Change happens overnight.

The most important story you missed last week was this:

“Why This Could Be a Critical Year for Electric Cars – Booming in a depressed market, battery-powered vehicles are a plus for the climate but pose a big threat to carmakers and parts suppliers that are slow to change.”: https://nyti.ms/351DH8s

Last year, electric cars made up NINE PERCENT ((9%) of new car sales worldwide…NINE PERCENT! That’s astronomical!

But in the U.S?

Only 4%.

This is what drives me nuts about America. The supposed greatest country in the world whose biggest advocates are uneducated nincompoops who’ve never been anywhere.

Go to Norway. It’s all electric! And Norway is a rich country because of its oil. It’s the Scandinavian Saudi Arabia. And just like Saudi Arabia, it’s investing in the future. But America? The last time I wrote about electric cars I got an e-mail from some idiot telling me internal combustion engines were forever!

Er, no. Absolutely not.

And even worse, the Detroit companies are way behind.

Even Mercedes-Benz. Its vaunted EQS is being panned by all the critics. Not because it’s a bad car, but it’s not in the league of Tesla and Lucid and the rest of the electric startups who began with a blank sheet of paper. There’s too much legacy in the EQS, because the underlying platform has to work for a gasoline version too. Turns out you can’t compromise in the fight for the future, you’re either all in or you’re out.

GM? Had to take its Bolt off the market. It caught fire. Ford’s a bit better. Stellantis is way behind. Turns out the future of automobiles is Chinese. They are the only country that can compete with Tesla. China bought up lithium production around the world, a crucial element in battery cars, while Detroit was still asleep at the wheel.

But I take you back to Kodak. We kept hearing that digital would supersede film. But it never happened. There were digital cameras in the marketplace, but then seemingly overnight, EVERYONE switched to digital and your film camera was worth nothing.

Gonna be the same deal with electric cars. DO NOT BUY A NEW GASOLINE CAR! Unless you plan on getting rid of it within five years. Because the value is gonna crash overnight, your car will be worth nothing. Buy used. Or lease, which is insane for most people, financially stupid, today’s cars are so good you can keep them for two decades, after your payments are through you’re sailing clear, without payments. Some have tax advantages to leasing, most don’t. They just want to drive a new car every few years or don’t want to lay down for ownership, or can’t afford it. If you’re leasing a new car for status, just talk to the younger generation, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE DRIVER’S LICENSES!!!

So people are e-mailing me that 112 million people watched the Super Bowl.

That’s because it’s a national event, the only time the country is all on the same page, there are parties, IT’S NOT BECAUSE OF FOOTBALL! Because otherwise the rest of the playoff games would have numbers in the same neighborhood and they’re not even close.

People are driven to that which everybody else is, especially in the disconnected world we now live in. They want to feel included, they want to be able to comment. But if you think it’s about the game… Look at the Grammys and the Oscars, flying high and then ratings tanked almost overnight, AND WILL NEVER COME BACK! Turns out their universality is gone. Used to be everybody watched them like the Super Bowl, then they all looked at each other and asked why and now don’t.

This is how it happens, and it happens fast.

So the negatives of football are huge. First and foremost, the younger generation participation numbers are going down down down. They don’t even have youth leagues in Inglewood, where the Super Bowl took place. Come on, every person has a mother, and most want to protect their children. As for the effects of football, read this article:

“For N.F.L. Perfection, a Steep Price – Nick Buoniconti, Jim Kiick and Jake Scott, of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, were each found to have C.T.E., the brain disease linked to head hits, bringing to six the number of players diagnosed from that team.”: https://nyti.ms/3JwB6SG

I remember watching Nick Buoniconti on “Inside the NFL.” They were always talking about him raising money for charity. His son was paralyzed playing football. And then Buoniconti disappeared. I wondered what happened. Turns out he had dementia from CTE and now he’s DEAD!

You don’t want to die, really. You’ll be begging for more life at the end, believe me. As for full functionality, people killed themselves because of long Covid, football players are routinely committing suicide because of CTE. And mothers are gonna let their kids play the game? Come on!

And you’re right, I used to watch. But now I can’t. It offends my sensibilities.

Meanwhile, soccer has made inroads over decades and when the World Cup is played this year…believe me, all those kids who grew up playing soccer will be tuned in. And THE WHOLE WORLD will be tuned in, just like they are for electric cars. Turns out America is too often last.

And don’t say that’s because I hate the country. I’m saying to wake up, so we can compete! Trump kept all those foreigners out, who worked at Silicon Valley companies, and now they’re creating startups in their own countries, we missed out.

