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I feel kinda weird writing during the Oscars. People are e-mailing me and I’ve got a bit of FOMO, but not enough to turn on the show. Tomorrow it will be history, and what I missed today won’t matter. Even worse, nothing seems to matter to everybody these days. Although that’s a great Bonnie Raitt song, from “Give It Up, her best album, until decades later “Luck of the Draw” came along to eclipse it. Even more amazing, “Nothing Seems to Matter” was written by Bonnie, a rare event. It’s the second song on the first side, which is the one with the “hits,” but I always played the second side more, for a long time, until the aforementioned “Luck of the Draw,” “Too Long at the Fair” was my favorite Bonnie Raitt song, albeit written by Joel Zoss. And the second side ends with Bonnie’s version of “Love Has No Pride,” before it became a standard when done by Linda Ronstadt, albeit years after it was released in ’73. But after “Too Long at the Fair” comes a rollicking version of Jackson Browne’s “Under the Falling Sky,” which is different from the original on Jackson’s debut, but nearly as memorable. And then comes the Sippie Wallace/Jack Viertel “You Got to Know How,” which I never loved, but then comes “You Told Me Baby,” also written by Raitt, just before the aforementioned closer, “Love Has No Pride.” And on a good system you can hear the tape hiss, when records were recorded analog and it was more important to get the emotion right than be perfect, mistakes were left in, because after all it’s a performance, if you try to get it exactly right you oftentimes excise the soul. And Bonnie was still relatively unknown, a college favorite, but if you don’t fall in love with her after hearing “Nothing Seems to Matter” and “You Told Me Baby,” you don’t want to let go. And after they gave up trying to steer Bonnie on to the hit parade, she wrote another killer, with her now ex-husband, “One Part Be My Lover,” which I loved, but today it’s the title cut of “Luck of the Draw” that resonates. I’ll make it very simple:

“These things we do to keep the flame burnin’

And write our fire in the sky”

That’s the L.A. story, hanging in there, waiting for your big break, which may never come. And Paul Brady wrote “Luck of the Draw,” I was just talking to Dann Huff about him, he’s one of the greats, and I don’t think I sold the Dann Huff podcast heavily enough, he’s so honest, you’ll not only learn so much, you’ll get a feel for the unpredictable roadmap of a musician.

But this is about books.

The most eagerly anticipated book of the year was “To Paradise,” by Hanya Yanagihara. You know if you have to read it. Not that I can recommend it. You see Yanagihara’s previous book, “A Little Life,” was a slow burner, as in it took a while for the public to adopt it. We’re so used to being driven by the hype, but it’s the stuff that doesn’t jump out of the box that truly ends up reaching and touching us. And it took at least a year for all the recommendations to reach me, because on the surface “A Little Life” is not appealing, but it’s an adventure you can’t get anywhere else. But you’ve got to be able to accept negativity and loss. Which reflects life. People tell me they want nothing negative, they want more shows like “Ted Lasso,” but that’s a fantasy, real life is grittier, that’s what truly resonates and lasts, like “A Little Life.” “To Paradise” is split into three sections, and the end of the first is fantastic, but then the scene changes. People like the second section, but I prefer the third, set in a climate-affected future. You read and you can feel what it might be like. But if you’re at all intrigued, start with “A Little Life.” And if you want to know more about Yanagihara, read the profile in “The New Yorker”: https://bit.ly/3IJG51C She’s not part of the New York literary scene, the book business. Which is a controlled cabal with its own judgments. Her day job is running “T Magazine” for “The New York Times,” and she reflects how they can’t fire her, because of her ethnicity, because she’s a woman. And this self-knowledge is sprinkled throughout, Yanagihara knows she’s not beautiful, most of us are not, but in a world where everybody is b.s.’ing 24/7 it’s refreshing to encounter honesty.

