It rained in L.A. today. At least enough to get your car dirty. Yes, the air is so bad that when we finally get precipitation all the pollution ends up on your car and you’ve got to get it washed, it’s the exact opposite of climates where it rains on a regular basis.

Not that I saw the rain. I’m not an early riser, but I saw the remnants when I woke up, the wet concrete, the blackened street.

And it’s gray. And cool. It hasn’t been in the seventies for weeks.

But it’s gonna be in the high eighties again soon, you see fall is the hottest time of the year in Southern California, but by then the days are getting shorter and the light…

I always wait for it in August, when the light changes. The sun has fallen in the sky and it’s not quite as bright, the light is kind of yellow, and you realize fall is coming.

Now fall in Los Angeles lasts a long time. One can even argue there is no winter, we never get snow. Oh, of course every decade or two there’s a dash in Topanga Canyon, at the far reaches of the Valley, but although we see the forties, it’s never in the thirties during the day. And therefore it’s like an extended beginning of school. When it’s still new, when you’re still decompressing, before it becomes a complete grind.

Then again, when I used to go to school, and I’m never going back, we never started before Labor Day. School in August? Unheard of. August was still SUMMER!

The summer ended with the Labor Day picnic at Jennings Beach, the Kentucky Fried Chicken and the corn on the cob and the doughnuts. And then you knew in a day or two, you’d be back in school. Although it wasn’t an abrupt transition, there was always a down week in which your mother took you shopping for clothes and you went to the discount outlet for supplies and then, you were in the thick of things.

But one thing about August…the water was warm! I remember going on an extended canoe trip on the Allagash. We started in June on Moosehead Lake, in Maine. And we jumped in the water…

One expects the ocean on the north shore of Massachusetts to be cold, but not a lake.

But when the trip was over at the end of July, the water in the lake was not quite tepid, but it was comfortable.

Before that canoe trip I went to summer camp. First day camp, and then three years of overnight camp. There were two sessions, each a month long, July and August, and the first year we went in July but then we learned all the good things happened in August, so we switched months. The Olympics were the highlight of the camp year. And the closing ceremony, with handmade boats on the lake. You didn’t want to miss those. But by the last week or two, it would be cold. You’d be huddled under your blanket…you know, when you go into the fetal position and scrunch the blanket around you.

For a while there it seems like summer will never end. And then one day while you’re just minding your own business, exalting in the sun and the heat, you realize it’s almost gone. Mother Nature has been grinding the gears of the seasons and it’s inevitable, days will get shorter and cold will come.

And at first this is a phenomenon. A new school year, looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations. The summer seems so long. But as you get older the calendar speeds up, to the point where when summer begins, you’re already contemplating its ending.

But these past two years have been so weird. It’s not like I’ve fully enjoyed the summer, grasped it, gone on vacation, and now it’s going to be fall already? September? Really?

And live in L.A. long enough and you yearn to return to the east. A week or two back there cures you of the desire, the day when your plans are canceled because of the rain seals the deal, but the rebirth in the spring is such a thing, and you take advantage of the summer, knowing it will be gone.

In the west we’ve got higher mountains. But on the east coast, all the snow can melt in a day. You can be skiing one day, and the next day it warms up and rains and the lifts close, it’s all over. In the east you’ve got to get your days in, you never know when the season might end. And so many days are crappy, with bad weather, ice, you’ve got to take advantage of the good ones. But in the west? The ski season is endless, Mammoth is usually open until July. And ice? It doesn’t really exist.

So out west…there aren’t these lines of demarcation that there are everywhere else. Everything is available all the time, assuming you’re willing to travel. Then again, westerners think nothing of driving for eight or ten hours, that’s anathema on the east coast.

So you wake up one day and you realize time is passing.

But it gets even worse, you’re being replaced along the way, they keep making new people. I watch these European TV shows with adults and they were born in the seventies, the eighties. Really? It’s like I’m already over the hill.

