He’s done.

And he’s the only one who doesn’t know it.

If you’re addicted to this story, I recommend not only that you subscribe to Apple News+. but that you click on the “Following” button in the lower right hand corner and when the menu/list comes up, select “Election 2024,” right there at the top, under the heading “Special Coverage.”

Of course you’ll see the headlines, but that’s not the nougat.

You’ll scroll past said headlines, and then the podcasts, and then you’ll get the “Latest Stories.” Scroll past the big blue box and you’ll find the “For You” section, which is the heart of the matter, to quote Don Henley.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about Henley for weeks now. He’s got that great line in “The End of the Innocence”:

“this tired old man that we elected king”

That was about Reagan, even though by time the song was released Ronald was gone, from the office and mentally. In case you’re too young to remember, Reagan had Alzheimer’s and they covered it up. And they wonder why no one trusts the government…

So when you get to the “Latest Stories” and “For You” sections, you will get up to the minute headlines/stories. It’s better than Google, because the detritus is filtered out. Just about every news source is there, other than the “New York Times,” because the Gray Lady don’t need no stinkin’ Apple. While the rest of print media is on its deathbed, the “Times” has burgeoned, triumphed, it’s America’s newspaper, no matter how much those on the right and the extreme left hate it.

And there was a trifecta of negativity posted on the “Times” site today.

You had the editorial board itself saying “The Democratic Party Must Speak the Plain Truth to the President.”

Even better was “James Carville: Biden Won’t Win. Democrats Need a Plan. Here’s One.”

And then the number one Biden defender, Paul Krugman, turned tail on the man whose economic achievements he can’t stop trumpeting: “Please, Mr. President, Do the Right Thing.”

Maureen Dowd even weighed in earlier in the day, breaking her once a week schedule with “Joe Biden, in the Goodest Bunker Ever.” Dowd skewered the Biden team for trying to correct the Stephanopoulos transcript. Did you watch? The man was clearer, but once again you could barely hear him, his voice was so soft. And there were faux pas, the media is pointing them out ad infinitum.

But it’s not only the media. On X/Twitter, Hillary Rosen, late of the RIAA, excoriated Biden for blaming it all on “elites.”

“This desire to wedge the ‘Dem elite’ against ‘regular folk’ is bad. The elite are actually late to concerns about Biden. A majority of voters have been concerned about this for the last two years. And he has a 36% approval rating. If he doesn’t step down to increase our chances of winning, then yeah, we’ll have to circle the wagons, and I am a soldier against Trump, but please stop pretending or casting blame. President Biden and his behavior alone is responsible for this problem – not the voters, not the media, not his opponents, not the party and not the elite. #MorningJoe”

The irony is that the party elite is the cause of this problem. It’s the rank and file who’ve been saying Biden is too old for eons. 

“A New York Times/Sienna College poll last week showed that 74 percent of voters said Mr. Biden was too old to be effective, including 59 percent of Democrats.”

And the piece-de-resistance came from Jon Stewart tonight, “‘Get on board or shut the f*ck up’ is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker.”

It’s positively laughable I tell you.

But it seems the press is the only one with balls. Except for Meathead, maybe:

“It’s time to stop f*cking around… It’s time for Joe Biden to step down.”

That’s what Rob Reiner said on X/Twitter on Sunday.

And you might think the media doesn’t matter.

And you may ask yourself where is your large automobile, where is your beautiful house, where is your beautiful wife.

And then you’ll realize David Byrne was prescient, for it’s the same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

Joe Biden is living in the White House, defended by Jill, and it’s starting to resemble high school politics. We duly elected officials will dictate!

And the students and the public will laugh.

Biden is out of touch. In some ways just like Hillary Clinton back in 2016. She couldn’t sense the change in the air, that people were fed up with the politics of the day. And no one saw her as honest and trustworthy. The woman who once proffered facetiously that she could stay home and bake cookies then said her favorite book was the Bible. Talk about pandering.

But it’s bigger than that. We live in a changed society. A pastrami sandwich is not only under a buck, it’s over twenty dollars today, up from just under that threshold before the recent inflation. And said inflation was not caused by Biden and he did a good job of handling it, but that does not mean people are not struggling.