Anyway, one book you need to read is “American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins. I know, you couldn’t read it after the controversy, but that was years ago. Yes, after being anointed by Oprah, the politically correct police came down on the book because it’s about the Mexican experience and Cummins is not Mexican. But the book is so good! Doesn’t that trump everything? And no one is preventing someone of Mexican heritage from writing a book about this experience, it’s not like the doors are closed. I mean would I be bothered if a non-Jew wrote a great Holocaust book? Absolutely not, greatness trumps everything. And Cummins has Latina heritage, and despite the blowback it turns out you still can’t get “American Dirt” from the library, it took me months, I reserved it on a whim. And this book is UNPUTDOWNABLE! I can’t say I love the style of writing, but it doesn’t interfere with the plot, the experience. Actually, Don Winslow wrote about “La Bestia,” the train migrants ride atop, in his book “The Border,” and Winslow is a better, more gripping writer than Cummins, but Cummins’s book rings more true. At first you’re hooked by “American Dirt,” then you can put it down, but about thirty five percent along…you’ll stay up all night reading it, to finish it. I started at 5 PM and finished at 11 and was happy about the whole experience, I guarantee it’s better than the Oscars, fiction is always better than fact, it’s more truthful.

And the other book I want to recommend is “Mercy Street,” by Jennifer Haigh. Haigh is the opposite of Yanagihara, in that she went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and too much of the output of the graduates of that school is mannered, overwritten, focused on words more than plot. That’s what passes for “literature” today. Where to me, it’s all about a great story, it trumps the writing, all the time. But having said that, I was stunned by some of the mistakes in the book, there were just too many, I had to go back to the beginning to see who the publisher was, turns out it’s Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, a first rate operation, but “Mercy Street” definitely needed one more proofread. The cop is driving a Charger and then moments later he’s in a Tahoe. I expect these inconsistencies in rock biographies, but not in top level fiction. And I started reading “Mercy Street” and got immediately hooked, Haigh can write, the characters come alive, you’re taken immediately out of everyday life, you’re right there in the story, a great escape. And you think the book is about Claudia, but then it switches and there are other major characters and you think it’s becoming predictable, but ultimately it’s not, not that it’s completely satisfying. The ride is really good, the feelings engendered, it’s just that the story ultimately is not as innovative as you want it to be, but having said that I spent five hours finishing it last night, I wanted to know what happened, but also I was enjoying the ride.

Would I have enjoyed the Oscar ride?

Have you caught the negative blowback? It’s everywhere. You know you’ve got a problem when the press has declared you dead and you’re unaware of it. There’s the “Los Angeles Magazine” article everybody’s been e-mailing me, and that story in the WaPo saying the ceremony should be on Netflix, which I agree with, and have said previously. It’s just that the world moved and the Oscars did not, kind of like rock.

Then again, is Bonnie Raitt rock? She’s got a new album coming…the hype is beginning, it was in this week’s “Pollstar.”

But one thing is for sure, we’re looking for peak experiences. And when we have them we tell everybody about them. Which I’m doing now. Check ’em out.

Bonnie Raitt Spotify Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3Ln9sbE

“A Little Life”: https://amzn.to/3LhynO3

“To Paradise”: https://amzn.to/3LikW0e

“American Dirt”: https://amzn.to/3Nrp8wI

“Mercy Street”: https://amzn.to/3DeJXqe

“Are the Oscars Over?”: https://bit.ly/387WEb1

“The Oscars are niche entertainment now. Just let Netflix stream them.”: https://wapo.st/3tK1nIh

You’ll have a hard time finding another person who listens to the same new music as you. Of course you can go online, or go to a gig and find acolytes of the same act, but the odds of going to work, hanging with friends, and finding commonality in new musical tastes is extremely rare.

Playlists did not solve the new music discovery problem. We used to depend on radio to introduce us to new music, then we depended on MTV, now searching for new tunes you like is like looking for a needle in a haystack. How many new tunes can you listen to at one time anyway? And who are the creators of the playlists, which only work as background listening anyway. If you’re a dedicated music fan and you can listen to every song on a playlist…I don’t believe it. The only exception is Rap Caviar, which has lost some of its power and influence since Tuma Basa decamped for YouTube, what a mistake, but there is not another playlist that is acknowledged as great in the entire music ecosystem, and that’s just plain sad.

Repetition breeds acceptance. And in a world of unlimited choice there is little repetition so fewer tracks are embedded in one’s brain, new music becomes ever more disposable.

