money or a credit/debit card. And I will know my PIN and enter it correctly the first time. 

5) You will not change checkers and/or money drawers whilst there is anyone in the line. Working that check stand will be implicitly understood to mean that breaks are only available when no one is waiting to check out. 

6) You will not publicly attempt to extort money for whatever cancer research fund you are choosing to support this week. I give my fair share to charity. If you really want to support the work being done on prostate or breast cancer then by all means dig into those deep pockets of yours and pony up the dough, but it does make me wonder why you want me to support those charities and not, oh let’s say, the fight against AIDS. Or syphilis. Or hemochromatosis. Or Hep C. Or any one of a thousand other worthy but oh so messy to explain to the kiddies diseases that plenty of people (even people who shop at Safeway) get.

I truly do believe that implementing such a checkout line would be of great value to your company. It will generate tons of good will and appreciation from the millions of Americans who are fed up with your culture of phony, forced, make believe “neighborliness”. And for those who enjoy being treated as a Stepford customer there will still be six other check stands open to accommodate them.

Provided you actually hire some of those real honest to god human neighbors you claim you want to be friends with. 

I thank you for your kind attention and hope you have a pleasant day.

How To Make Your World A Better Place

I went to vote today. 

Notice I said I went to vote. I got in my car, I drove to my polling place, had interaction with other people, then went into a voting booth and punched my selections for who I wanted to represent me, lead my government, and say yea or nae to a series of ballot initiatives. I didn't sit in my house and leaf through web pages before mailing in a ballot six weeks ago. I didn't do that because I have to draw a line in the cement when it comes to all these wonderful "advances" we've made in our post-modern world. 


It used to be, a way back in great-great-great-grandpa's time, that we pretty much did everything in public. For the great mass of humanity there were always others around no matter what you were doing. America's expansion is the direct result of a guy saying "I can't stand being around you people anymore" and heading out for Injun country where much to his surprise he found out that basic survival meant needing people he might not be terribly fond of. But at least he didn't have his neighbor knowing what he was eating for breakfast or knowing if the extraction of said breakfast went smoothly a few hours later. 


Yet our solid pioneer forefathers still came together to pray, politic, and party. Those three were considered the entertainment portion of their lives and they did it as a community. As time went on and we became more "civilized" our need for a massive group became less and less. Ten churches replaced the one, the square danced morphed into the theater which morphed into the movie theater which morphed into TV, each step a bit less and less communal. I'll argue that it was politics that took the longest to centralize down to the one. Oh sure we hear about "retail" politics in the early primaries and how it has to expand into televised ads in the larger states and how the presidential campaigns are really just prime time soap operas but after it's all done, after all the shouting has died down, you had to walk out the door of your home, stand in line, declare your name and address for all the world to hear and then step into a booth and make your mark. 


That was democracy.


In the guise of simplifying our ever busier lives, those in power have declared they want to make it easier and easier for us to vote. Where as once it was so inconvenient to absentee vote that business and pleasure trips were rearranged to avoid the issue, now whole states say to hell with the ballot box, let's turn the postal box into one and have mail in elections only. Show up at the wrong polling place? No problem, go ahead and use a "provisional" ballot and it will get counted once it's verified you're not voting early and often (the "Chicago Way").  I'm old enough to remember when bars opened only after the polls closed on election day. Oh, excuse me, that was Election Day. Now you can be as tight as you want as you express how tight you are when you won't pay an extra dime to fund a civic improvement. And every year there seems to be a new, improved system for telling us the result faster and faster so that the second the digital display hits 8PM we can know the winners and losers. 