So the esports revolution will happen overnight, just like digital cameras and electric cars. It’s been in the marketplace for years, but change happens very slowly, then all at once.

Meanwhile, boomers are getting older every day. Young people are being minted as I write this.

It’s kind of like baseball. I grew up when it was the number one American sport, absolutely. And then in the mid to late sixties the NFL usurped its title, because it was faster with more action. Meanwhile, I know tons of boomers who are addicted to baseball. Younger people? NONE! Why do you think your perspective is the world’s, and nothing will ever change. And then the world changes and you want protection, you want to be made whole, no one can lose in America.

Football’s got a ton of negatives. And nothing is forever. Gladiators? Those are history. But no, nothing can die in your lifetime, nothing you’re addicted to!

Even skiing, my love. It was hip in the sixties and seventies, everybody talked about it. Then it became saturated, the tree-huggers wouldn’t let them build new ski areas and the smaller areas closed when the big ones invested so much money in infrastructure that the middle class was squeezed out. There’s still a ski industry, but it’s mature, if you’re a skier you’re in a backwater, with the rest of your minority group. Even snowboarding! Gen-X embraced it, then kids started to ski instead of board, they didn’t want to be like their parents, and snowboarding stalled, despite what you see in the Olympics, which reflect what was happening DECADES AGO! Hell, Shaun White is 35.

For the last twenty five years all we’ve seen is change. The CD is forever! Well, it turns out no.

And then change happened so rapidly. Big floppies to small floppies to hard drives to solid state storage. For years you’ve been angry at your cable company having a monopoly, and now the wireless companies are providing home broadband, actually that was one of the commercials in the Super Bowl!

So when you stand on ceremony, believe there will be no change, that your love is forever, you’re just demonstrating a narrow perspective. Unfortunately, head in the sand ignorance is rampant in America today. But that doesn’t mean change doesn’t happen. Mark Zuckerberg was caught off guard by Apple’s privacy protections and TikTok, and I’m supposed to believe you have your finger on the pulse of the future?

NO WAY!

It reflected the music of the players as opposed to the owners.

If you search online you will find three responses to Sunday’s Super Bowl Dre extravaganza:

1. Best Super Bowl halftime show ever!

2. Okay, good to see hip-hop, it’s about time, but do all the acts have to be twenty or thirty years past their prime?

3. Horrid. I turned it off.

I found the Super Bowl surprisingly flat.

In truth, football is fading, to be replaced by esports. The only people who don’t know this is are those involved in it. And that number continues to decrease. Too many parents don’t want their kids’ lives shortened.

And football has very little action. Video games are all action.

Football requires physicality, as result of genes and training. ANYBODY can participate in esports.

It’s fascinating to watch the boomer generation run its institutions off the rails. The Oscars announced a fan award will be decided on TWITTER! That’s so 2012. When people watched the show and live-tweeted. The only people who still do that are those who’ve got an interest in the movie business, the scribes, everybody else doesn’t care. Twitter is for news diehards and oldsters. Youngsters are on TikTok.

And what is the essence of TikTok? PARTICIPATION!

Everybody wants to play. Which is the democratic leveling that contributes to the growth of the aforementioned esports. If you want to draw attention to your enterprise, you’ve got to let the public participate.

I laud the ability of an outsider to present an Oscar, but if the Academy really desired excitement, they’d offer a role in a movie! That’s right, the person with the best TikTok clip referencing an Oscar nominee gets a role in a film next year. In a Spielberg movie. Or Michael Bay. Or Spider-man. A SPEAKING ROLE! Yup, not just an extra. Give them a line. Or two. That anybody can do. Believe me, the TikTok generation will tune in to find out who won.

So watching football is a passive experience, when as stated above, everybody wants to participate. The game hasn’t changed in decades, is beholden to advertisers and there’s very little actual playing involved. The Super Bowl tradition is loved by oldsters. Youngsters? Eh…

So in this world you either lead or you follow. If you’re not innovating, you’re dying. If you’ve seen one Super Bowl, you’ve seen them all.

Like the commercials.

For decades, the actual Super Bowl game was not competitive. But you tuned in just to see the commercials. A paradigm that was established with Steve Jobs’s 1984 commercial for the Macintosh. ONE commercial changed the whole paradigm. Since then? We’ve seen safe.

