I’m sick of people telling me what to do. Not my mother, but the tech titans and anybody with an elite college degree seems entitled to pontificate on how I should live my life, as if they’ve got the tablets from God and I’m lost in the wilderness.

The left is the worst on this. Having left behind the working class, wanting nothing to do with the disadvantaged after paying lip service to them at best, the strivers and achievers keep telling us they know better, these people who ruined the economy. Bankers are extremely wealthy but for a long time they blamed borrowers, the people who got into homes who shouldn’t have. But the disadvantaged see what you’ve got and want some of that, meanwhile those at the top control the economy and even those with the best intentions couldn’t pay their mortgage when the crash came.

Used to be we looked to artists for guidance. Back when money was secondary and living outside the law was primary. But today’s “artists” are mini-coporations, they talk about their “brand” and money is their main focus and if they’re not making it they keep bitching about it.

And Bob Dylan famously sang not to follow leaders and watch the parking meters and you may be flummoxed by that lyric but you’re not by those dominating today’s hit parade, which basically say I’ve got a lot and I want more. Kudos to Beyonce for revealing her dirty laundry in public, but “Lemonade” was primarily a victory in marketing, most people haven’t heard it and many don’t want to, but the press keeps telling us she’s a genius. Huh?

But that’s fodder for the masses. Nobodies going nowhere. But if you’re a thinking person you’re inundated with the tales of those who made it to the top, whether it be Larry Ellison telling USC graduates to follow their dream or Sheryl Sandberg telling her brethren to lean in. But the truth is Ellison is not like you or me, you have about as much chance of walking in his footsteps as you do of breaking Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive hit streak. As for Ms. Sandberg, she did a mea culpa, now that she’s a single mother, she had no idea it was so HARD!

Yes, it is.

You may say we need to raise the minimum wage, but you’ve got no idea what life is really like on the bottom. You don’t eat with us, you don’t fly with us, you want nothing to do with us.

The right wing tells us to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps while the left wing says we can come into the big tent, but we’ve got to serve them drinks and dinner.

No wonder the young and disadvantaged are voting for Bernie and Trump.

I just read a story in the “Times” by a woman with four children who says motherhood is not really overwhelming, she’s got plenty of free time. But she’s got a husband and a nanny and she’s on the road giving talks… How many people can live that privileged life?

And speaking of privilege, it’s self-reinforcing. The elite institutions are peopled with the scions of the already rich. And forget affirmative action, the real crime of college is not that you can’t get in, but that you can’t PAY FOR IT!

But we keep reading the stories of the successful, who tell us to just change this or that and we too can be rich. Utter hogwash. And they pay lip service to teachers but they don’t want to pay them like doctors, like they do in Finland, and the doctors themselves don’t make the money of the techies and everybody’s trying to climb the greased pole believing the flaw is with them when the problem is the system.

Just because you’re rich that does not mean you know better, it just means you’re rich.

And once upon a time the rich lived in the same neighborhoods as the middle class. That’s passe. The rich live behind gates, and the middle class can’t live in Manhattan and if you’re never exposed to something how in the hell are you gonna know what’s going on?

That’s the conundrum of the season, how the press got it so wrong on both Bernie and Trump. And now they say they’re adjusting, but I believe their frame of reference is off, how do you konw what’s going down on the farm when you spend all your time in Paree?

A columnist uses his perch to write books and become a celebrity. No one is happy where they are. Everybody thinks they can do better. But not everybody can be rich, we don’t all live in Lake Wobegon.

But they tell us we do. You can’t get a good ticket because the acts scalp their own, you’re just trying to participate and they blame Ticketmaster, which is just a conduit, a middleman that does what the acts tell them to.

But everybody with a buck is telling us what to do. Everybody who went to the Ivy League tells us what to do. As if they were better than us.

THEY’RE NOT!

“In the New Hollywood, Sumner Redstone Is a Man Out of Time”

Nothing’s changed.

Except maybe execs have closer relationships with their offspring. Otherwise, it’s the same as it ever was, pussy and power. Except the execs have more power than they ever did! Talent ain’t king, the man with the money is. And that man has more cash and lives a better lifestyle than any mogul in history. And despite the carping, it usually still is a man. And although the few female executives are not known for their trysts, one thing’s for sure, they can go mano a mano with their male contemporaries, they’re anything but warm and fuzzy.