And I also realize so much of what was important to me is not only unimportant to younger generations, they’ll never even know about it. And it’s all about touchstones, points of familiarity, that’s why you can date someone decades younger, even marry them, but it’s never completely satiating. You start singing the theme to “Car 54” and they’re blank-faced. They know nothing about Toody and Muldoon.

And when the sun is shining brightly most of these thoughts do not go through my head. But when the world starts to die, when the light starts to fade and the grass and the trees begin to wither, I’m reminded, you’re only here for a brief period of time and then you’re gone, forgotten.

Oh, when you’re young you think you’re gonna leave your mark. And then you reach an age when you realize it’s all a joke, no one will be remembered, and even two thousand years is the blink of an eye in the universe, and it’s all about being happy while you’re here. And money can buy you love, but get old enough and physical items become irrelevant. Oh, you want food and a roof over your head, but when someone old buys a fancy car to show off, you laugh, because you realize they haven’t gotten the memo, they still think these things matter, that we’re paying attention, wondering where we are on the totem pole, but we’re not. We’re just people trying to hang on, looking for our way, for some good times, some laughs, it’s all about experiences, and many of those you don’t even have to pay for, they can be as simple as playing with a toddler or reading a book on a porch.

Not that I’d give any advice. No one ever listens. Or they buy what you’re saying not realizing every individual is different and you’ve got to find your own way, that’s the journey of life, that too many don’t take. You don’t want to get old and realize you did it their way, instead of your way.

But each generation has to find out for itself. Each generation thinks it’s indomitable, infallible, knows everything, until it suddenly realizes it does not. With age comes wisdom, you learn how much you don’t know, and you focus on locating yourself in the universe more than your place in the rat race.

But the big wheel keeps on turning, the Earth keeps spinning, the seasons plow on whether you’re paying attention or not.

But then one day you notice. And you want to put a drag on the system. But you can’t, all you can do is awake and observe. And it’s satisfying, but it’s also painful.

Tune in today, August 17th, 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

People don’t care.

At best it’s a high grossing film with hugely declining numbers after opening weekend that never plays on pay cable or a streaming service, that you can seek out if you want to but most people don’t make the effort.

This is radically different from Vietnam. I remember watching the exit on television in a world where I never watched television, because there, but by the grace of god, went I.

The draft. You could get your ass shot off in a futile war. Why?

That was the difference. You hit eighteen and you were at risk. All those wankers worried about vaccine cards/databases are babies compared with those of us who had to register for the draft. You couldn’t escape. If you were eighteen, they found you. Oh, you could go to Canada, but that was back before most of us had been there and realized how great it was. You were scared.

So, in Vietnam we were holding back Communism. There was even a name for it, the “Domino Theory.” If we didn’t fight in Vietnam, many more countries would fall to Communism and…

Yes, Communism was the bogeyman back then. We’d seen Khrushchev bang his shoe. We’d seen the wall go up in Berlin. There was the space race. It was us versus them.

And then Reagan solved the problem. WHAT?

Any student of Communism knows that it fell from within, that Reagan had almost nothing to do with it. Just like it’s not really Biden’s responsibility that Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when we pulled out. In the west we were worried about religious governments and the mistreatment of women, then again, many in the U.S. are auguring for religious government and are involved in the personal health of women while they refuse to be inoculated against a pandemic. Don’t try to employ logic, it doesn’t apply.

So what was the enemy in Afghanistan? TERRORISM!

Then again, as soon as we invaded, the brass exited for Pakistan.

Then again, the focus was on Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. And you wonder why people don’t trust the government.

If you’d lived through Vietnam, you were against the incursion into Iraq. I wrote so, I was against it, check it out.

But America had changed. As a result of the Iranian hostage situation at the end of Carter’s term. Now, it was all about aggression. Which isn’t hard to believe if you listened to the music. The sixties were about peace and love, FM was unformatted, for hipsters, for explorers. But by time we hit the end of the seventies, we had years of formatted aggressive and meat and potatoes rock on FM in every hamlet and burg and this was the music that fed the yahooism of those who never had to face the draft, the bullies who hadn’t been anywhere and thought the U.S. was the indomitable greatest country in the world without flaws.