I mean my favorite commercial of the game was the “Sopranos” Chevy one. But it would have been better if there were more narrative. It was cognitive dissonance to hear Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning,” as if someone had changed the channel. But why couldn’t there be an arc? Steve Jobs bought two minutes for Apple in 1984, couldn’t Chevy buy more time?

Which brings us back to the halftime show.

In truth, it’s a visual performance. The audio is secondary. Most people listen on lousy TV systems anyway.

And it started with the set. All white. When you lose color, you add color. And the labels… Tam’s Burgers? If you lived in L.A. you smiled.

And Dre was happy and Snoop showed why he was a superstar and the whole show proved why rock is dead. Point out the innovation in rock in the last two decades…smiling everyman meat and potatoes Dave Grohl?

Yes, the stars brought all their drama. Not only Mary J. Blige, but the rest of the performers.

Dr. Dre… The most unknown superstar there is. Who is Dre exactly? Nobody knows! Should we be afraid of him or in reality is he nice… He’s inaccessible. But here he was, smiling.

And then Snoop delivered on all fronts. Not only his unique vocal delivery, but the way his body moved akin to a Slinky, as if he had no bones inside.

Fitty was a surprise.

Kendrick brought the whole thing up to date, he deserved his own headlining spot.

And then Marshall evidenced that intensity that had everybody scared twenty years ago.

Snoop… What really happened in that park? All we know is Snoop was acquitted. And we also know that Snoop is a football fanatic. And that he’s good friends with Martha Stewart. Talk about an American story, if Snoop Dogg ran for president he’d win. Hands-down.

Fitty. He has his own checkered past.

As for Marshall… Let’s see, he remarried Kim and they got divorced once again. Hailie went to college. He starred in his own movie. He gained an insane amount of weight then lost it. He got hooked on heroin, but here he is as if none of that mattered, delivering his lines like they still matter, like he still matters, unlike all the geriatric rock stars still plying the boards.

As for Mary J…

She didn’t look like the models, the skinny social x-rays. She looked more human, like someone in your neighborhood. And unlike the models, she had rhythm and evidenced it.

The whole show was about rhythm. Which has supplanted melody in today’s music. Rhythm is more basic, the underpinning, when all the rest is b.s. you strip it down to its basics.

Kinda like punk. The Ramones opened the floodgates, enough with prog rock, it was about energy and attitude and anybody could play, and did, just like they ultimately rapped.

Hip-hop won. By being more authentic. More grounded. More experimental. More real.

Is it a bit long in the tooth now? Sometimes a caricature of itself?

Yes. But nothing has come along to replace it. That’s the irony of the internet age, there’s so much more, across the board, but it takes so long for something new to become dominant. Overnight was over ten years ago. And if it happens real fast, it fades. Like Clubhouse. Heard anybody talk about that recently?

And if you rest on your laurels, you’re dead. You can try and buy the competition, play hardball, but you can’t keep down innovation, you can’t dictate to the public, which is how TikTok usurped the social media throne from Facebook.

As far as Facebook competing with Reels, etc. It’s about the PLATFORM more than the content. When you have the dominant platform it is not superseded by a copycat because all the people are already there, in a community, and sans community you’ve got nothing.

So in truth they should have given Dre control years ago.

And isn’t it funny how he had to pay for it. Seven million supposedly. Proving, once again, that cash is king, and without it opportunity and upward mobility are steep slopes most people cannot climb.

But if corporations can buy advertising, Dr. Dre is entitled to buy time too.

And for the first time ever, the halftime show has gone viral. It’s memorable. It’s being watched and shared in the tens of millions, ultimately the hundreds of millions. Because like Kimmel says, it’s not about the show, it’s about the internet, the longevity. It blows up on the internet. Years from now, no one will remember who even played in last Sunday’s Super Bowl, never mind won. But they’ll remember the halftime show!

But the impact will never be the same as something from the pre-internet era. Because we no longer watch the same shows, consume the same art, the center stopped holding in America eons ago. As a matter of fact, there were multiple news stories over the weekend that white people were abandoning the NFL because they thought the owners were kowtowing to the Black players, who they thought already have too much power. Call it the Kaepernick effect. You’ve got to keep the “boys” down. Otherwise who knows what will happen!

Actually, nobody knows, now more than ever. Will Putin invade Ukraine? Will Trump win the nomination in 2024?

But one thing was for sure, twenty-odd years ago, if you wanted to know what was going on you listened to hip-hop, the sound of the streets, the sound of reality.

Sunday was a well-deserved victory lap.

So where do we go from here?

