From the Beginning
Part 3, In which I channel the spirit of the cranky old man I will inevitably become:
Our performance last night went well, far better than I imagined considering the set-up. The place looked like a big metal barn, a warehouse space converted to a theatre by setting up a stage and pointing some folding chairs at it. It looked like the sort of place where a rave might break out at any moment, complete with massive club sound system, video projection screens on every wall, sunken cocktail bar, and a stage full of DJ equipment. I almost expected the staff at the door to distribute glow-sticks to people as they entered. The show went well, though. The tech people did a great job, the sound was awesome, and the Divine Ms. R did her usual stellar job of pulling the crowd in and keeping them in spite of the distractions of the space.
Which were considerable. During the performance, the video screens on the walls of the space continued displaying giant "ambient imagery" loops. Evidently Ms. R prevailed upon the organizers to at least turn off the screen behind the stage, which was nice of them.
I am not sure why, but we now live in an age when it is important that a screen be flashing moving imagery somewhere within our field of vision at all times. The rise of this trend has proven to be an increasing irritation to me when I play in bars, as it often results in audience members tuning out the performer on stage ( who after all does not fly or explode or morph into a talking toilet brush) in favor of staring at the fascinating if ultimately meaningless stimuli offered by the video monitors. The best example I’ve ever experienced was the bar that ran footage of naked women gyrating on a pole while the band played. There’s nothing like coming in second to cheaply-shot, soundless video of strippers to give one a thorough grasp of one’s place on the entertainment food chain.
When the DJs that followed us took the stage the reasoning behind these screens’ presence became instantly clear: There is nothing inherently compelling about watching a headphone-wearing hipster guy stand behind a bank of turntables, occasionally pushing a button or making one of the small hand motions required to scratch a record. It’s really about as interesting as watching somebody work a cash register. The music blasting forth from the sound system may be eminently danceable and may represent an unbreakable wall of pulsing rhythm that few human bands could hope to match, but the lack of any sort of theatrical presence (or in fact movement) from the performers combined with the fact that they are not so much generating music as they are pushing the "on" button on a very fancy stereo virtually necessitates some kind of additional visual distraction. Hence, videos of burning radial tires and a battery of spinning, flashing multicolored lights. Voila! A gripping spectacle of live musical entertainment!
Of course the point of these events isn’t the performers on stage at all. It’s the crowd, the groove, the vibe in the room. It’s about people who are younger, hipper and sexier than me dancing the night away in (and perhaps on) ecstasy to a continuous, throbbing beat. And hopefully hooking up afterwards.
But I guess my worries that this will spawn a generation of audiences that don’t feel obligated to actually face the stage when people are up there performing for them were laid to rest by last night’s experience. Not only did they choose to watch the performing humans instead of the giant dilating eyeball graphic they could have been watching, but for the most part they shut up and listened, laughed at the funny bits and generally interacted like they were at an actual event and not a cunning electronic representation of an event taking place in their living room.
So I guess all hope is not lost after all.
From the Beginning
Part 2:
If you want to see the guts of this country, travel by train. Driving down the interstate it’s easy to get lulled into thinking that you are seeing the countryside you are passing through, but what you are actually seeing is the painted face of the countryside. It is a sort of Potemkin village, like the front of a movie set. The landscape that surrounds an interstate is there for the benefit of the travelers on that interstate. From this vantage point it is easy to believe that this is a land of billboards and service stations and motor lodges. Of course, if you bothered to talk to the locals in any of the towns you passed you would undoubtably find that most of them spend very little time hanging around the Days Inn and the Circle K. Even knowing this, the subconscious effect is powerful. I’m sure it’s the reason why in Washington state all the clearcuts start a quarter mile back from the road; The sight of those big, healthy trees by the highway reinforces the perception that there are more of the same behind them, while also serving as a physical barrier to block the view of hillsides covered with mud and stumps.