But how would he know? Biden’s in a bubble. He’s not scrolling social media, he is not taking the temperature of the country, he’s just listening to what his handlers say, and they’re oftentimes saying exactly what he wants to hear, or canards they want him to hear.

Used to be lawyers, businessmen, had secretaries, who were ultimately labeled “assistants,” even though the job didn’t change. But today everybody does their own typing. If you can’t type, you’re screwed. But all the young ‘uns know how to type, they’ve been doing it on their devices since not long after birth.

And there’s the generation gap.

It’s a great big country and Biden is completely detached.

And what does he fall back on? THE RULES!

I’m chuckling as I write this. The law is irrelevant if you can’t enforce it. And a contract oftentimes doesn’t even matter. Forget the cost, both financially and to your career, of a lawsuit, many defendants are judgment proof. And even if they’ve got money winning and collecting are two different things. Can you say “Alex Jones?”

Anybody in business will tell you the legal system comes last. It’s the option of last resort. Because the legal system is imperfect, but even more important, oftentimes it doesn’t apply.

You can rely on the law, but if the court of public opinion is against you, if your team is against you, you’re toast.

Like Biden.

But after playing team politics for so long, too many elected Democratic officials are afraid of going public with their truth, that they want Biden to drop out of the race. They think they might be excommunicated, like Liz Cheney. But that’s the Republican party. Then again, are the Democrats now as bad?

I mean isn’t that what we all want, some truth? Mr. Smith in Washington? Someone who leads?

But it’s like that Snoop Dogg song, everybody’s dropping it while it’s hot. Hoping that someone else will do their dirty work. First and foremost, the press.

But ultimately it will probably be like Nixon. Who fought his expulsion tooth and nail, was defiant, until he wasn’t. You see his own party came to the White House and said he had to go, that he couldn’t beat the legal system.

And Biden can’t beat Trump. He’s a laughingstock for stating that if Trump wins he’ll be fine with it, “as long as I gave it my all and I did the good (the White House’s words, everybody else heard “goodest”) as job as I know I can do…”

How narcissistic.

And the truth is it’s not about Trump. This is where Biden and his team have been delusional from the start. They thought painting Trump negatively was enough to win, but this is not true, you’ve got to play offense, lay out a plan of action, deliver something people can believe in as opposed to trying to scare them into voting for you.

This has been hysterical, only this has been our life for almost the past two weeks.

This reminds me of Paul Tsongas, who was running for President, testifying he had beaten cancer, and then ultimately died of the disease just a few years later.

That’s a politician for you. They’ll say and do anything to get the job and keep it. They’re about as trustworthy as a used car salesman.

And while we’re talking used… Does anybody, and I mean anybody, want to put their faith in an eighty six year old to run the country? I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden dies before that age. But he’s going to will himself to live and be cogent, if not spry, long beyond that.

I’ve got cancer. And I’m going to tell you what the research says, that believing you’ll beat it has no effect on the disease. It runs its own course. Believe all you want, but if the genetics say you’re going to go, you’re going to be history.

But this is the same America where the short believe they can play in the NBA. The untalented believe they can be musical stars. Everybody feels entitled to success in their vertical of choice, but that’s not the way it works, never has and never will.

The doors are closing on Biden and he thinks they’re wide open. That by trying to defend a piss-poor performance that was beyond a bad night he can make people deny what they saw, never mind instituting his action plan more than a week after the incident.

And there were the questions for that radio interview… The host lost their job over that, why not Biden? Who is horrific off the cuff, but not too good even if there’s a script. Talk about making a hash of the language, to the point where people aren’t even sure of the point he was making.

Biden is going to wake up when he’s forced to. Oh, he’ll never admit he’s not worthy of running, not a feisty on the ball man, but they’re going to take the ball from him just like they do from the starting pitcher in Major League Baseball. Yes, when the pitcher shows signs of tiredness, weakness, they pull him and replace him. But we can’t do that with Biden, he earned his place in the race!

What a crock of crap.

Once again, the rules are guidelines, they are enforced at the will of the people, who don’t always abide by them.

So how does it end for Biden?

As Ernest Hemingway put it… “Gradually, then suddenly.”

