Trump was not prepared for this.

But neither was I.

After spending five days on my back, sick as a dog, I landed in Los Angeles, the land of winter heat and thick air, and…

There was no limo driver.

I’m busy b.s.’ing with Tempkins, who’s planning to go to the Westin, lord only knows how that turned out, and Felice is getting frustrated. But I tell her we landed forty five minutes early, that’s why the driver wasn’t there.

That’s not why the driver was absent. He couldn’t get anywhere near the airport. Because, you see, they were protesting Trump’s immigration policy at the Bradley Terminal.

Thank god we didn’t take the driver’s advice, when he called in and told us to get a cab to where he was on 98th Street… Not because I’m afraid of the neighborhood, to which a degree I am, but because there were no cabs!

I pulled out my phone.

Used to be in times of crisis you turned on the television.

On the news apps?

Nothing.

I had to go to Twitter, where the feed was blowing up, #LAX, it was all there to see, frustration, gas being poured on fire, and I was catching up as the sirens started to scream, the gumballs swirled, and suddenly I felt like I was in Europe during the last century, when workers went on strike and brought cities to a crawl.

They brought LAX to a crawl.

But I wasn’t frustrated, I didn’t care how long it took to get out, made me proud to be an American, made me feel we can beat this jerk, because we’ve got the majority on our side. And just like we found out every family has a gay member, however closeted, it turns out every family has a foreign relative or has been here relatively briefly and who knew there would be such a spontaneous reaction to the ban?

And spontaneous is the key. Trump could brush aside the Women’s March, it was planned and foreseen. But shutting down airports? I don’t think anybody in the Cabinet pictured that. Then again, when was the last time these people flew commercial anyway?

So what to do?

After waiting forever for our bags, it is LAX, after all, like hillbillies we started strolling for the exits. And it was so crowded on the sidewalks that we realized we might as well walk in the street, there were no cars at all. Nobody at LAX could be picked up!

And nobody could be dropped off!

In the other direction were the huddled masses walking in, having abandoned their rides, not wanting to miss their flights.

But it was not pandemonium, everybody was cool, this is how you give the middle finger to the powers-that-be.

Turns out Trump didn’t think his policy through. And when he says how few people were actually denied entrance who’s gonna believe him, after the inauguration fiasco, everything he says, especially when it comes to statistics, is false.

But the public was mad as hell, and they couldn’t take it anymore. And you may not have been at the airport but soon you’re gonna be inconvenienced too. Because as President Dodo institutes his policies the public is gonna rise up again and again and again.

We haven’t had this spirit here since 1969. When the public had enough of the Vietnam War. You may not have been alive back then, but a great majority was for the war before it was against it. Unlike politicians, the public can change its mind. And on Twitter you’re seeing the regret, the people who voted for Trump and are now reconsidering.

That’s what’s great about history. You cannot see what is coming. We thought Trump would be toppled by truth in newspapers, but really it’s gonna be you and me, standing up to the man.

So we’re walking out of the airport. The lines for the taxis look like you’ll get out by Tuesday. As for Uber… Not such a great solution when you can’t get in. And what Uber driver would attempt to anyway. Made me glad that in this instance we had a car.

Which we eventually met two terminals away. And after being picked up we started to see…

Traffic. Empty roads on the way out, gridlock on the way in. Funny how so few can impact the lives of so many. Which is kind of how we got into this mess in the first place, Trump believing he could run herd with his minority over the majority.

Call it people power. Pushback that was not anticipated. We kept hearing the Republicans control Congress as well as the White House, soon the Supreme Court too. And that’s very depressing.

But tonight I’m optimistic.

Because it’s you and me, baby. United we stand, Delta and Southwest too, and when we’re together there’s no stopping us.

It’s democracy in action.

You can’t keep the will of the people down.

And the people have spoken and are continuing to speak.

Just because you squeaked to a victory by playing to a slice of America’s public inciting their biases and fears, that does not mean you have a mandate to trample our rights.

There was no plan folks. This bad businessman who has been kept alive by banks as he raped and pillaged in Atlantic City and around the world has been shooting from the hip. Whereas great leaders weigh and plan and…

Do everything Trump won’t do.

Johnny came marching home tonight.

And he’s gonna keep on marching until truth, justice and the American way are restored!

Stephen Stills Manassas
Start at 29:00 in.