Not so when you take the train. Nobody has taken the trouble to tart up this landscape. What you see is what you get. There are no billboards pointed towards the tracks. What would be the point? What we do see out our window is the industrial heart of these Western Washington towns, lumber yards and grain elevators and gravel pits. We see the sides of buildings that nobody bothers to repaint, faded and peeling logos for lubricant companies and ancient hand-lettered "Pause that Refreshes" signs. We see railroad trestles that have fallen into disuse and been allowed to rust, green ivy wrapping around the reddening iron, moss growing over rivets. The back forty of rural properties, where people inter their derelict cars and broken-down tractors. Second-growth forest, tenaciously reclaiming land that was cleared in the early twentieth century.
And of course we pass the freight trains that run all day and night to every corner of the continent, carrying goods from place to place. The lifeblood of industry.
My most recent ex’s maternal grandparents are fundamentalists. Southern Baptists, to be specific. Every once in a while they drop in on her wherever she happens to be and try to talk some Jesus into her. I got to meet them on one of these visits and found them to be perfectly charming, if predictably straight-laced people, as long as we avoided all topics of controversy. We talked about the weather a lot, as I recall.
Her grandfather is the sort of guy with whom I agree on virtually nothing. He’s a Korean War veteran who thinks of Jesus as his Commander-in-chief in the battle against the forces of Satan. I’ve met plenty of this brand of Christian throughout my life, believers who skimmed over all that boring "thou shalt not kill" and "turn the other cheek" crap and went right for the good part at the end of the Bible. You know, the final action-packed chapter where the forces of Good open up the seventh seal on a giant can of divine whoop-ass and finally settle this thing once and for all. His is a he-man, ass-kicking Jesus: a Nordic superman who long ago laid aside his shepherd’s staff, the better to swing his fiery sword of retribution.
Anyway, the one point on which we did agree was the sorry state of neglect that our nation’s railways have fallen into, and how it did not bode well for the future. His contention was that the rails were the backbone of industry and were thus the crucial link that enabled our country to keep its lines of supply and distribution flowing freely during WWII, allowing this great nation to bring its unrivalled industrial might to bear against Germany and Japan . He believes that allowing the rail system to lapse, therefore, presents a grave security risk.
That may well be. I just think that putting goods in lots of boxcars attached to one big engine moving down an unobstructed rail is a more efficient method than parceling the same goods out into semi trucks hooked up to lots of little engines and having drivers haul them down the interstate.
Plus, I think trains are cool.
Not only are the vistas lovely, but one can still ride a train without being asked to remove one’s shoes or submit to a strip search. At least until some clown figures out a way to hijack a train and steer it into the Pentagon.
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With this backdrop scrolling by outside our window, the Diabolical Mr. J and I discuss the finer points of the power ballad, which has become something of an obsession of mine over the course of this last summer. He points out that, structurally, it parallels the development of a symphonic tone poem.
"Which is more essential to the atmospheric intro?" I ask him. "Mandolin or fog machine?"
Part 1:
It's 6:30 AM and I'm waiting for the bus to take me to the Amtrak station downtown. I need to catch a 7:30 train to arrive in Portland by 11:00. I'm not actually performing until 10:00 tonight, but such is this business we call show. It's just now getting light out. I must confess it's been a while since I saw this side of 6 AM -- coming and not going, as it were. When I got up at 5:45 and walked downstairs to make coffee everything was peaceful, dark and quiet, Mr. Galt having retired for the evening just previously (his evenings are what some of us refer to as mornings.) The house felt uninhabited as I had my coffee and hastily prepared for my trip. I stuffed one change of clothing, a rain slicker, some toiletries and a script into my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. Then I picked up my guitar and stepped outside.
Now, standing at the bus stop, traffic is beginning to surge as the gainfully employed leave their homes, blinking in the harsh light of another working day. But on my walk here, I felt like I had the whole neighborhood to myself. This is what I enjoy most about early mornings. It's too bad I also enjoy sleeping .