I'm going to put on my grumpy old man pants and suggest that it's time to let up on the easy button. Everything else in our lives keeps getting easier and easier, let's make democracy if not harder, at least a bit more difficult than voting for the next American Idol. Let's say that if you don't want to take the time to stand in a line and meet with your fellow townspeople and pull the curtain shut (or at least hunch your shoulders over so the guy next to you can't see who you vote for) then you have to go to City Hall and pick up the absentee ballot, not have it mailed to you because you clicked the box on the webpage. And if you show up at the wrong polling place well then guess what, you have to take personal responsibility and go to the right one. And instead of instant gratification (and I use the phrase cautiously) on election night, lets go back to paper ballots and a black Sharpie and if it takes three days to count all the ballots then it's okay because, lets be honest, those of us who remember the election of 2000 would be happy to wait three days instead of three months.


I'm saying all this because I know that when that when the going gets easy, we humans slide down the path to taking it for granted. When we take it for granted we don't notice when it disappears. And when it disappears then we shrug our shoulders and say give me the next easiest thing. "I don't have a say in how the government works anymore? That's okay, that nice guy with the Charlie Chaplin mustache will take care of me."


You don't have to take the ballot box away to make democracy a fossil. You need only butterfly a few ballots, or hang a few chads, or have a glitch in the counting software of one or two key districts and poof there goes another Iraqi or Afghani village. One way we as Americans can at least make it more difficult for the bastards is to show up at that precinct, stomp our collective foot and make sure that vote counts. 


An American president once said "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad,". Well actually it was THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT which was a movie and has been relegated in entertainment history to being the first draft of THE WEST WING but the sentiment is right. You gotta want it bad, so bad that you'll get up off the La-Z-Boy and show up and be counted. And because you showed up and were counted and talked to your neighbors and helped the little old lady poll worker who couldn't spell your name right, maybe, just maybe, your own little part of the world got better. 

If You Could Take A Pill...

So recently I got into a conversation about the upcoming Summer Olympics. One of the guys mentioned that he had read an article that said 50% of aspiring Olympians said that if offered, they would take a pill that could absolutely guarantee them a gold medal in their event, even if they KNEW it would kill them five years later.  Of course that turned into a “what would you do?” conversation, with various redistributions of the risk/reward equation thrown out to the gods of speculation and ultimately ending, as these conversations always seem to, in mandatory sexual connotation (“so if you had a pill that would guarantee you could have any woman in the world but after five years your hoo doo would fall off…”)

Fantasy scenarios like that are fine for water cooler conversations, but the reality is we are faced with real life versions every day, albeit for the most part not as extreme.  You can take the train to work and have a pleasant twenty minute commute or you can drive the car and have the freedom to come and go as you please. You can take the high stress job with the probability you’ll die sooner or the low stress job that means a longer life but less money or recognition. The fact is we make these kinds of deals with the universe all the time and in the past we’ve always known all the risks and all the rewards.

More and more in this world we aren't told what the price is we have to pay. At best we get half a story, usually the one associated with the reward side of the equation. Buy this real estate with little money down and low mortgage payments and you’ll make a fortune renting it out (but nothing about the balloon payments and the packaging of your loan with others to be sold as a bet against your success in this exact venture). Vote for this politician because he’s a guy you’d want to have a beer with, the kind who will bring back the good old days (never mind that his economic policies will result in you losing your job, won’t train you for a new one, and likely will decimate your community).

But let’s get back to that pill for a moment.  What if I told you that there was a pill you could take that would prevent you from getting 90% of the major diseases. No cancer, no diabetes, no AIDS, you’d be able to skate through life without having to worry about anything more than the occasional cold or flu. Really? Sign me up! Oh, but here’s the other half of the equation. While you won’t get cancer or diabetes or AIDS, there is a 20% chance taking this pill will leave you with debilitating nerve damage; damage so severe you’d have to be on pain medication the rest of your life. Now there’s an 80% chance you could take the pill, have no ill effects, and go through your life immune to those diseases, but that 20% chance exists, it’s real and it’s going to happen. Do you take the pill?

Now let’s take it one step further. I have another pill. This magic pill has a 95% chance of working on you, but now the diseases aren’t cancer or diabetes or AIDS. Now they are the measles, the mumps, whooping cough, all diseases that could potentially cause severe problems, but ones that in this day and age are treatable.  The catch is there is a five percent chance that you will end up brain damaged, unable to hold a simple conversation or fully function in society. You’ll be dependent on others to take care of you pretty much the rest of your life. Oh and let’s not forget that in the immediate aftermath of taking the pill you’ll be spewing out something called acidic diarrhea which I’ll let you imagine what that is.