Bugs me when major media gets it wrong, oftentimes intentionally. The players whitewash the truth if they’ll go on record whatsoever. There’s not a single man pooh-poohing Sumner’s efforts, if anything they ADMIRE HIM!

Except for getting caught.

I’m just saying if you think today’s execs don’t want to get laid as they willfully extract their pound of flesh from anything in their path, you’re not in the game. And it’s not only in media, tech is the worst, you can’t tell those people what to do. They tell YOU what to do. They tell GOVERNMENTS what to do! Yup, coming down on Indiana and North Carolina, the governor of Georgia caved, it’s like a bad Mafia movie.

Used to be the exec was a conduit, a necessary part of the chain who most people were unaware of. Then the “New Yorker” did profiles of them, Tommy Mottola took over Sony Music and today, the execs make much more than the acts, year after year. Warm and fuzzy my ass, cutthroat and duplicitous.

And Rupert Murdoch marrying Jerry Hall may be laughable, because of his age and her need to be with someone rich and famous, but if you don’t think today’s movers and shakers are employing the same playbook, you don’t know that Evan Spiegel is dating Miranda Kerr. Oh, you don’t know who Mr. Spiegel is? Well, believe me, everybody under thirty does, the app titans are the new moguls. But wealthier.

Want to challenge a majordomo? Screw with his lifestyle. Make him fly in the back of the plane, make him fly commercial. Make him drink wine with a screw-top. Make him give up his American Express Centurion card. And not only keep him from having sex, but TALKING ABOUT IT! Oh, these guys talk about the babes, it would horrify you. Especially the language they use and the denigration evidenced. They’re smart enough not to air their dirty laundry in public, but behind closed doors…

Everything’s behind closed doors. Thank god we’ve got the press, but it rarely goes deep enough in any sphere. It’s a tool the rich and famous manipulate, whether it be Kim Kardashian calling up gossip sites to come shoot her at a restaurant or a fat cat employing a PR person to trade stories, to keep out of the press that which will hurt by delivering some other item.

And the press is envious of the players. Reporters too want to fly private and get laid. They’re raring to eat at the trough of these bigwigs, if they can consume more than the crumbs that fall off the table, a ride on the jet, the number one traded currency, or… Meanwhile, the execs paying lip service to them, their benefactors, are laughing behind their backs, how they’ve gotten the better of the reporters.

It’s all smoke and mirrors. A way to keep the proletariat working. As if everybody could write a successful app, everybody could be a YouTube star, everybody could be Lady Gaga. The people bitching loudest about streaming payments don’t get any. But they think they deserve them, because in today’s culture everybody can play and the press keeps trumpeting the stories of the downtrodden who’ve broken through.

It’s almost impossible to break through. Admire the winners for their pluck, for navigating the gauntlet. As for friends, they don’t have any, they’re too busy stabbing each other in the back. Of course they’re nice and charming with the reporters. That’s what they DO! Ask any band that’s been wooed to be signed and can’t get anybody from the label on the horn shortly thereafter. As for actors…good luck collecting on that profit percentage!

Laura M. Holson had a premise and she wrote a story to fit it, damn the truth. The only buzz in Hollywood is that this got public. You always want to keep the sun out, or spin the story if it gets revealed.

And Sumner Redstone is not the only one who thinks he’ll live forever. Doug Morris is 77 and still running Sony Music, he ain’t gonna give up the reins to some young ‘un, not because of the money but because of the power base, he still wants to shake ’em up and let Vivendi know it made a mistake by squeezing him out. And the boys have their toys, and it’s not only planes but babes, and you may wish it isn’t so but just by saying it that does not make it true.

The quotes in this story remind me of “Casablanca,” it’s just the usual suspects rounded up to cover up the truth.

Because the softies, the PC police, those who never made it… Can’t handle the truth.

That men with big appetites don’t restrict their goals to winning, they want so much more. And they take it. Barriers are made to be broken. Do you think they’re going to go gently into that good night?

It’s not in their character.

Neither then nor now.

The Power of the Dog

I’m hooked on this book.

And you could be too, maybe.

It’s not the kind of thing I read, the “Baltimore Sun” called it a “thriller,” and I don’t read genre books, no mysteries, nothing plot driven, I’m looking for a volume to touch my soul, but I started reading this and it keeps calling to me, chewing up my evenings, making me mad I have to turn out the light at night.