Stephen Stills makes it seem so effortless, you can’t believe he’s wringing that sound out of his guitar, no one should be able to play that well, no wonder he was friends with Jimi Hendrix, who played on Stephen’s solo debut.

I was reading about Manassas on Music Aficionado, the story is entitled

“Why Manassas Was Stephen Stills’ Best Band” ,

and I don’t believe that, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for Manassas so I had to read the article, no one ever talks about the band anymore, it’s like they didn’t even exist, but that initial double LP is a killer, in an era when double album packages were de rigueur and too often there was too much filler and not enough nougat, but not in the case of “Manassas.”

I bought the solo LP, you’ve got no idea how big CSN and sometimes Y were. It took a while for their sound to penetrate, everybody didn’t know “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” until “Deja Vu” came out and then their records were on every turntable, the songs were a part of the fabric of this nation in a way unfathomable today. If you were under thirty you knew. Now we all live in our own little silos, just looking for community.

Which we got at the show.

But it was different. It wasn’t a show, it was a CONCERT! It was about the music, there was no production, rarely a light show, you were there to hear the sounds, and watch the musicians play them.

That’s what’ll blow your mind about this clip, the way everybody can play, before it was possible to fake it.

You probably don’t know Manassas’s material, and when you don’t it can be hard to get hooked, which is why I led you to that instrumental passage above, but if you wind the YouTube clip back to the beginning not only will you see and hear Stills’ exquisite playing, you’ll hear that of the other band members, who are virtuosos in their own right and all hang together in a way that seems impossible with so many musicians on stage. Joe Lala’s percussion stands out, it’s anything but superfluous. And Paul Harris and Al Perkins are virtuosos on organ and pedal steel respectively, but that’s not to denigrate the rest of the players, you watch Dallas Taylor behind the kit and you want a shirt like him, didn’t he get the memo that you’re supposed to dress up, put on your stage outfit, a monkey suit for the Grammys no one watched or cared about, no this was before everybody went formal, when it was more important how you played than how you looked.

So I didn’t buy “Stephen Stills 2.” Even though I knew every lick of the solo debut, I found it somewhat disappointing, in retrospect it’s phenomenal, it’s just that I was comparing it with CSN(Y) and “Love The One You’re With” was not quite up to the standard of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “Carry On,” I played the “Deja Vu” opener every day I woke up in April 1970, it put me in a good mood, sometimes music can do that, irrelevant of what is going on in your life.

But the buzz on the Manassas album was so good, I took the plunge. And if I were gonna introduce you to the package I’d say to start with side four, “What To Do” is instantly accessible, as is the follow-up, “Right Now,” you don’t have to hear them multiple times to get them, you get them right away. But the piece-de-resistance is the eight minute long “The Treasure” and then listening to the closing cut, “Blues Man,” you’ll be jetted back to your childhood bedroom, it’ll warm you up and creep you out at the same time, just like adolescence.

But those are not my favorite songs.

My absolute favorite is “Johnny’s Garden.”

There’s a place I can get to
Where I’m safe from the city blues
And it’s green and it’s quiet
Only trouble was I had to buy it

Wow, truth! A sense of humor! None of the poor-mouthing of the holier-than-thou wannabes, Stephen Stills worked hard and is now testifying from a new perch.

And work hard he did. You can’t pick like that if you don’t practice. The path to stardom is not straight, and just when it looked like he was on top of the mountain Buffalo Springfield broke up, but not before he wrote “For What It’s Worth.”

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear

That’s for sure. This was 1967, FM underground radio was just being hatched, most people in America wouldn’t be exposed to rock on the frequency modulated dial for at least half a decade, this was long before “Easy Rider,” most people had no idea what a hippie was, most of America was categorically unhip, but in Los Angeles, on the Sunset Strip, the seeds of disquietude were starting to blossom and after the riot at Pandora’s Box Stephen Stills was inspired to lay down his thoughts and the result became an anthem that sounds just as fresh today as it did yesterday, and the obvious question is why today’s younger generation can’t emulate, can’t follow in the footsteps of this giant and his work.

Because it’s a different time with a different generation. People are afraid. To harm their career, to piss anybody off. You’re in bed with the man, who’s not the enemy. Just think about that, you hear people testifying again and again in support of the police, back then they were the enemy of the youth, we’re not even starting from the same block. Then again, back then the younger generation were all on the same page and that page was written in recording studios and read on radio stations. Radio was the internet of its day and everybody involved knew it. Television was moribund, radio was positively immediate, and if you liked what you heard…

You went to the show.