NEXT!

https://t.ly/qKpqg

This is for all of you who complain too many books are bummers.

You know David Nicholls. Probably through “One Day.” It was a movie and now a series on Netflix. Not that I’ve seen either. I rarely watch a production of something I’ve read, it’s too compressed, it’s not the vision I have in my head, it’s always inferior to the reading experience, The only movie that I’ve ever seen that is better than the book is “Wonder Boys,” you know, the film with the last great Bob Dylan song, “Things Have Changed.”

And there’s a similarity here in that I read Michael Chabon’s “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” and then had to read its follow-up, the aforementioned “Wonder Boys.” But unlike with David Nicholls, I haven’t read all of Chabon’s work, despite the hosannas, I too often found it was a bit difficult and didn’t resonate, however I did enjoy “Telegraph Avenue.”

I started with “One Day,” Nicholls’s 2009 book. I read a review and then purchased it on Amazon just after I got my Kindle. Nicholls’s books are slight, but somewhat literary. You don’t feel like you’re slumming.

And the feeling of “Sweet Sorrow” really resonated with me, so I reserved the new one, “You Are Here.”

Which I completely missed the hype on. I stumbled on it in some reading I did. How could David Nicholls have a new book and I not be aware of it? That’s the modern era, blink and you miss it.

So on the surface, “You Are Here” seems simple. It’s about a hike across England and you know there’s going to be a romance. In other words, it’s pretty predictable. But not completely. And although I am now inspired to walk across England, what impressed me most was the nailing of the inner dialogue of romance, how the individual feels and acts, the nature of connection.

You’ve got your eyes on someone…

Maybe someone set you up, and you end up wondering if they even know you.

That’s the point. Marnie wants to exchange stories. She doesn’t want to be bored by a pharmacist talking about Formula One.

There might be women who want the external, who are entranced by the penumbra, how someone looks, what they own, how much money they have, but the majority want someone they can connect with, that they can talk to, who will listen to them, who they can exchange stories with.

What does it take to open someone up? Is it even possible to open them up?

And to what degree are you haunted by your baggage, do you own it, do you reveal it?

Get to a certain age and we all have romantic failures. And no matter what happened, we don’t feel completely good about them. I was listening to a podcast with Bill Maher and Penn Jillette and Maher said he is still haunted by the teenage girlfriend who dumped him. That’s how deep it cuts, not that you can get many men to admit it.

Marnie is too isolated. She works at home and is not rolling in dough. And as the years have passed…she notices the change.

Michael is a teacher who is stuck. Covid led to his wife moving out… (Yes, we now have books where Covid is a feature, not a bug.) And on some level he’s not living in the real world, he’s on his own planet, he believes the solitary life works for him, but does it really?

So the whole book is about Marnie and Michael coming together. You can see it from page one. But the description of who everybody is, their inner thoughts, makes the book worth reading.

I mean to what degree are we trapped by our choices, how do we get out of our own ruts? Have we lost touch with what we used to want? Are we burdened by our losses?

But there’s that spark.

And a lot of missed signals.

“You Are Here” is an easy read. Two days if you want. Maybe less. But even though I knew where it was going, a whole world was created, and not only did I end up knowing these people, I could see myself in some of these characters.

https://t.ly/5zw97

This is a wild book.

What do I know about Miranda July? That she was part of the riot grrrl scene, that she was more than a musician, a performance artist, and although exalted, she lived on the fringe of commerciality.

Which delivered a ton of credibility, then again it was not easy for me to get over the change of her name from Grossinger to July (not that I knew it had been Grossinger, I learned that from Wikipedia doing research about her after starting the book). When someone has a generic last name, nothing you’d find out in the wild, it kind of sticks in my craw. It’s such a statement.

But the bottom line is Miranda lived on my periphery. I knew who she was, kinda, but my knowledge was barely an inch deep.

And then “All Fours” got great reviews. Made the best seller list. And that interested me. Because I knew July was left of center, I knew she would produce something different, far from traditional, and that’s the kind of thing that intrigues me. Although July is only fifty, this challenge of orthodoxy, coloring outside the lines, is a value we had in the sixties, and I miss it.