Sure, younger people listen to more new music, but they are just as confused as the older generations, or focused on very narrow tastes. The younger people are not better at fixing computers, and they are not multitaskers, no one can multitask, but people still talk about it.

Attention spans have not shortened. Evidenced every day by the extended amount of time, hours, that young people play video games and binge television. This is just an excuse developed by oldster creators who are angry no one is paying attention to their productions. There’s a run to greatness. And then there’s everything else. The middle has been hollowed out. Kids know what is great, and avoid everything else except for extremely niche product, that appeals to them personally, that they experience/wear as a badge of honor. It’s harder to separate yourself from others when we all have the same smartphone, but people still do try to differentiate themselves, ergo their unique interests.

People would much rather talk about streaming television than music. Adults rarely talk about music at all. Honchos in the music business rarely talk about music at all. They all want to talk about streaming television and politics, the drivers of today’s culture.

Most people with something to lose avoid talking about politics, unless it’s their brand.

Truth is nonexistent in America today. Finito. Which cheapens the value of the hype the entertainment business has historically traded on. Either people are numbskulls who’ll accept everything you tell them, or they are educated with the power of analysis and are constantly checking what is proffered to them. Unfortunately, fewer are educated with the power of analysis than ever before, which is just how the rich and powerful like it.

Most people don’t listen to the songs at the end of the album. The album model was based on vinyl, two sides, with four prime positions, opening and closing track on each side, you knew the act would put their best stuff there. But now with just a string of songs the audience doesn’t know where to focus, so they start at the top and fall off somewhere along the way, if they even go that far.

Don’t confuse money with power. The media focuses on Netflix’s numbers constantly, talking about how many people are left to subscribe. It’s kinda like cell phones. Now everybody has one and the old leaders, are still the leaders. Verizon, with the historically best service, has had the largest market share for years, and maintains that position. Just because an industry runs out of new customers, that does not mean it has no future. Netflix has first mover advantage, makes the most product, and I don’t know what the upstart streaming services are thinking, it comes down to Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max. As for Apple, the company has so much money it stays in the game. As for Amazon…yes, it’s buying MGM, but so far the company has never truly focused on visual entertainment, they’ve treated it like everything else in the store, an endless cornucopia, caveat emptor. Furthermore, it’s essentially free with Prime. Brands are everything in a world where individuals have sold their souls for cash. Netflix has the best brand, people believe in it. And Disney and HBO Max have legacy power. Amazon? Video is the poor stepsister. And Hulu keeps losing product, how soon until it loses subscribers? As for streaming with advertising…there are always cheap people, but the real business is in people paying every month, and they’ll only pay a limited amount of money.

Buzz happens slower than ever before. And the media is not in control of it. The old movie advertising, all the tricks to get people excited about something? Gone. Now hits pop up organically, and spread via word of mouth. “The Tiger King,” “Squid Game”…even Netflix had no idea of their reach and power. And yes, streaming TV shows gain traction relatively quickly, but music takes forever to gain hold.

George Costanza rules. If you want to succeed in today’s world, just do the opposite of what everybody else is doing. Be credible, turn down sponsorships and endorsements. Go the other way, people will notice it and respect you for going down the road less taken in a world of me-too.

TikTok brings classic rock back from the dead. As well as overlooked recent tunes. No one is in control of the process, it’s spontaneous, but it’s powerful, more powerful than any other platform of exhibition.

Web3 is about removing the power from the tech gatekeepers. Will it go down that way? Questionable, but some of the biggest players in the sphere want it to go that way.

The value of crypto and NFTs are debated constantly in the media, but almost all the stories miss the point. For the younger generation, crypto and its offshoots, like NFTs, are the new music. It’s the late sixties all over again. The oldsters are completely out of the loop, they know nothing. This is exciting to the younger generation, there are many opportunities, and seemingly everybody is playing. You might not own any crypto, but twentysomethings do.

The future is unpredictable. Just when you think you know where things are going, the unexpected happens. Not so much the war in Ukraine, but the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the single-minded leadership of Zelensky. Everybody in America gets into politics to get rich. It’s better than entertainment. Get elected and you can trade on your donors forever. Zelensky is not about this. He’s Mr. Smith, but he certainly isn’t in Washington.