Not everybody, not at first, their parents wouldn’t let them. It wasn’t like today, where parents accompany Madison and Mason to the gig, most parents wanted no part.

But some of us had liberal parents.

And we went and our minds were blown.

And if you watch the Manassas clip above you’ll know why.

P.S. Don’t email me and tell me I overlooked Chris Hillman, that I didn’t mention Fuzzy Samuels because he’s black. The truth is the players were always hipper than the fans, they knew it wasn’t about accolades, that everybody knew the truth. Funny how culture has changed, today you have to tell everybody how great you are on social media, over and over and over again. Yesterday, you just had to pick out one note, pure and easy, and we all got the message.

Jim just iMessaged asking whether his mother-in-law should get an Echo or a Dot. You know a revolution is brewing when a septuagenarian jumps on the technology bandwagon. It reminds me of 1995, the heyday of AOL.

Now in that year most people did not own computers. Ironically, many said they were waiting for a device you could talk to. But then AOL exploded.

Not that it hadn’t been hiding in plain sight, the online enterprise had launched years before. It wasn’t even first to market, initial traction was gained by CompuServe, Prodigy and GEnie. But none were as easy to use, and ease of use begets buzz. Interestingly, Prodigy was backed by Sears and GEnie by GE, the behemoths were in the know, kind of like Xerox, with PARC. But they gave up too soon, they didn’t adjust on the fly, and they were left in the dust. Proving it’s not always first mover advantage, but continued improvement. AOL was Facebook to its competitors’ MySpace. Hell, even many who tried the ultimate also-rans gave up, there’s no greater frustration than a computer that does not do what you want it to, even if it’s human error. That’s what made the Mac so successful, what ultimately caused Apple to become the most valuable company on the planet, not only ease of use, but the Genius Bar, where those who were inept or time-challenged could make an appointment and be walked through something that most geeks could figure out by themselves. And only geeks were on the other online services.

But AOL was a revelation. It was easy to use. And so exciting. Within twelve months seemingly all of America did sign on, forget that the service did not access the World Wide Web at first, to suddenly be able to hook up with the rest of humanity, both intellectually and socially, was an incredible thrill. You know how you wait for a text or an email on your mobile device? When you logged on to AOL and heard that voice saying “You’ve got mail!” you felt like the most popular person in the world, the dopamine hit was staggering.

That’s where the Echo is now.

Talk about ease of use, you just talk to it. But when it talks back, you get that same tingly feeling you did when you heard “You’ve got mail!” And just like in the early days of AOL, most of what you’re doing with the Echo is unnecessary and irrelevant, but it’s so much damn fun. To the point where you can’t stop talking about it, you’re a member of the club, you want to demonstrate the device’s wares to everybody you encounter.

And at first AOL was like Google search, it spread by word of mouth, not advertising. Which may have you scratching your head when you think of all those giveaway discs you ultimately kept getting in the mail, but despite being available to all, AOL was a secret club, that anybody could join, and you did. First because of the buzz, then because you didn’t want to be left out. You might have heard of the Echo, but you didn’t need one until the buzz reached you, and to this point it’s being sold on word of mouth.

Now once you decided you wanted to play on AOL, you needed a computer. Or if you already had one, a modem. And every couple of months both were improved. Talk about a technology boom, talk about the eradication of the national deficit, funny how technological breakthroughs can benefit the economy. The rich do get richer, because when you’re selling something to everyone with little labor you garner great wealth, but our nation as a whole benefited. And there have been technological breakthroughs since…

But now you don’t need a new phone.

A new computer only once a decade for many people.

But the Echo is a gateway to a whole new world of acquisition, one we’ve been hearing about for years which is just now coming to fruition. Kinda like digital photography, we heard it was going to kill film for a decade and it didn’t, but then, overnight, it did.

Smart home here we come!

There was Nest.

Apple’s been bloviating about the smart home for years.

But with Echo, the public finally gets it. They want their device to control their environment, not only the temperature, but the lights.

Now many forget all the AOL naysayers.  People were addicted! It was gonna end human interaction! The same way they’re uptight about the Echo and privacy. But the truth is you already gave up your privacy, wanna know how? Look at the ads following you around the web, Google and ad networks know all about you already, never mind all the info that’s hiding in plain sight. If you can’t find anybody you ever knew online within half an hour, pictures and everything, you don’t know how to surf, and others do, they can find you. So if you’re afraid of Alexa listening all the time… Amazon says it doesn’t. But that’s not convincing to you, because you’ve got culture shock, you don’t want to throw in with another new device, but everybody else does.