Not that I would have laid down cash, I reserved “All Fours” at the library, via Libby, which I highly recommend. Did you see the Kindle is having a revival as a result of BookTok?

“How the Kindle Became a Must-Have Accessory (Again) – the e-reader has become the gadget of choice on #BookTok”

Free link: https://t.ly/KtAt0

You know I’ve got a bug up my butt about the Kindle backlash. The naysayers, the Luddites, lost in music, the CD died and streaming took over, but the oldsters who control the book business stopped the Kindle in its tracks, because reading must be done on paper, they like the feel of a physical book, and they like displaying the spine in their collection to impress guests, even though they’ll probably never pick up the book again. But just like with MP3s and streaming, the little girls understand. And women do drive the book business, and when you try to impress your set in mud beliefs upon younger generations, they often reject them, be wary of this.

So I started reading “All Fours” and it was not what all the reviews said it was about, menopause.

Now maybe if you’re a male you’re not interested in menopause. But I’ll tell you you are interested in girls, and the more insight you gain into the opposite sex the more headway you’ll make, you want to show interest, compassion, understanding.

Not that I recommend the average male pick up “All Fours,” I think many couldn’t handle it, or wouldn’t be interested.

And in truth at first I wasn’t interested either. I stopped and started multiple times.

But then the book started to pick up.

Let’s see, there’s a cross-country trip. And classification of those who do such a thing and those who don’t, Drivers and Parkers. Which one are you?

Oh, let me add that what kept me reading was when the main character said she was working all the time and missing out on life. She loved to work, she needed to get ahead, but what experiences eluded her? This is a question those trying to get somewhere ask ourselves on a regular basis, especially in this world where all the wasted time has been excised by Covid. That’s right, the drive to the doctor, that’s been eliminated, so many appointments are virtual. You have to make an effort to socialize outside work, it’s not easy to do and you’re constantly asking yourself whether you’re wasting time.

And then the book takes a left turn. It’s fantastical. Money is spent on something no one would ever lay down for. You think you’re living in a world that has no relation to reality.

But then it all starts to make sense.

And about sixty percent of the way through menopause finally starts to be mentioned.

Let me ask you, do you still feel sexy, desirable? Men and women. Do you think genetics has something to do with your loss of libido? This is investigated in “All Fours,” yet not so much clinically but in a frenzy of the individual dealing with aging and being concerned with time passing them by.

And crushes… Do you act on them?

And what is a marriage anyway?

In truth, “All Fours” tracks relatively closely to July’s life. But write what you know, right?

And it still takes a while to get into. It’s not difficult, but you just don’t know where it’s going, you’re not hooked.

And then you are.

“All Fours” has an artistic sensibility. You know, one in which money doesn’t come first. Where it’s all about asking questions and pushing boundaries.

If you’re over forty and a woman, I highly recommend “All Fours.”

Then again, if you’re hooked on nonfiction, if your books need to be set centuries ago, if questioning everything about your life doesn’t resonate, maybe it’s not for you.

And men…

“All Fours” is a cultural landmark. It’s anything but me-too. You haven’t read anything like it. But it’s not like Jennifer Egan, “All Fours” does not come from a literary tradition. It comes from…

A riot grrrl tradition. As in a rock sensibility that believes women have power and can do exactly what the men do. Furthermore, everything is up for grabs, norms, if not thrown completely out the window, need to be questioned.

“All Fours” is not the kind of literary fiction your facilitated book group will read, but it will engender tons of conversation nonetheless.

I finished it almost a week ago, but I keep thinking about it. I’m not haunted by it, and it’s not so much about the questions, but throwing off the shackles, a life in which everything is up for grabs, after all we only get one chance at life and we want to make the most of it.

The three major labels are not releasing enough product.

You’ll find this interesting:

“Netflix, Amazon Lead With 53% of Original Streaming Title Orders in First Quarter of 2024, Study Finds – The growth comes from increased investment in international territories, according to Ampere Analysis”: https://t.ly/GKdEC

Production at Netflix and Amazon is dramatically up, meanwhile, their competitors are hardly making anything at all. Look at the graph.

How are you supposed to win if you do not play?