Steve Martin messengered it over. No, not the famous actor/writer/musician, I don’t know him, funny how you can live in the same town and not ever come across somebody but there are those who live thousands of miles away that you see all the time, like Steve Martin of APA. We were at dinner, talking about reading, and he started raving.

And the very next day there was a messenger at my door, with a package from Book Soup. How much did that trip cost? Couldn’t Steve just send me a Kindle version?

I hate the book business. Because they made Kindle books as expensive as the physical versions. In this case, the paperback “Power Of The Dog” costs LESS than the Kindle take and that makes no sense, there’s no printing, no shipping, no returns… but you can’t stay in the way of people inured to the old game, until it all collapses and they wonder where their lunch went. Ten plus bucks for an album of files is ridiculous, and now it’s all about streaming, and don’t blame Spotify, don’t even blame YouTube, they’re saviors, before that it was all piracy all the time and you didn’t get paid at all.

And what I love about Kindle books is I always have a device with me, I don’t have to schlepp the book around. In a stolen moment I can read the same damn book on my iPad or iPhone, it’s always in reach, today’s all about access, who’d want to sacrifice that?

And despite this being the golden age of the written word, hell, it’s king on the internet, there’s so much bad writing that when you encounter something good it’s a pleasure, you don’t want to put it down.

Don Winslow can write.

But despite getting the book back in February, I didn’t crack the cover until last weekend, when I finished Angela Duckworth’s “Grit,” don’t read it, it won’t quite put you to sleep but it’s close, she may be a good researcher but she’s a mediocre writer. I only opened “The Power Of The Dog” so I could tell Steve I tried. But it cut like butter, I was immediately involved.

In a twisted tale of dope dealing.

There’s the hooker with the heart of gold, the young punks who mess with the Mafia in NYC. Even the cocaine cowboys of Colombia. But what makes “The Power Of The Dog” work is the history, of Mexico, Central and South America. Because we in the U.S.A. are clueless, we’re lucky if we know what’s going on in the next town, George W. Bush was elected President and he’d never even left the country! But his father was involved in the shenanigans in Central America…

That’s where the CIA operates, fighting communism, and on so many sides of the coin that you cannot spend it, it won’t fit in the slot machine, it will only bring you tsuris instead of winnings.

What really happened in Nicaragua? Which side were the Sandinistas on? And guns for hostages with dope in the middle…

“The Power Of The Dog” explains it all.

And I’d whip out some great quotes if I read the digital version, where you can highlight and collect them quickly.

And I don’t want to reveal the plot, like every lame reviewer extant.

I just want to give you the vibe. What if you got caught up in something you couldn’t get out of, knowing it would all end badly, but enjoying yourself along the way? What if in your travels you encountered politics and dealt with so many players you were no longer sure which side was right or wrong? Then you’d be involved in the story in this book.

It’s a long tome. I still have a hundred pages to go. And there’s a sequel, “The Cartel.” And it’s not everybody’s piece of candy, but if you like a long hard slog, if you like a dope or Mafia movie, you’ll go down the rabbit hole and think this is what life’s about, story.

Some of the descriptions go on too long. Some of the characters are two-dimensional. Sometimes there’s too much plot. But when you read “The Power Of The Dog” you suddenly understand what all the shooting and the addiction and the government programs are about. You get a feel for the miasma. You examine motivations, wonder if we can ever get along, if there are any solutions.

Books are interesting. In that you can’t sample them, you’ve got to read them. Someone can tell you about a track and you can immediately check it out and get it. A movie only takes an hour or two. But a book is a commitment.

And you never know what to read and you never know if you share the same taste, you’re stumbling in the wilderness for something that resonates and then you devour it and it’s over, you’re hungry for more but there isn’t any.

If you’re going on vacation. If you’re looking for something to eat up the long nights. If you want to know more about a life you never lived.

CHECK IT OUT!

No, not the seventies dance craze, but that classic Southern California interaction wherein an optimistic girl or gent spins their dream and tries to convince you to get on board.

Last night I had dinner at the Soho House, a private club of which I am not a member, speaking to its exclusivity. Upon arrival in L.A. the rooftop joint was seen as a gathering place for the connected, to see and be seen, because L.A. is a visual culture, how you look, showing off, is key.