Don’t expect the story to be on Fox News. Stop waiting for it and its viewers to wake up to the truth, they don’t even see it! Fox News is a controlled ecosystem just like the news in Russia. That’s the truth, just like Trump is an autocrat. I mean step way back, this is a guy who thinks the rules don’t apply to him, yet people are so caught up in the red versus blue they can’t acknowledge this. Once you undermine the game, there is no game, remember this.

Everybody believes they are powerful, everybody believes they have a voice, and they exercise it online. Raise your head and it will be chopped off. This is the world we live in, if you think you’re better than everybody else you’re in for a rude awakening.

No one trusts the legal system anymore. They shake their fist and say they’re going to sue…but the last place you want to be is court, it’s time-consuming, expensive and you’ve got no idea of the result. Actually, the legal system is for the rich only. It only works if you’ve got money. And if you’ve got money, you can bury almost anybody. I’m talking civil, of course the hoi polloi get caught up in the criminal legal system. Hell, we need people to fill all those for profit jails!

Everybody wants a smaller government until they need it, then they want relief from the disaster they experienced.

The rise in gas prices is the greatest incentive to buy electric cars…if there were inventory the numbers would shoot into the stratosphere. This is the turning point, this is the inflection point, from now on it’s all electric. I don’t want to hear about government support, I don’t want to hear about precious metals for batteries, the public can sense and see the future. A car is their second biggest investment. And they don’t want to be at the whim of the oil companies. Yet why people keep having to drive ever bigger trucks… Once again, don’t expect people to be rational.

Nothing is foolproof. Spotify went down a couple of weeks back, and Apple did just last week. This is not a reason not to believe in services. Hell, you’ve been paying for cable for decades and think about how many times that went out! The truth is products are built better than ever before, they work right out of the box, and tech reliability keeps improving.

If you believe Social Security will collapse, you believe the U.S. government will collapse. Want to take those odds? I didn’t think so.

Everybody’s an expert, and almost nobody knows the score. With so much information available online, why does misinformation rule? People still live like it’s the pre-internet era. They’ll tell you what’s best when you can go online and easily suss out what’s best yourself, and it’s rarely what people tell you it is. People are attached to what they’ve owned and what they’ve experienced, they don’t want to admit they made a mistake, or even that they’re wrong. So if you have an important decision to make, call your friends last, go online first. I’d say the same thing about bloviating about politics, but…people don’t want to find out they’re wrong. And why can’t they even Google to find out the veracity, the trustworthiness of the site/people they are quoting? It’s mind-blowing.

People are either lying about being poor or lying about being rich. It’s cool to be poor and it’s cool to be rich. The poor are downtrodden and the rich are overlords. When the truth is most people talking like this are neither poor nor rich, just average. There are truly poor out there, too many, but they don’t brag about it.

You’re on your own. No one is looking out for you. If you don’t know this yet, you’ve been sheltered by your parents, or they are rich. America is a giant casino, which is rigged, and those who own it don’t want you to win, no matter what they say. Las Vegas doesn’t advertise its truth, that the whole city is built on losers. The odds are against you. So, if you want to win learn the game, the facts. Because if you get ripped-off or lose, the odds of someone coming to aid you…are close to nil.

The world runs on sex. Pure and simple. The richest people with the best pedigree will risk it all for sex. Then again, is sex what life is really all about? I mean if we weren’t focused on sex, there’d be no new generations. But if you can’t understand what is going on, look at the sexual element. And the monetary element too. People do their best to hide their truth but it’s evident, you’ve just got to look harder.

The world runs on information. That’s the beauty of the internet world. You can be sitting at home, without portfolio, but if you read and gather information you have the ability to play with the successful. It takes effort, but the information is at your fingertips, you’ve just got to read it.

People are impressed by the knowledgeable and articulate. If you think it’s all about how you look, fashion, you’ve immediately taken yourself out of the game, unless you’re so good-looking that you can trade on that alone, and that’s a matter of genetics, and almost no one wins that lottery.