I don’t know, but one thing is for sure, it’s forward, not back. If you’re protecting your interests, you’ve already lost. You’ve got to experiment, put it all on the line, lay down your truth. Which is anathema these days. Wasn’t that the argument re Rogan? The truth? Well, it turns out the truth is fungible, irrelevant of its veracity. And without truth, you no longer have a society.

Music used to be the glue that held society together. This was what was wrought in the sixties and seventies, music is an elemental building block of the boomers.

But people today believe it’s just music, that music always rules. That’s patently wrong. Music rules when it pushes the envelope and is instructional, when it’s aspirational as opposed to lowest common denominator pandering.

If you want to win today you’ve got to tap into the mind-set of the people. Big time sports can never do this. Never ever. But art can. Music, movies, TV. That is art’s power. That is why artists are adored more than billionaires. And have more power if they choose to exercise it. But in an era where the acts want to be billionaires, have compromised and sacrificed their art in the pursuit of money, you end up with a hollowed-out sphere.

But the power is still there. Nascent, ready to be reawakened.

But growth is slower than ever, and today’s younger generation is impatient, it wants it all and it wants it now, and now, more than ever, that’s impossible.

It starts with you. Then you gain the hearts and minds of the public. You allow people to innovate and own your production. If they’re messing with your music that’s a TRIBUTE not a heinous copyright infringement. Hell, all those wankers who were against Napster and YouTube have finally woken up to the power of TikTok, they’re DYING to have a viral moment like Fleetwood Mac, a regular citizen skateboarding with cranberry juice to music that is playing to one as opposed to everyone.

So the halftime show was a delineation of what was. It’s also a harbinger, a blueprint of what can be. It’s all there, you’ve just go to look below the surface.

You need to look deep inside, reflect your inner feelings without compromise, and then they might resonate.

The game didn’t.

But the halftime show did.

HOORAY!

Tune in today, February 15th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

You get older and you start to disconnect.

Every morning I wake up and immediately jump on my phone. I don’t leave it by the bed, at some point I turn off the ringer and plug it in in the other room, otherwise I’d never get to sleep. But when I wake up, I grab it first thing and then sit down on the throne and read the news.

Yes, the porcelain goddess. You might find that gross, but in truth I’ve always loved the bathroom. It’s private. If the door is closed, no one can come in, especially if it’s locked. Grow up in a split-level with four other people and you treasure your privacy.

And like in that old Joni Mitchell song, I’m looking at the news and it’s all bad. Putin wants to invade Ukraine because Ukraine is going to start fighting first. And he’s convinced his constituents of that fallacy. They’re gung-ho. As for America, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are fanning the flames of trucker protests in the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump takes his presidential documents to Mar-a-Lago and it seems the brouhaha of Hillary’s e-mails is forgotten. As for Ukraine, Michael Moore is telling us to stay out, as is Fox News, but those in D.C. on both sides of the fence are saying we have to defend Ukraine against the Russians.

Now if you’ve been to the area, it’s astounding how close these countries are. Like states in America. As for burying one’s head in the sand in the name of nationalism, today’s paper said that BMW was buying back 50% of its Chinese operation to ultimately own 75%. The old laws limited ownership, now Xi has loosened it up. And BMW has to operate in China, because it’s the world’s biggest market!

Having grown up in the last century it’s hard to fathom the changes. Forget the loss of kumbaya, forget the greed, forget the billionaires, hands-down the United States was the most powerful and profitable nation in the world. One thing we know for sure, if the sun hasn’t set on this paradigm yet, it soon will.

As for democracy…

So on one hand I’m drawn in. On another, I detach, because in truth I won’t live that long. The long term effects of global warming…it’s bad now, but it’s going to be really bad after I pass away.

So I’m torn between two worlds.

But it’s even worse. Everybody my age is retiring. That’s right, they saved for decades, invested that money they made oftentimes doing work they didn’t want to do and now they want to relax. Which is hard for me to fathom, I still believe I have some runway. But I’m one of the few who doesn’t want to call it quits.

Furthermore, the game has changed. There used to be clearly defined winners and losers. Now I hope your victory satisfies you, because no one else cares. So you question what your direction is, and why you do it.

And back to Putin… He’s stealing from his own country exactly why. To become even richer? I mean how much is enough? He’s my age, I think with a hundred million dollars I could do just fine, never mind a billion.

And this weekend is the Super Bowl. Which is being played in L.A.

I think the game should be banned. One day we’ll wake up and do so. A humane, caring society wouldn’t let men damage themselves this way, getting CTE, shortening their lives. But there’s too much money involved. And it’s one of the few avenues of success available to Black people. So as long as the pay remains high, you will find people to participate.