The fact is, put that way most people would never take that pill. “No thanks, I’ll put up with a couple of weeks of puffy cheeks or red spots or persistent hacking if it means I don’t have to find out what acidic diarrhea is”.  I know I wouldn’t take it and I doubt many of you would. So if some company actually produced this pill they’d have a tough sell. Now I know something about selling, I’ve been doing it all my life. When you’ve got a dog product, one that you just know is going to be a tough sell; the way to sell it is to only talk about its upsides and never about its downsides. “Look at this refrigerator, it’s so inexpensive. Automatic ice maker? Who needs that, besides they always break.  Energy efficiency? You’d have to own that other model for thirty years to make up the price difference!” You get the picture. The company would only talk about the upsides to the pill and never about the downsides. But with down sides that severe you’d probably have to take it a step further. You’d have to say that those downsides don’t really exist, that it’s all made up, that it’s all just a coincidence.

And that friends is why vaccine makers deny that their products cause autism. As a matter of fact they deny that their products ever do any harm. Nobody ever gets hurt from a vaccine. There is no downside according to those who make money from selling vaccines. If some baby is perfectly fine one day, goes into the pediatrician for her well baby check up (including her dTP shot) and the next day starts a downward spiral into the “autism spectrum” well that’s just a total coincidence. If a 50 year old woman gets a Hepatitis B vaccine shot and three weeks later is in pain so severe she can’t get out of bed, well that’s just a total coincidence. Vaccines couldn’t possibly be the cause of any problems, they only do good. Keep repeating that mantra till you are blue in the face, or at least can say it with a straight face.  Tell doctors only half the story on your research so they’ll tell patients the official abbreviated version. Don’t forget to discredit any doctor who might suggest otherwise. Jump on that “herd immunity” theory, that it’s in the public interest for everyone to be vaccinated (honestly if it was, then why don’t they give the vaccines away for free?). And for god’s sake, financially incentivize doctors to be on your side against their own patients. Give them the free dinners and the free trips and the free dollars and fund their pet projects and most of all make sure they know that it all comes from those tiny vials sitting in the office refrigerator -- the energy inefficient one without an ice maker. 

Silent No More

I will no longer remain silent.

If you are my age you often wonder why nowadays we seem to have dozens of diseases that weren't around when we were kids. Alzheimer's, Autism, Chronic Fatigue, Attention Deficit, Down Syndrome, even allergic reactions to foods, we rarely if ever came in contact with someone with anything like that. Oh sure, there was the quiet kid in the corner or the grandfather who was "off" or the woman in the next town who was "just lazy" or the boy who couldn't sit still in class. But these days it's all over the place. Everyone knows a family dealing with one if not more of these "modern" diseases.

No, it's not because these diseases have always been around but only now have we given them a name.

No, it's not because those afflicted are looking for sympathy or attention.

No, it's not because the medical industry needs a new source of income (though they certainly will take advantage of it).

And no it's not any one of the thousand other reasons bandied about on the internet or in the press.

It's because we are being poisoned. And we are willingly drinking the poison.

It's called aluminum.

You probably just thought to yourself, "oh god he's crazy, he's gone off the deep end, he thinks the tin foil hats are letting the aliens into our brains". You don't know how much I'd love for all this to be some giant M. Night Shamalamdingdong crappy movie. Probably like you, I thought the only time I ever came in contact with aluminum was when I bought the mega pack of chicken at Safeway and wrapped up each piece in it's foil blanket for a long winter's sleep in the freezer. Turns out I was wrong. It is in nearly everything you put in or on your body on a daily basis. Food, cosmetics, deoderants (try finding one of those without it), and most of all, medications. It is a preservative, it keeps these things from going bad. Now there are lots of other preservatives that could be used for that purpose but it turns out aluminum has one great advantage over all those other compounds.