And Apple was the first company with mainstream voice activation, but Siri was a disaster upon launch and still isn’t very good. In this case, Apple appears to be CompuServe/ Prodigy/GEnie.

And Google has a competitive product, but Google’s track record of arriving late and obliterating first movers in new markets is just terrible. It tried to kill Facebook and didn’t come close. As for Google Home… It understands me very well, maybe even a bit better than the Echo, when it hears me, which oftentimes it does not. It seems to have a dead zone in the back, and if I’m not right up close and sometimes even if I still am, I end up yelling at the device and getting frustrated with it, makes me want to use it less, unlike the Echo, which I want to use more and more. And Amazon was brilliant in using the name Alexa, the geeks at Google don’t know how to be hip. “Hey Google”? Where’s the fun in that? And AOL taught us first and foremost it has to be fun. Also, the speaker in Google Home is too small and the device is unattractive. Sure, the Echo might be ugly beautiful, but you never want to be bland.

And unlike Apple, and very much like Microsoft, never forget, the success of AOL coincided with the launch of Windows 95, the Echo is an open system, anybody can play. You’ve got Spotify, but no Apple Music. How can that be?

Amazon is playing a long game wherein it wants to become the standard, and so far it appears to be winning.

Now what killed AOL was the World Wide Web and broadband. Proving that you can be here today and gone tomorrow in tech, and you have to reinvent the wheel every damn day. But every Friday I get an email from Amazon all about new Echo features. Some utilitarian, some just fun, so…

You’re gonna own an Echo, it’s just a matter of when.

Voice activation/response is the latest technological breakthrough. While we were waiting for flying cars, when it looked like there were no breakthroughs on the horizon, it snuck up on us, kinda like AOL back in ’95.

This is only the beginning. In an on demand world, we can now all have a personal concierge, at our beck and call. One we can use and not feel guilty about. One, in the tradition of modern tech, which is not expensive to buy.

This is a juggernaut.

“The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds”

I’m pretty sure most buyers never finished this book.

So why did I?

Maybe it’s fandom, I’m a Michael Lewis believer. He writes well about subjects I find interesting and he’s not self-aggrandizing and thin-skinned like Malcolm Gladwell, whom I’ve lost faith in. But both oftentimes write about science, when neither has any true expertise in the field. And after reading Clayton Christensen’s latest tome I’ve realized you’re much better off going to the source, only oftentimes the source can think, has experience, but can’t write.

Maybe it’s because of my Kindle policy. If I buy it, I read it. My inbox fills up constantly with print supporters, they’re even more vociferous than CD supporters, maybe not foaming at the mouth quite like vinyl supporters. And that’s part of what “The Undoing Project” is about, the investment the old guard has in debunking new theories. I got an email from a friend in Bora Bora telling me she had nothing to read, that the book she’d brought was boring her. I told her I was lying on my bed reading about a new book on my iPhone and went on Amazon and bought it and started reading it right away on my Kindle and was engrossed. Funny how the people addicted to their mobile devices can’t stray from hardcover books. Then there’s a publishing industry that won the war with Amazon by pricing digital copies almost the same as physical ones, and that just doesn’t feel right. And that’s another thing in “The Undoing Project,” how emotions, however irrational, creep into decision-making. If I had the hardcover I could lend it, it could sit on my shelf forever, even though lending can be rare and we end up weighted down by our possessions.

Maybe it’s because of Middlebury. I vividly remember Professor Andrews saying in anthropology freshman year that we were never going to discuss the reading in class, if we’d gotten this far and had trouble comprehending the book we had bigger problems. That was what Middlebury was about, reading. You’d sit in the dorm lounge on sunny afternoons for hours, poring through books you had little interest in, because you knew you’d have to expound upon them in the test, and expound you did, there were no objective exams at Middlebury, only subjective ones, essays, three hours long. So I know how to read a boring book and soldier on. Is this an asset? I oftentimes wonder. We hear all the time about pivoting, but I stay the course, I’m starting to think to my detriment, sometimes you just have to give up.

Like I’m sure most of the purchasers of “The Undoing Project” did.

But the reviews were so good!