And then it got worse.

Reagan’s legacy is really income inequality. Maybe that will be pointed out in generations to come, after his anointment as a saint fades in the rearview mirror. Reagan lowered taxes on the rich and suddenly it was open season, everybody who was about love one another in the sixties was about getting theirs in the eighties. And Clinton just supercharged the whole thing and appeased the right along the way, eviscerating welfare benefits. Now we were not all in it together, now there were the workers and the lazy, the givers and the takers, the rich and the poor, and if you weren’t a winner you were a loser, and denigrated by society.

And then came the internet. And suddenly billionaires were everywhere. They weren’t just bankers. And along came social media, which put us all in our own hole with our own influences/news. And politics was no longer about making the sausage, but digging in your heels and fighting the other guy, in the case of the Republicans the leaders literally said they wanted to make sure Obama, and now Biden, got none of their ideas passed into law. This way, they could solidify their base like a high school basketball crowd and then…

The crowd took over the asylum. Suddenly, the rich on the right were no longer in control, but the rank and file, who used to be Democrats, but were ignored by the technocrats when globalization came a-calling. And people were pissed. And the Democrats missed it, the Republicans harnessed it, and then realized their traditional values of the unrestricted marketplace run by the elite no longer worked. Turned out the underclass on the right wanted health care just like the left. So what we’ve got now is a bunch of bloviating elected officials playing to a theoretical base whilst hurting their constituents at the same time. This is DeSantis, this is Abbott. In what other world does the government INSIST on not protecting its people? INSIST on a free-for-all? All in the name of freedom, when the truth is that term used to mean something back in the days of Communism, but now most of Europe is more free than the U.S. and the Taliban may require burkas, but it’s an endless culture war in the U.S., we argue whether bakers have to bake cakes for gay weddings. Do people really care about this? No! But these are touch points elected officials believe will rile their base.

Like Benghazi. Quick, ask a Republican to find Benghazi on a map. Quick, ask ANYBODY in the U.S. to find Benghazi on a map! Almost no one can, because they just don’t care, it was really a fight about Hillary Clinton, not the people who died over there.

So, the nature of our country has changed, yet the boomers running the nation think it’s still the same. That we’re horrified, absolutely horrified I tell you, that the Taliban overran Afghanistan in a matter of days and Afghans were crowding the airport. Cool pictures, but what does that have to do with me, the average American citizen? Our airports are chaos. We’re fighting over masks on airplanes, duct-taping passengers to their seats, we don’t even know how to fight for our own lives. And when we’re confronted with the option to do so, to save ourselves, an incredible swath of the nation says no, we’ll go unvaxxed and unmasked, screw collateral damage, we need our freedom! It’s positively tribal, in many ways no different from Afghanistan!

And the Afghan president was powerless and the Mujahideen were braggarts without portfolio, never mind desire, and the Taliban walked back into power. Not radically different from the Republican takeover of 2016. How come we all assume tech will change constantly but not politics, not the temperature of our country? Then again, elected officials might have heard of TikTok, but they’ve never used it, and if you don’t think the youth have power you don’t understand the power of technology, its ability to rally and change minds. In many cases with disinformation.

So, it took twenty years to lose. Not that the outcome wasn’t sealed when we started. The movie had played before, with the Russians, who spent almost a decade in Afghanistan and left with their tails between their legs, having accomplished nothing. Why did America think it was different? It never even asked that question. It just thought it was so powerful it could win anywhere. And it took twenty years for the nation to wake up and realize this was not true.

If you want something not to break, don’t buy American. They keep telling us manufacturing should come back, but even our iPhones are made in Asia.

I’d never ever buy an American car. Except maybe a Tesla. But even that has me hesitating, because of their poor build quality.

You see Americans are all about lifestyle, they don’t want to work too hard, and why should you, when you can’t get ahead, when you can’t win, when unions have been eviscerated and Jeff Bezos jets into space on the money he made off the backs of overworked warehouse employees? Check the numbers, Amazon is soon to become the biggest employer in America. And sure, that’s Bezos’s money, legally, but why weren’t there higher taxes? And most Americans aren’t even invested in the Wall Street game.