It's cheap.

In fact it's so cheap that you really can't make any money off selling it unless you can get your buyer to purchase way more than they would really need. "Psst, hey buddy, I know you only need a tiny bit to make each aspirin tablet last a year, but why don't you buy twice as much and make the aspirin last two years". Conviently enough it's all perfectly legal to do that because the government of the United States, the ones who say how many parts of cockroach per ounce it's okay to have in a Hersey's bar, has not a single regulation about how much aluminum can go into that same Hersey's bar. But I don't want to single out our own government as being lax in it's oversight capacity because there is not one country in the world that limits aluminum addivities. Not one. There is only one item sold that has any limits on aluminum content and that is baby formula and those regulations only came about when those crunchy granola moms decided that breast milk was better than powdered and the baby formula industry needed to win back it's clientele by getting it's employees...er I mean...Congress to enact a minimal set of standards that of course the baby formula industry came up with.

Problem is, too much aluminum builds up in your body and it turns your own mind and/or body against you. What's the through line that connects grandma's Alzheimer's with grandson's Autism? They both have too much aluminum in their bodies. Studies are showing this connection again and again. And where did this aluminum come from? Well grandma smoked like a chimney for years (yeah, it's in tobacco too) and my cousin always said she sure did use an awful lot of Maybelline eyeshadow, and everyday she took one of those aspirins like her doctor told her to to prevent heart attacks, so she built up a lifetime of aluminum. But where did little Timmy's Autism come from? He was only breast fed and was perfectly healthy until one night he started crying uncontrollably and pooping and vomiting and mom called the doctor and the doctor said "Oh that's the normal reaction to the MMR vaccine he got today". First of all that's not normal. Second of all, that MMR vaccine was probably the seventeenth vaccine Timmy had had in his six months of life. And every one of those vaccines was preserved by aluminum. It's one thing to gradually take in a lifetime's worth of aluminum, it's quite another to have it all jabbed into your body in a span of six months. Imagine a brain, still developing, still trying to figure out what it is supposed to be doing, suddenly bombarded by a heavy metal cocktail. That brain may become so strained, so beleagured, that it goes into an infant form of Post Tramatic Stress Syndrome and shuts down.

Like they used to say on TV, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. But so is a body.

Adults with Chronic Fatigue or Parkinson's or ALS are all showing to have higher than normal amounts of aluminum in their bodies. Is there enough evidence to prove that aluminum causes all these diseases? Not yet. But let me just say this; if there are a bunch of suspicious fires in your neighborhood and you find out the guy down the street did time for arson, wouldn't you call the cops and tell them to at least have a chat with this guy? We need to do more research on the connection between aluminum and these diseases, but no one seems to want to fund that research.

Anyone wanna take a guess why no one wants to fund research that would show the ridiculously inexpensive preservative is actually poisoning the people who are consuming it?

Like I said, I will no longer remain silent. I'm not going to tell you what to do because I wouldn't know what to tell you to do. I'm going to do what I do best and write about it. If you want to read about it I'll be here taking out my rage on my keyboard. That's correct, rage. As you may have guessed by now this is not a theoretical exercise for me, not some conscienceness raised epiphany. My beautiful wife Betsey lives with the pain caused by Big Pharma's greed everyday and has for the past five years. For those five years I have been silent, thinking this a private family matter. I have lain against the ropes absorbing Big Pharma's punches one after another, but now it's the sixth round and I'm not taking it anymore.

Hey Merck, is that all you got?

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If you are still interested and have an spare hour, take a look at this video from the Vaccine Safety Conference of 2011. It's a talk by Professor Christopher Exley, one of the foremost experts on aluminum today, on The Systemic Toxicity of Aluminium. One note of warning, though Professor Exley is a brilliant and engaging speaker, he does have that funny British way of pronouncing aluminum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKfbkeQyw84&feature=youtu.be

Will You Make Me So Happy For the Rest of My Life?