Don’t do what everybody else does. The competition is too rough.

Don’t tell people they’re better than that. That just makes you look bad, that you think you’re better than them!

Don’t apologize unless you mean it. Apologies have become nearly worthless in our society. They’re get out of jail free cards. Stand your ground, and if you’re wrong admit it. Because character is everything, live long enough and you’ll find that out.

I don’t plan to watch. Which is astounding if I look back to the past. The Oscars were a ritual. My mother would stay up late watching them. She was a movie buff, she used to go to these Judith Crist weekends. This was back when being a fan was enough, you didn’t need a badge, you didn’t go online and try and become a star yourself. The world has changed a lot, but the Oscar telecast has not. Hell, the movies themselves have changed but the Oscars have not.

Everything comes and goes, like MTV. Youngsters would find it hard to believe that when MTV launched we’d stare at it for hours, usually at a friend’s house, because it wasn’t yet available in ours. It was new, it was different, it demanded all of our attention, it drove the culture, and then it didn’t. Kind of like the VMAs. That was an awards show, with an irreverence lacking from the Oscars. And although the VMAs still exist, they’re completely irrelevant, a marketing vehicle. That’s what the Grammys turned into too. A way to expose talent. Once it was learned there was a bounce from an appearance, everybody wanted to be on, performing their new song so it could run up the chart. But the audience was turned off by this, and there’s no longer a bounce. Turns out in the streaming era everybody who is interested has already experienced the music. It’s only the out-of-touch brain dead who learn something from an awards telecast. Not to mention, in today’s world of deep niches, nothing is universal and most people don’t care about most things, think about that.

But it’s the same damn Oscar show every year.

I’m not saying the nominees don’t want to win, I realize people tune in for the fashions, but the movies themselves have changed, as have stars, the world is different, but in Oscarland, it’s completely the same.

Kind of like in music. None of the classic acts can get any traction with new material. The old fans don’t want it and the youngsters have more than enough with what’s out there already. Music moves forward, you have to accept this. You can also accept that music today is in a bad space, but that does not mean it will be so forever. But one thing is for sure, we’re going forward, not backward.

And speaking of going forward, the movies today are all about superhero/comic book/action adventure tentpoles. That’s okay, it just doesn’t square with the Oscars, which are supposed to be about artistry as opposed to commerciality, and in films the two diverged decades ago. You cannot square what is popular with what is good, what is art, what the Oscars want to reward. The Oscars are still living in a twentieth century world, and it’s 2022.

Not that I think the Oscars should be fixed. They had their run, that’s it. They’ve been superseded by streaming TV. Streaming TV liberated creators, suddenly everything was fair game, and on a smaller screen it’s about plot as opposed to image. Movies have become special events, kind of like the circus, before that was put out of business, because it was out of date and out of time, what was permissible in the past is not necessarily permissible today. Going to the movies used to be a ritual, an interest akin to sports. You knew who the actors were, you were aware of the past greats, and the films addressed and moved the culture. But they haven’t done that for a very long time. Think about it, we had a slew of Vietnam movies, from “Apocalypse Now” to “The Deer Hunter” to “Coming Home” to… But we haven’t had a slew of films about the dot com crash, or the 2008 meltdown. No big budget studio efforts that try to make sense of the past. There was “The Big Short,” which was excellent, and did not use a traditional style, kudos, but it was just one movie.

And then there’s the indie sphere. Which is kind of like music. With the means of production so inexpensive, everybody is making a movie these days, and everybody believes their film is worthy of attention. It’s positively overwhelming to the consumer. Furthermore, the films play at festivals for eons before they’re released generally. They’re already passé, moribund. As for the audience? There is one, but they want to see them at home, on the flat screen, built in to a service they’re already paying for. The independent business is so rearguard, it’s nearly a circle jerk. In today’s attention economy, the indies put up so many barriers to seeing their pics that they go unseen. I’m not paying fifteen bucks to see one pic when that will buy me a month of Netflix. As for going to the theatre, it’s too slow for me. The movies don’t start when I get there and I’ve got travel time and I can’t pause them and I know there are dedicated moviegoers yelling just the opposite right now, but they’re in the minority. What’s the metaphor, you skate to where the puck is going? Well, it certainly isn’t going to a healthy independent theatre experience.