But now the place has been overrun with wannabes. People strutting around like they’re somebody even though they’re unrecognizable. Yes, that’s one of the Los Angeles sports, we may not have a playing professional football team, but we look for stars every day, and we find them. At the grocery store, the car wash and at dinner. We’re all looky-loos.

And last night I did see someone, it was Miley Cyrus. Didn’t she have somewhere better to go?

It’s one thing to see someone famous at a fine dining establishment. It’s another to be up close and personal with a famous face at a place I can get into. I always thought the rich and famous hung where we did not.

True.

But mostly they’re techies and bankers, people with real money.

Entertainers ain’t got that cash.

But they used to.

Used to be you went to L.A. to make your dream come true. Didn’t matter if you had an Ivy League degree or were a graduate of the school of hard knocks. You shined up your personality and started doing the hustle. The only people who went to the head of the line were those with famous parents. And if you met one, you did your best to attach your star to them.

But most people were nobody from nowhere just like you. And you listened to the stories and had meetings and hung out thinking that you were getting ahead and living the life, that if you just paid enough dues you were gonna make it.

But then the dream changed.

Movies became about comic books. No one even knows who runs the studios anymore, they used to be the most famous people in town.

As for music, the record labels consolidated and the billboards were excised from the Sunset Strip, soon to go are the clubs. All that’s left is condos and restaurants.

And it turns out people have to hang somewhere, I was stunned how crowded the boulevard was at midnight, with lanes blocked off for pedestrians waiting to get in. What is so enticing? What are they trying to achieve? Is this just a second tier tryst for those destined to dash their dreams and end up living in a far-off valley doing day jobs?

That’s another element of Hollywood, it weeds out those not up to par. There’s an endless supply of new faces and if you don’t gain a toehold you’re squeezed out. Some go home, most rationalize their decline. Their day job becomes their real job or they or their significant other gets pregnant and suddenly you’re buying real estate and you find out it’s far from your old haunts.

But until that fall from grace… You go to the gym, a toned body is everything in L.A., you go to the right places and you try to get ahead.

But now if you’re educated, if you’ve paid your dues, you want nothing to do with this game, with its false hopes and culling of the herd.

Used to be doctors and lawyers, professionals around the world, looked with envy at the shenanigans in Los Angeles. They did what their parents told them, they played it safe, they had their nest egg, but they did not have fun, they did not live free and easy, their dreams were things they only thought of at night, when they put their heads on their pillows.

But then something changed. Life became tougher. The bottom was nowhere to reside. Hell, you used to be able to live in L.A. on far less than a grand a month, now that’s a couple of dinners for you and your buddies. So those with brains trained their sights on new locations. Watergate killed the gravitas of attorneys, you refrain from telling people you’re a member of the Bar and law school applications are way down, why spend so much to make so little, if you can make any at all? And the doctors themselves helped kill the status of the medical profession, bitching that they were only making hundreds of thousands instead of millions. And all that science was too hard anyway. So the truly gifted went into tech and the mules, those who know how to jump through hoops but need the hoops laid out for them, went into consulting, or banking, They wanted to make that money.

And there’s a whole hell of a lot more money in those fields than entertainment. And a star ain’t what it used to be. They’re not looked up to and they’re not rich. They’re just striving to eat some of the crumbs falling off of the table of those with the true dough.

And if it’s solely glamour you’re interested in, you can go to Miami, it’s much closer to New York anyway.

And if you just want to spend money and party, nothing is better than Vegas, where you can throw off your inhibitions and nothing is written down, although you may appear on Instagram.

And if you’ve got no education, if you’ve got no CV whatsoever, you come to Hollywood, to try to make it on your wits, charm and good looks. It’s every person for themselves, hustlers abound.

They’ll tell you where they’ve been, who they’ve seen, who they’ve hung with. Locations and personalities are the hustler’s currency. And the great thing is none of this can be checked. There’s no LinkedIn for parties. And Facebook won’t tell you what you want to know. Is this person really engaged to so and so? Do they really have a development deal at the studio? Are they rich or broke and just waiting for you to buy them a drink?

Who the hell knows.

It’s disconcerting. In the old days it was the only way to play. Now it appears to be a complete waste of time. An endless reality show where you lie, cheat and steal for attention, and then are instantly forgotten.

And in today’s world where nothing lasts it’s all about the money. And if they had any would they really be showing up here?