I imagine the coolest job in the world might well be night maintenance crew at Disneyland. Walking around the Magic Kingdom all darkened and silent; the lifeless, glassy eyes of Dumbo and Pinocchio staring at you from every shadowy nook while you swab cotton candy and children’s vomit from beneath Mr. Toad's Wild Ride --- I'll bet it all looks a lot different at 4 in the morning. I tell myself that if one could somehow gaze, unblinking, into the darkened face of the Happiest Place on Earth some deep, primal secret of the American id would stand revealed.
Yes indeed, the "It's a Small World" ride, its animatronic Danish milkmaids and jolly Eskimos halted in mid-song, their smiles frozen into hideous leering rictuses that would be the envy of any Miss America contestant, takes on a very different cast when viewed by the light of a single 40 watt bulb. Anybody who has spent any time at all backstage can tell you that knowing how the magic trick is done changes everything. But knowing where the rabbit is hidden must pale in comparison to seeing the gears and wires that moved the face of a treasured childhood memory.
I wonder if they make the maintenance crew wear the little mouse ears?
More "Fun with Numbers." Featuring the always-riveting marriage of politics and math.
Taxes
Average Tax Break for bottom 60% of earners under administration's tax plan:
$350
Average Tax Break for top 1% of earners:
$96,634
Source:Citizens for Tax Justice.
Health Care
Number of people who have become uninsured since Bush took office:
3.8 million
Number of people who gained insurance under Clinton administration:
2.3 million
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
In the same period, family health-care premiums have risen by more than $2,700 a year. The average cost for a family plan is now above $9,000. A total of 43 million Americans are now uninsured.
Number of retirees who will lose employer-paid drug coverage due to new Medicare bill:
2.7 million
Number of retirees whose employer-paid drug coverage will be cut by the new Medicare bill:
9 million
Number of Medicaid recipients forced to enroll in Medicare drug benefit, resulting in higher cost sharing and no coverage for some drugs:
6.4 million
Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Manufacturing Jobs:
Manufacturing Jobs lost in 2003:
582,000
Manufacturing jobs eliminated since 1997:
3.3 million
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Software Industry:
Number of jobs lost in software-producing industries from 2000 to 2004:
128,000
Number of jobs gained in India in software-producing industries from 1999 to 2003:
150,000
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Trade Deficit:
U.S. trade deficit in 1999:
$271 billion
U.S. trade deficit in 2003:
$549 billion
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce.
Education:
Amount Administration has underfunded its own No Child Left Behind Act since it was passed in 2001:
$26.4 Billion
Opinion:
A commenter on the previous posting questioned the inclusion of CEO pay as a relevant statistic, and I admit that by itself it does seem to be something of a red herring. My intention at the time was to relate it to several other things, in particular the statistics on tax breaks, job creation (or lack therof), and average worker pay. I realize I am engaging in editorializing by using CEOs as a shorthand for the very richest people. Sue me. (This is a figure of speech. Please do not sue me.)
I believe it to be relevant because I think it refutes the claim that tax breaks for the highest earners stimulate job creation, the "rising tide lifts all boats" philosophy, variously termed supply-side or trickledown economics when it was previously employed during the Reagan-Bush years. If this were the case, one would expect the upward trend in CEO pay and the general growth in the holdings of the very wealthiest Americans to parallel similar gains in employment and worker pay. But this seems to be the opposite of the trends we actually see.
In fact, so far the results of this administration's application of supply-side remedies for the stalled economy would seem to agree with predictions made based on the results of that previous era, that is to say high deficits, recession and an overall bleak job picture. These results can be obscured (as they were in the Reagan years) by statistics showing overall growth in the economy; which only confers advantage on the average worker if that money does indeed trickle down. This is why I find the numbers on worker pay to be a better measure of general economic prosperity than unemployment, although either is more relevant to most of us than the GNP.
With more people out of work or underemployed, rising health care costs, more and more of us uninsured, and the Baby Boom reaching retirement age, demands placed on social programs are bound to increase. Yet there is substantially less money than before to fund those programs. As for the private sector, the same logic applies: the pressure placed on private health plans by an aging population will mean that the portion of those insured who are still earning wages while incurring relatively lower medical expenses will have to pick up the slack.