Change is hard. And it often happens when you’re not looking. But if you don’t change, you become moribund, stuck in the past, which may be comfortable, but leaves you in the rearview mirror.

Let’s talk about the excising of all those awards from the telecast.

The question is simple. Are the Oscars an awards ceremony or a TV show? Awards ceremonies are supposed to have gravitas, have meaning, which is why everybody’s pissed off that these awards will not get airtime. But they do detract from the flow of the show, so should they go? Well, as soon as you get rid of them you undercut the essence of the Oscars. But like everything these days, it all comes down to the money, and that TV cash…

And when the money is first, the public knows it and bakes it into their decisions. I mean the Oscars are undercutting whatever credibility they still have. As for the Grammys adding nominees after the fact, these people are so inside they can’t see the outside whatsoever. The public is laughing, you just showed the truth, that the awards are worthless.

And most awards are. The funny thing is what is awarded most, which gains the general consensus, is not what is remembered, even lauded in the future. And there are so many awards shows, aimed at people who got a trophy just for participating, that winning means nearly nothing.

That’s the world we live in.

Want to have an awards show where you honor popcorn pics? Be my guest. But trying to mix them with artistic films is like bringing Megan Thee Stallion to the symphony, it’s a different thing.

Now the truth is I don’t have enough time. That’s what the internet era has wrought, a tsunami of information, a lot of which I’m interested in. Do I want to waste four plus hours seeing some awards show? No. I’ll just read who won and move on, like everybody else, no one seems to remember who won.

I mean first we’ve got the news. It’s endless, and right now there’s Ukraine and Web3 and the film business has its head stuck in the sand like none of this exists. And who cares what actors have to say about the big issues anyway, they’re just playing a role. And there’s an entire gossip industry built on such issues as whether Jennifer Aniston wants a baby, will have a baby, or will get back together with Brad Pitt. That’s commerce, not news. Like most of the tentpole pictures. It’s fine if people want to pay attention, but not me. I mean once “The Towering Inferno” was part of the culture, but today we’ve got so many options we have superior stuff to consume, and interestingly we all want to consume different stuff.

I guess that’s another problem with the Oscars. There’s no longer a monoculture, that went out with the last century, where the Oscars are still living. We’re all in a different space and we all think our opinion is worthwhile and maybe awards shows are history, just like late night TV.

Did you see that Jimmy Fallon just got a new producer? That used to be big news, they wrote books about late night TV. But now fewer people than ever watch the shows and they don’t move the needle. I mean the goals of the past mean nothing today. Remember when every comedian wanted a sitcom? Today there are few sitcoms and the ones that air play to tiny audiences and you’re not furthering your career whatsoever. Things change.

I wish I was excited about the Oscars.

Then again, there was that news about a month ago, how all these foreign language series are being watched in not only America, but around the world. That’s exciting. Around the world creators are striving for our attention, doing new things, testing limits, and there’s an audience for all this, whereas another Marvel movie? I mean it’s juvenile, whereas most of these foreign streaming series are not.

So I don’t know where the world is going, but one thing I know for sure, it is going. And if you want to drag it into the past, if you want to protest about change, the joke is on you.

If you have a profile, people are pissed when you change. But artists can’t be beholden to their audience, no way, otherwise they’re not artists.

I already know what the Oscar telecast will contain before I turn it on. Oh, a few jokes, a few faux pas, boring musical numbers and some winners, that’s it. Interested? I mean I can literally name a hundred things I’d rather do with my time.

Or you could go smaller, take the route of gravitas, meaning, but the Oscars still think there’s such a thing as one national mind when a healthy chunk of the population truly believes Trump should be president, that victory was stolen from him. Maybe you forgo the big tent, the big net, and only appeal to the fans.

But that would require living in the future.

The Oscars are all about the past. Own it, don’t try to convince us otherwise, because we’re not buying it.

But we’re buying plenty of stuff, if you want to push the envelope and get us excited.

But the Oscar telecast does not.

Next.