It’s rigged.

So now we’ve got talking heads who were arguing about the culture wars yesterday opining about Afghanistan today. The game is bigger than the players. As in the subject is irrelevant, it’s just about the endless arguing. And Lorraine Ali, an old rock critic who has become a TV critic for the “Los Angeles Times,” has it right when she says these “news” outlets have nobody on the ground in Afghanistan, these far-flung places, so there hasn’t been a continuing flow of news and the truth is all these stations quote the “New York Times,” which everybody seems to hate because it’s self-flagellating in public, trying to work out its woke issues in the light of day when every other outlet has an iron curtain, and doesn’t buy into the right wing b.s. Yes, the right wing outlets telling us Trump won… The MyPillow guy has gotten much more coverage than anything happening in Afghanistan, check it out.

Lorraine Ali: “American TV ignored Afghanistan. Until parachuting in to watch it fall”: https://lat.ms/3mafPG5

So, this week the spotlight shined on Afghanistan. Assuming you paid attention, and the truth is most people don’t, check the TV news ratings, they’re minuscule, it was horrifying. But most people probably saw a headline online and then moved on. As for evaluating what this means for America at large? People have lost the power to think. Schools are so worried kids might learn about slavery, or something triggering, that they don’t teach students how to analyze, sift the truth from the dross. People are literally INCAPABLE of doing this. So it’s all emotion, all the time. And emotion can’t compete with facts. Then again, we learned in the last administration that facts are fungible, Kellyanne Conway literally told us that, and now the truth is literally up for grabs.

So, Afghanistan is really far away. Many Americans hate Muslims in principle. People are hurting so much that they want to take care of America first, instead of spending trillions overseas. As for the long term impact…well, get in line, behind climate change and so much more. The young care about the future, but the old are too busy balancing the interests of fossil fuel providers, weighing business consequences, while America continues to drift, like a sailboat with a luffing sail.

Meanwhile, the Delta variant is raging and businesses are getting hurt (that’s a fact, you can read it in the “Wall Street Journal”) and despite tight Covid restrictions California’s economy hummed and the state’s coffers are loaded with dough and…

If you can make sense of it you’re spending a lot of time paying attention.

But most people don’t have either the time or the inclination. Their priority is not Afghanistan, it’s not the news, and since the news became entertainment, and we all know it, why should we take it seriously now?

But if you were at home, eighteen years old, worried about being shipped overseas to a place no one you’ve ever known has been to, and risk getting your ass shot off in a futile war, you’d be very concerned. You’d actually be happy the U.S. pulled out. Because it would mean you were saved. Also, you’d be questioning these foreign incursions. All in the name of humanity, your own safety. But ever since the all volunteer army came into being politicians send our youth overseas to be killed willy-nilly and…

The rest of the populace just say they volunteered for it.

But the truth is so many of them had no other option. They needed the money. Or they saw no viable future. Come on, without a college degree it’s almost impossible to get ahead in America. One can say that the army is college for the underclass. They learn discipline, a trade, and hopefully this will pay dividends when they come back to the mainland. But that’s quite a risk, one the average American DOESN’T WANT TO TAKE!

So the truth is we’ve got no investment in Afghanistan, almost none whatsoever, except for the troops who fought and died over there for nothing, just like they did in Vietnam, and sure, we’ll get some movies down the line, but that won’t replace your legs, never mind your life.

Then again Americans don’t even want to protect their own lives, they’d rather play Russian Roulette, go unvaccinated believing that they won’t get the Delta variant and end up on a ventilator and possibly die. Yes, you see the losers of this game in the news every damn day and the unvaccinated don’t care, do you think they really care about Afghanistan?

We shouldn’t have been there, certainly not for this long. But people are so afraid of TERRORISM!