And I remember the first Super Bowl. That’s how old I am. Back when it had no gravitas, when the AFL was seen as kind of a joke, and the first two Super Bowls proved it, and then came Namath.

Now in the name of money they play football in the winter. But ironically, in L.A. this weekend, where the game is being held, it’s like summer, it’s in the eighties.

And in truth, I’ve spent most of the past two years housebound. And I’ve been in a cocoon. I talk on the phone even less than I did before, which was miniscule to begin with. I’m waiting for the time when I can turn into a butterfly. Which isn’t quite yet. Then again, like I read in that tweet, they’ve done the research at YouTube University and have decided that Covid is gone and the country needs to open.

So we got on Sunset…to the beach, just like in that Steely Dan song. And the traffic was worse than it is even on a summer day. Because it’s Saturday, because it’s Super Bowl weekend and tourists are here, everybody wants to drive up PCH, have that California experience, which in truth, you cannot get anywhere else.

And after parking I surveyed the ocean, which is glassy, and a big wave came in.

And I smiled.

Ella was making a sand castle. She’s three. When I was that age I went to the beach all the time, every day during the summer, with my mother. And I built sandcastles too, but back then the tools were made out of metal, not plastic, and I cut my hand on a rusty bucket and got my first stitches, four, in my hand, at age four.

And the waves keep coming in, big wheel turning, the hand of God.

And it really isn’t any different than it’s always been. Like George Carlin said, save yourself, the planet will be here forever.

But George is dead. So many are dead. The biggies and those not so big. Like Ian McDonald of King Crimson, they wanted me to write about him. And I certainly know who he is, and how he ventured to Foreigner, and he was there for the first three albums, before Mutt Lange came aboard and jetted an already huge band into the stratosphere. And if McDonald had died back then…it would have been big news.

But now rockers are dying left and right. It’s their time. Their bad behavior and lack of medical attention is catching up with them. We thought they and their music were forever, it’s weird to grow old and find out that is not true.

So there are so many things I don’t own. But none of them would give me that feeling of staring out at the water, the sun on my face, just one human being on the face of the earth. That’s the only context that really matters, the rest is a competition you’re involved in until you reach an age where you can see it is a joke, no one is remembered, and you can’t take your money with you.

So it’s really about the next generation. You gain joy from seeing them experience for the very first time that which you know by heart.

And this year, reluctant to go to a party, I now realize I’m not that excited about watching the Super Bowl, that I could miss it completely and lose nothing. Even the commercials… They don’t mean what they used to.

Nothing means what it used to. But you’ve got to get old enough to realize this.

Then again, the younger generations are all about experiences. They need to document them, but once again, you get old enough and you know you’ll probably never look at those pictures again and after you die they’ll get thrown out or deleted.

And this may sound like a downer, but it’s not, not at all. I’ve been LIBERATED! It doesn’t pay to fight with the ignorant. The truth always outs. And sure, you need money to live, but you don’t really need that much, otherwise you’re just showing off, and like David Geffen posting a pic of himself on his yacht during Covid, you become a target of ridicule.

You’ve got to be happy on the inside.

And that’s quite a challenge. Because nobody’s happy all the time, nobody. You’ve got to endure the lows to appreciate the highs.

Like being inside forever and then coming to the beach.

Where the freedom we embraced in the sixties was launched. By the Beach Boys, the rest of California. Now, everyone wants to make fun of California, point to its flaws, but if they were here today they’d change their opinion.

Yes, at the end of the country, three thousand miles and three time zones from the east coast. Or, as Larry Ellison told Dr. Agus… I’ll give you the money to build a research facility, but not in New York. In New York you fail once and you’re done. In California you fail and you pick yourself up and do it again, and again. And why would you want to be in New York anyway, where you talk to bankers, isn’t it better to be on the west coast with the creative people, the thinkers?

But I’m not trying to convince you. I hope you’re happy where you are.

If I had my suit with me I’d go in the water. I’ve already gotten my feet wet. Sure, the water is cold, but it’s so hot out, it’s refreshing. It would be a shock to the system.

And that’s the kind of shock I’m looking for.

“Can the World’s Most Connected Doctor Cure Cancer? – He was physician to the late Steve Jobs, pal to Elon Musk and Howard Stern, counselor to both Trump and Biden. Now he’s founded the most cutting-edge cancer center in L.A.”: https://bit.ly/33mrZVu