I really love music. Lots of people do, but I tend to love it more than lots of people. It's my belief that it's not good enough to just have music playing, you have to have the RIGHT music playing. Want to be calm and restful? Don't put Beethovan on, even if it's the Moonlight Sonata (there's an underlying tension in it, the gravitational pull of the moon). Want to amp up and get the blood flowing? I don't care how much you play Like A Rolling Stone or Highway 61, Dylan won't work, he's too dense and cerebral. You need lyrics that mean nothing, an excuse to turn the human voice into another instrument. Hmm, how about that Iggy fellow and his stoogies? Something about Lust For Life?

So knowing this about me, recently someone asked, "Okay, one song, one piece of music, the musical composition that says everything anyone would want to know about you, what is it?"

I'm sure this person expected me to say some Springsteen song like Thunder Road, or some Benny Goodman piece like Sing, Sing, Sing, or something classical like the Jupiter Symphony, or maybe go philisophical and bring up Coltrane's Love Supreme. Theater major in college? Bet there's some obscure Sondheim floating around in the brain.

It's none of them. And it's without hesitation. I don't have to sleep on it or give you an answer in the morning. I know right now.

It's rock and roll. Maybe the epitomy of rock and roll. It's musical theatre. The album it comes from was first conceived as a rock and roll opera. Certainly it's epic in scope (it takes eight and a half minutes to play and there is a long passage of time in the storytelling). If Brecht and Weill had written rock, they would have written it. It's operatic, it's jazz; a movie of it would have to be directed by the bastard child of Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese. It's as American a song as you can get, yet deconstructs the classic American love song to it's core principles. It's themes center on the American desire to conquer and aquire that which doesn't belong to us, but we have difficulty with the idea of having conquered we now must occupy. It takes place in a car, the most treasured of manly possessions, is all about sex, the most treasured of manly persuits, and in the middle of the song Phil Rizzuto comes in to do play by play of a baseball game, only of course it's not a baseball game and the action being recounted gives new meaning to the phrase "suicide squeeze". Holy crap it even reimagines Gatsby's light at the end of the pier, his orgiastic future, as the glow of an AM radio.

Ain't no doubt about it we were doubly blessed, cause we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed.

Yes, hello Mr. Loaf, it's Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

How can you not get a thrill from this song on some level? Take it as a rememberance of things past. Take it as an anthem of teen angst. Take it as a cautionary tale. Take it as some great freaking rock and roll and if you don't believe me check out who the drummer is (Max Weinberg), who's playing the piano (Professor Roy Bittan) and who produced the damn thing (Todd Rundgren). And on a personal level, it's sung by a fat guy in a wildly inappropriate white shirt with sweat pouring down his face to a hard body curly haired brunette with an attitude of her own and an opinion on where and how this encounter will end. Not that I've ever been or known anyone like that.

And when it's all over, when eight and a half glorious, rocking, hysterical, envigorating minutes have passed, you get the second greatest fuck you line in the history of literature: "So now I'm praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive, cause if I gotta spend another minute with you I don't think that I could really survive".

(For the record, the greatest fuck you in literature is Mr. Dylan in Positively Fourth Street, the last two stanzas)

It's the next line though that really hits it out of the park for me. Because after all the laughter, all the sexual tension, all the base thumping, driving, beating, pulse rattling crescendos, after all of that invective for a life lost due to a moment's bad judgement, the hero swears "I'll never break my promise or forget my vow".

He's a standup guy. He made his bed and he'll lay in it. Or is it lie in it? He's what we all want to be. Okay, maybe there were better choices in life, but the choice he's made, he's sticking to it, till the end of time. His word means more than anything. He's the Sydney Carton of rock and since I took enough English Lit courses in college to have heard the Carton/Jesus Christ analogy more times than I care to remember...well I'm not going to go there.

So put me on that desert island and give me that MP3 of Bat Out Of Hell (it's the 35th anniversary this year), I'll be swearing on my god and on my mothers grave I'd love you to the end of time.