But the real terrorism, cyber-crime, goes unaddressed. Ergo the constant compromise of government computers, never mind cases of ransomware. But we’re still busy building infrastructure for a ground war that will never happen while our own infrastructure can’t be fixed. Yes, read about the trillions spent in Afghanistan basically for nothing and then think about the pothole that ripped apart your tire and bent your rim. And you wonder why people are angry. We need to focus more from the bottom up as opposed to the top down. We’ve got to educate, inform and take care of the disadvantaged. We’ve got to give them opportunity. But we can’t, because we’re in the midst of a tribal war.

As for the Afghanistan pullout causing a hit to our international reputation…the truth is America has fallen in the eyes of the rest of the world already. Just go somewhere and listen. But no, better to be an ostrich believing a fantasy until it’s all over.

Now don’t lay that America, love it or leave it, b.s. on me. Of course there are great things in the U.S. And sure, people clamor to come here, but not everybody. Because it’s pretty damn good in many countries. And the real reason people come to America is economic opportunity, which we quash at every turn, making sure the poor stay that way and the rich lord over them.

Used to be we could count on artists to lay down truth. Yes, musicians told us the Vietnam War was a bogus effort with huge costs. But today the headlines in music are about brand extension and wealth. It’s little different from wrestling. And the movies are about fictional superheroes, there’s literally no truth there. There’s a vacuum of truth and honesty but it’s very clear why that’s so because…IT DOESN’T PAY! And life is tough, and unlike in the sixties and seventies you can’t survive on minimum wage.

So, this Afghanistan story will blow over, and it won’t have legs, except for politicians trotting it out as denigration of Biden, without talking about Bush II and Cheney getting us into this mess, never mind Obama and Trump continuing it. We’ve got the blame game. Hoping you’ll vote for the “innocent,” assuming you can vote at all. That’s right, in today’s America not only can you not make it economically, you can’t even vote.

So keep telling us how bad it is in Afghanistan, how poorly it was handled. If you want us to slow down and look can you at least have some nudity, some TikTok clips, have some fan fiction about a superhero coming in to save the day? Because otherwise…WE’RE NOT INTERESTED!

It’s a music movie.

I’m stunned at the lack of buzz re the new season of “Ted Lasso.” Today there were articles about its Christmas episode, but only one hand’s worth of people have e-mailed me about the show since it launched. It seems like Apple and the media did such a great job of promoting it that they no longer allowed fans to own it. Or maybe it’s just not that good, I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet, I’m waiting for the season to finish before I dig in, I only binge.

And there’s been a concomitant amount of promotion about “Coda.” But no one’s e-mailing me about it whatsoever.

The hype was hard to miss. Sundance winner. Marlee Matlin insisting deaf characters be played by deaf actors. But it appears the hoi polloi just don’t care, that newspaper coverage is the circle jerk of Twitter for the entertainment industry, but even worse, it has little to no effect.

It’s kind of like when people ask to send me their physical product, it’s streamable online, that’s enough, but these people feel better about themselves if they send the CD or vinyl. It makes them feel like they’ve done something, pushed the project along, when nothing could be further from the truth. Studios and streaming platforms massage old school media and believe they’ve done their job when nothing could be further from the truth.

But I heartily recommend “Coda,” as long as you can handle a heart-tugging, somewhat saccharine movie. But there are edges at times. And I really enjoyed it. It’s free with your Apple TV+ subscription, something everybody seems to have, since it comes free with Apple purchases, but there’s no talk about “Coda.” But if you watch it, you’ll tell other people about it.

So what we’ve got here is Emilia Jones as Ruby, the only hearing person in a family of deaf people, i.e. her parents and her brother Leo.

And you know how it is with films about disabled people, they’re perfect, admirable, sans edges. But not this family! They’re so busy talking you expect them to break an arm or a finger. And they use salty language. And Ruby is their interpreter, can they live without her?

Families. They don’t really want to let you go. They want you to be who they want you to be, and too often people can’t escape the pressure.