The statistics on job loss would seem to indicate that skilled, relatively high-paying jobs (such as those represented in the software stat) as well as unskilled, lower-paying jobs are leaving the country. The example of India is of interest because India's rise as a tech center corresponds to an agressive program of education adopted there a generation ago to train more workers in these skills. At the same time, spending for education here has languished. Here again it seems that as the need for investment in education becomes even more pressing, the funding to provide that education will be less available .
To answer another point posed by the same commenter, I understand that the president has limited control over the economy. I also recognize that many of these trends extend beyond the term of the current administration. However, I do believe that the policy decisions made by an administration have an effect. I don't believe that a ship captain is responsible for the weather, only for steering through it.
A further note:
I am not a statistician. Therefore, the most persuasive evidence I see for the state of the economy are based on my own observations, and what I've observed is this: A sharp rise in the people-I-notice-sleeping-in-doorways Index, a precipitous climb in the boarded-up-storefronts Average and a gigantic leap in the people-around-me-who-have-been-downsized Indicators.
So far I've been avoiding out-and-out discussions of politics here because political blogs tend to become irritating and I'd mostly be preaching to the choir anyway. But I thought it would be an interesting change of pace to talk about national politics using actual facts.
Maybe this idea will catch on. But I doubt it.
Feel free to link to this.
Economy
Federal surplus at end of fiscal 2000, projected over 10 years:
$5.6 trillion
Federal deficit under current administration, projected through 2011:
$2.3 trillion
2004 deficit:
$450 billion
Current U.S. debt:
$7,298,671,067,464.27
Source:Congressional Budget Office.
U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, a former Reagan administration official now appointed to a 15-year term as a nonpartisan auditor, on the deficit:
"Our projected deficits are not manageable without significant changes [in taxing or spending]... We simply cannot grow our way out of this problem."
Wages
Americans average income growth from 2000 - 2002 (the most recent year for which data is available):
-5.7%
Adjusted for inflation:
-9.2%
Source: Internal Revenue Service.
CEO pay growth in 2003:
27%
Ratio of CEO to worker pay in 1982:
42 to 1
Ratio of CEO to worker pay in 2003:
300 to 1
Source:Business Week.
Jobs
Number of jobs lost since January 2001:
1.2 million.
Number of jobs promised to result from Tax Cuts:
5.5 million.
Number of jobs created under Clinton adminstration:
21 million.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The 0.9% contraction in the job market since March 2001 represents the greatest sustained job loss since the Great Depression.
Unemployment rate when "recovery" began in November 2001:
5.6%
Unemployment rate today:
5.6%
Underemployment rate when "recovery" began:
9.4%
Underemployment rate today:
9.6%
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"This is the last stop in the Ride Free Area. At the next stop you will be required to pay a fare as you leave. No stories, pizza coupons or chickens accepted."
Our bus driver is a smartass. In that New York kind of way, that would seem outright surly but for the fact that it's also pretty damn funny. Some Seattle passive-aggressives in the front of the bus are complaining to each other about how mean he is, just loud enough so they can be sure that he hears them but quiet enough that they can pretend he can't. He couldn't care less.
"This is not, repeat is not as close as we will pass to the Seattle Center. If you do not understand the word "is" or "not", please ask the person in the seat next to you to explain."
"Quarters are money, sir. You overpaid. You must be rich."
"This stop: Seattle Center, QFC, Larry's Market and the FBI UFO reporting office."
Some tourists are disembarking to go to Bumbershoot. They are asking for transfers.
"What do you need transfers for? You're gonna be here all day, right? Alright, fine. Have some souvenirs." he says, handing them the transfers which will almost certainly, as he has predicted, expire before they get a chance to use them.
"Have a nice day."
I've come up with a new guideline: If at any point you find yourself talking on your cellphone while standing at a public urinal, you may have a problem.