Ever since Michiko Kakutani raved about “The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter,” I’ve doubted her opinion. Kinda like Steve Bannon. Who wondered why no one in the media that got the election so wrong lost their job. Because it’s a club, they circle the wagons, and the press keeps doing its job, reporting what it sees as the truth not realizing it didn’t work against Trump yet and it probably never will. And then you’ve got the lefties saying to throw money at the newspapers. Now I get three, but I will never look at them the same way since they got the election wrong. It’s kind of like a spouse lying to you outright. There should at least be consequences. And the truth is Trump and his cronies will not be beaten in the press or at protests but in the election booth. Like the Tea Party the left wing needs to line up Congressional candidates far to the left of Hillary, closer to Bernie, who excite the younger generation and will get people out to vote. But so far, the left has learned nothing from Trump’s election, it’s painful to watch, how the best and the brightest have their heads in the sand. And none of the reviews said “The Undoing Project” was nearly unreadable, they all focused on the bond between the two protagonists, but the truth is this is a story of psychological theory, do you care about that? I can’t say that I do very much, and I would have liked it better if it was a ten page article in “The New Yorker.”

But the media buys the pitch of the publisher and then the public buys the book and no one reads it. But it appears a best-seller. Once upon a time Amazon published how far people got in books, they’ve got that data (yes, you people afraid of Alexa can feel good about your position), but publishers don’t want that information out, certainly not authors. Then it would be like the music business, where we can see on YouTube and Spotify what people are actually listening to, and it oftentimes doesn’t square with sales, never mind the media spin. Hip-hop is even bigger on streaming services. Chew on that for a while.

And then there’s the curious case of “All The Light We Cannot See,” one of the best sellers of the last half decade. I was intrigued at first, but it took me a month to plow through it, because of the writing style. I don’t think that many people finished this book either. More than “The Undoing Project,” but… You see academics and critics laud that which squares with their principles. And if it cuts like butter and it’s easily readable it’s considered pop trash and pooh-poohed. But accessibility is a virtue. Anthony Doerr has won a slew of prizes, but I think they’d be better off going to a more populist writer, then again, the committees don’t want to acknowledge that work. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, and they want to keep it that way. You do know that prizes are a scam, that it’s a club and if you’re not a member the odds of getting one are almost nonexistent. But I will say Doerr’s book does qualify as art. The sense of loss and the suffering and consequences of war and the power of radio… They’re all in there. Funny how we live in a world where emotions are pushed under the rug, when emotions are the only thing worth living for.

So, if you’re gonna read one of these books, read “All The Light We Cannot See.”

As for “The Undoing Project”…

It starts off with an NBA anecdote, you’re riveted, but then it moves on to economics and psychology. You’re waiting for the NBA to return, but it never does. There are detours to a hospital in Canada, but most of the book is dry psychological theory, very important, but written in a fashion and at such length that unless you majored in the subject your eyes will glaze over.

The truth is people don’t act rationally. And economists thought they did. Amos and Danny proved them wrong. Over and over and over again.

We’d like to read the application of their theories, but mostly we just get theories.

And a bit of their interpersonal relationship, but if you’re reading this book for that you’re gonna throw it against the wall.

So what I’m saying here is we have a fact problem in the left wing world. We don’t question our media sources, we accept as a given everything put forth to us. We feel proud that we own unreadable books. We don’t look back and evaluate our choices. We’re overconfident and proud of it.

Not that I’m lauding the down and out Trump voters who don’t read at all and just dig in their heels as they vote for policies against their interest.

But first and foremost we must change us.

When you see people with a house full of books, ask how many they’ve read. Then pull one and quiz them about it. They like showing off, why else build a collection/monument to themselves?

Question authority.

Most learning takes place outside the classroom. Some of the dumbest, least analytical people have college degrees. Find an interest and pursue it.

Know that if you gain traction, if you break taboos, people will come after you, and no matter how much you fight back, you can never shut them up, this is what Amos and Danny realized, it drove Amos nuts.

We live in very dark times. My head is spinning from the inanity of the wall and the support of pipelines and dumb economic policies, but not only must we complain, we must put our faith in leaders and support them. Who is carrying the Democratic torch? Looks like no one at this point. We need someone to be our mouthpiece, and we’ve got to work the refs just like the right, call them on their b.s. when they attack our leader(s).

So it’s no wonder people turn to books.

Just don’t turn to this one.