So the Rossis make their living fishing, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Ruby is on the boat as their ears and she’s singing…

So what we know now is the hit parade, the Spotify Top 50, is so detached from what people want from music as to be laughable. As for Rihanna, she may be a billionaire, but she hasn’t put out an album for five years! So what is so surprising in “Coda” is when they sing songs… Like the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing,” and Kiki Dee’s “I’ve Got The Music in Me” and David Bowie’s “Starman.” Yes, they’re old, but you can actually sing them, and the lyrics aren’t completely vapid. And when the choir sings them your heart will go pitter-patter, that’s the power of music right there!

And the astounding thing is Emilia Jones, an actress, has a great voice. She adds meaning to the songs. This is not some TV competition show, this is far from the flat screen. It’s not about riches, but the joy of music.

And getting into Berklee.

The music teacher, Eugenio Derbez as Bernardo Villalobos, is a graduate of the college and is deserving of an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role. At first he comes off hokey, but ultimately you realize he’s got a solid inside, that he’s got a code, which he lives by and insists his charges respect. And isn’t it always the arts teachers who can bend the rules with language and attitude and fully reach the students.

So, there’s a plot. Having to do with the deaf family and fishing and Ruby being an outcast and it all works, maybe because her family is so off the wall, in a good way. But there’s also the story of Ruby’s singing. And the question of her future. Will she have one? Or will she be tied down to the boat for the rest of her life.

Now I’m not exactly in the mood I was in after midnight when I watched “Coda.” That’s when things slow down and you can marinate in art, as opposed to today when I’m dealing with all the incoming. If I’d written this last night it would have less edge and more soul. But if I wrote this last night what difference would it make? “Coda” is not Afghanistan. Not that most Americans care about Afghanistan, despite the news, but my point here is we’re all in our separate silos and when the maelstrom gets too tough that’s where we retreat. That’s why art is king, it soothes our souls.

And when the movie was over, I immediately went to the internet to find out if Emilia really did sing, and more about the actors and the shoot. But simultaneous with my research I pulled up Apple Music to hear…

I started on Apple Music, since it’s lossless. But I switched to Spotify, because it was a much more thorough search, yielding results I was unaware of, you see I needed to hear…

“You’re All I Need to Get By.”

That’s the duet in the movie. As a matter of fact, there’s even a soundtrack, you can hear the two characters’ version here: 

https://spoti.fi/37LH4yb

I’m not going to link you to the YouTube clip, because you’ll learn too much about the plot.

Not that the iteration of the song will bowl you over, but you see they work on it throughout the movie, from recalcitrance to exuberance. You see and hear it build. And it’s so satisfying. And you know it, but it doesn’t sound anything like the original, who did the original again? MARVIN GAYE & TAMMI TERRELL!

But that was a hit in 1968, and Tammi unfortunately died not long thereafter.

Then again, Mr. V has the choir sing Marvin’s “Let’s Get It On,” which is both surprising and satisfying at the same time, can you sing this at school?

But the version of “You’re All I Need to Get By” in “Coda” is different from the famous hit Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell version, because it’s…

A cappella. Just the melody, the notes and the vocals, and it shines in a whole new way. The original hit is more of a record.

Now interestingly the first hit that comes up on Spotify is Michael McDonald’s version.

But there’s a take by Aretha Franklin. And Diana Ross. Nancy Wilson. Johnny Mathis & Deniece Williams. And even Tony Orlando & Dawn, who made it into the Top 40 with this Ashford & Simpson composition in 1975. Now you know why all the money is in publishing. Write a great song and it’s FOREVER!

But the “Coda” version is unique in its quietude. It’s not a rollicking record, just high school students singing.

What do we need to get by?

It’s hard to stay focused in this overwhelming world in which death is always at the door. But then you watch a movie like “Coda” and it’s reinforced what you need is…

People.

Love.

And music.

Have all these and you’ve got the building blocks of life, and since the version of “You’re All I Need to Get By” is so stripped down in the movie the truth emanates, shines brightly and resonates.

Yes, watch “Coda” and when they sing you will fly. Taken to a place only music can lift you.

“You’re all, all that I want to strive for and do a little more

You’re all, all the joys under the sun wrapped into one

You’re all, all that I need to get by”