The majors are operating on a dead paradigm. The same one that killed the movie studios. Make less product and have it theoretically appeal to everybody while marketing the hell out of it.

Meanwhile, the niches are triumphing.

In movies you’ve got moonshots. A lot of sequels. Despite the hosannas over this past weekend’s grosses, with the success of the latest Minions and Pixar movies, the road does not go on forever, at some point the public burns out on what you’ve been purveying, then you’re screwed.

Netflix gets bigger and its competitors keep falling further behind. If this were the labels, they’d rest on their laurels, but Netflix is doubling-down. It is not worried so much about this quarter’s profit, but profit down the line.

Now Lucian Grainge bought market share when Universal purchased EMI. But that was about history, that was about catalog, that was not about the future.

And that’s what the labels rely on, catalog, it’s nearly free money.

But they are hemorrhaging market share in the new music world. They’ve streamlined the operation, there is very little investment, today it’s about growth, not quarterly Wall Street numbers.

We live in an era of niches. And when it comes to new product, you must release a ton of it, because you never know what will resonate with the public.

There’s less and less of a reason to sign with a major label. It’s not interesting in building from the bottom, only from the top. It doesn’t want small projects, just like the movie studios. And look where that led them, their lunch was eaten by Netflix.

Now is the time for the majors to staff up, to release more product, to prepare for the future. Now it’s more like the sixties and the seventies, never mind eighties.

Both movies and music were warped by the blockbuster mentality. It started with “Jaws” and “Star Wars” in movies, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and a bunch of diamond certifications in music thereafter.

But those days are through. As is MTV, which powered the success of so much of that product. Hell, Paramount Global was just sold at the equivalent of a fire sale price. Why? Because the business didn’t invest in the future, there was no vision, only maintenance. If you don’t have a plan for the future, you’re going to be eclipsed.

What exactly is the plan for the major labels?

More records in more genres. Period. That’s how you prepare for the future.

The labels have a misconception that they can hoover up any act that is successful in the independent sphere. But the price is too high. Acts no longer want to give up that action. It might be worth it if you’ve got a Spotify Top 50 hit, but most acts today fall outside that construct. Radio doesn’t help them and TV has become irrelevant. What is the label going to do for its money? It looks like a bad deal. And it’s only going to get worse. We’re at the tipping point now.

The labels believe we live in a pop world. But that would be ignoring the jet fuel of this business, the left field, the different, the alternative, which burgeoned in the late sixties and seventies on FM. Never in the history of the music business has it been less about hits, NEVER!

But the labels are still focusing on the hit business. Still locked into release schedules.

All bets are off today. It’s all about innovation, risk. Gaining traction with the public is a difficult, nearly impossible task. Which is why you must play more often, which is why Netflix and Amazon are making so much product.

The barriers to entry in the live business are substantial. Good luck competing with AEG or Live Nation. But Universal, Sony and Warner? Piece of cake. Of course they’ve got a financial advantage, the revenue thrown off from their catalogs, but concomitantly the cost of production and the barrier to entry has never been lower.

The labels don’t want to start something, they want to finish it. They don’t want to nurture from scratch, they want to glom on to the project. The first thing they’ll ask you is about your socials, isn’t it their job to build your career?

You have to build it, or buy those who build it. This is what happens in tech. Microsoft lost a step because it wasn’t innovative, it purchased its OS and then built upon it. It wasn’t until recently that the company has recovered.

As for Amazon… It’s well-documented that the company is driven by AWS, Amazon Web Services, and that has nothing to do with retail.

Apple buys less and believes in innovation. Will the juggernaut continue as Steve Jobs retreats further and further into the rearview mirror?

Music is the most nimble of art forms. But it’s become the most complacent, the most stable seen through the lens of the major label. Do we need another pop star, another rapper? Now is the time klezmer music can break through. And its audience might be limited, but when you combine it with folk, bluegrass, electronica and the rest of the niches you have a monolith. And one leg supports the edifice when another fails.

This is what happened in the ski business. If you own multiple ski resorts around the world, you can still succeed if weather is bad in one area. The successes make up for the losses. But you’ve got to prepare for this game. You’ve got to have vision.

There’s no vision in the major label world.