From: Adam Lewis
Re: CNN

Great job. Love that I am waking up in the Ukraine and am seeing you!

Come a long way from the Xerox mailers.

Best,
A

You’ve got to understand, I’ve been locked inside the house for months, staring at the four walls, there are only so many books you can read and so many movies you can see. Your mood starts to sink and you lose touch with reality and…

They called me to be on CNNi tonight.

Actually, that’s wrong, no one calls anymore, they e-mailed.

And twice in the ensuing recovery I’ve had to say no, after all, I was in a sling. But tonight… At 10:45? To discuss the Ed Sheeran/Marvin Gaye lawsuit?

Why not?

They send a car. Which is important, because driving is an issue.

And the woman had picked me up before. And she’s a bit of a terror on the road. That’s one thing about professional drivers, they want to get you there on time, their gig depends upon it. She asked me who’d set the pickup time, CNNi or me. I said CNNi, so if we were late, which we wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be on her.

We got there early.

Security is heavy. There are two sets of doors and you can’t break through either without a button being pressed. And when you’re inside… Everything at a TV station is focused on what’s on camera, the rest is pretty basic, everywhere I’ve ever been on. Hell, the desk is on a platform and there’s little else, even on “Weekend Update” on SNL!

So I went to makeup, you always want makeup, otherwise your head is gonna shine, baby boomers all remember Nixon in the Kennedy debates…

So…

You learn to be nice to everybody. And when you are, they’re nice back, and they tell amazing stories.

The makeup person is married to a nurse. And although off at midnight, she’s got to be back at 7:30! And she lives in Long Beach! And she’s got a sleeve tattoo. Her dad had a problem with it but it’s a generational thing, I know that, so I’m not gonna judge.

And then there was a young woman photocopying. I don’t know what got the conversation going but it turns out she goes to USC and she’s an intern. She’s studying journalism. And she turned out to be Jewish. She told me her father was the executive director of the Temple in Atlanta. I had no idea, but then we started to bond. She said she didn’t go to summer camp, a rarity amongst Jews, but she was a member of the youth group, of NFTY, and all these memories came flooding back, I just wrote about that the other day!

And then it was time.

Now the anchors are pros. They walk the line from relaxed to professional, off camera to on, so seamlessly. They make you feel comfortable, they tee it up…

And you go off.

You’ve got to be knowledgeable, but you’ve also got to be good entertainment.

And when we were done they wanted to continue to talk to me, said I was fascinating, and for a boy who’s been locked up inside for months that was music to my ears.

So I was jazzed, got my makeup removed, and got into the limo and got the above e-mail, from the Ukraine, was my driver Ukrainian?

I thought maybe, she was blond, had a heavy accent, so I asked her.

She was Iranian. She got out in 2002. She was only one when the Shah was deposed. Her father was Greek, so the Greek government aided their leaving, they got into Germany as refugees. And then through a religious program, since she was baptized, she got passage to the USA, to Tucson.

SHE DIDN’T SPEAK A WORD OF ENGLISH!

She stayed with a member of the church for a week. Then they got her an apartment and a gig watching children and she enrolled in college.

HOW DID YOU DO THIS, YOU DIDN’T SPEAK ENGLISH!

She shrugged her shoulders and said she picks up languages easily, she learned the game in Germany, the tricks.

And needless to say, after a year or so in Tucson, having switched to a job as a caregiver, she wanted out.

So she went to Houston.

HOW? WITH WHAT MONEY?

The church was long gone, financially anyway. She’d saved. And, oh yeah, a congregant had given her an old Dodge, so she had wheels.

But Houston was disappointing so she moved back to Tucson.

And then she decided to decamp to Los Angeles. She had an aunt there, but she didn’t contact her.

And she had a baby…

Whoa, how did this happen?

From Germany, another Iranian refugee, they were in love, he came over.

And I’m thinking she’s living on the bottom, just driving to make ends meet, but then she tells me…SHE OWNS THE COMPANY!

I figured she’d left college in the dust, a long time ago. But no, she got a business degree from CSUN. Working as a caregiver along the way. And she decided to start her own business with her own car to get ahead. And she took ads everywhere, she gained traction by pricing her services low, after all, she owned the car, and it was a recession, and after a year and a half, it worked!

Now she’s got four cars and multiple drivers and the CNN account…

And the trigger was software, she invested $2500 in software that linked everything, that gave so much information, and then her business burgeoned. Others said she was nuts, but she wanted it.

And now…

Was she a citizen?

Yes.

Who was she gonna vote for?

Well, at first it was Trump, now she’s not so sure. It’s the first time she can vote and…

Trump is a businessman.

And my head is spinning. These are the immigrants Trump’s people want to keep down? These industrious people who are contributing to society? Hell, buying software, aiding the bottom line?

This woman made something out of nothing. She’s an upstanding American citizen.

It was heartwarming.

It was a revelation.

And, oh yeah, where there’s a hit there’s a writ. Since the “Blurred Lines” case everybody’s come out of the woodwork, the line has been moved too far to the right, we’ve got to move it back. I think the “Blurred Lines” case will be overturned on appeal, after all, it’s about the sheet music, the notes on the page, and they’re not the same, and you can’t copyright feel…

And Zeppelin won the “Stairway” case and…

Sometimes there’s blatant infringement. But there are only so many notes, and so many ideas, and ideas have to come from somewhere.

And there’s so little case law, because so few of these cases come to trial.

It’s just that…

Musicians used to let stuff slide.

They don’t let it slide anymore, certainly not the heirs.

It’s a rough and tumble society, money is not free and opportunities in music have evaporated so it’s not hard to see how we’ve gotten to this coarse, litigious point.

But that’s a dead end.

Innovation is the way out.

New stuff constructed on the building blocks of the old.

We don’t want to inhibit forward movement, we want to encourage it, and now too many people are afraid, just ask the major labels.

P.S. Forget the court of public opinion, these cases turn on legal precepts. Furthermore, so many have come out in defense of Ed Sheeran. Will two lawsuits in a year hurt his career? Probably not, because those who want to believe, will, fans are everything, and he’s got ’em. It’s not about haters, but lovers. And if you’re an upstanding, forthright citizen who doesn’t take more than your fair share of the pie…people are with you.

From: Adam Lewis
Re: CNN

The one thing I have learned from travel is that CNN goes everywhere. Luckily Fox has no reach overseas.

All is well. Hope the shoulder gets better.. Best of luck with the rehab..