They broke the number one rule of the internet.

You start from the bottom up.

Downloads are anemic, because most people are unaware of the product, all the hype has been in traditional news outlets, and the readers of those might have credit cards, but they are not the target audience for a service like this.

Take TikTok… Did you see a carpet bomb promotional campaign? OF COURSE NOT! That would have killed it, the kids can smell a rat.

The kids found TikTok, and the press didn’t glom on until Lil Nas X had a hit with “Old Town Road.” As for Drake employing TikTok to break his new track big…that paradigm is gonna die, soon, because everybody will be trying to do this and really TikTok is a platform for the users, not the promoters. Think of viral videos on YouTube, everybody was amazed by PSY’S “Gangnam Style,” has there been a viral video recently? OF COURSE NOT! After the “Harlem Shake,” fully seven years ago, the audience realized it was being manipulated, and refused to be marks. Just like people stopped e-mailing jokes like they did in the AOL era, people stopped e-mailing “viral” videos, there was no excitement there. Right now there’s excitement at TikTok, and it might continue, but it won’t be built to benefit major label musicians, just like all the talk about YouTube these days is about influencers, nobodies who’ve gained traction, many of whom have moved on from YouTube to Instagram, the people remain constant, the platforms change.

And it’s hard to break a new platform. Bing is pretty good, but after billions it just has a sliver of the search market, and a lot of it is paid for. Google was good enough, people didn’t need an alternative. As for content on the handheld device, there are already too many options. Have you ever heard someone complain that there’s nothing to watch, do or say on their smartphone?

All of the internet platforms that broke big started small. Can you say YouTube and Instagram and Snapchat? People like the process of discovery, they want to own things, they want to be able to turn others on to them, that’s half the fun, they don’t like things jammed down their throat.

And there’s nothing cool about Quibi, the usual suspects telling us to watch? Don’t we have enough Chrissy Teigen anyway? Today celebrities have enough outlets to expose themselves online, can you say Facebook Live?, they’re not yearning for more platforms, they’re yearning for more eyeballs!

Netflix streaming was new. It broke open with “House of Cards.”

Ditto with HBO, “The Sopranos” made it must see TV.

So, if Quibi wanted to do it the right way, they’d have released very little product and waited until they had a hit, and then built upon that, eventually charging. Or at least have a two-tiered system, like Spotify, free with ads and pay without. And Apple would have had no traction with its streaming service if Spotify didn’t pave the way.

And it’s too late for new platforms anyway. You can’t game the system. Everybody’s on overload, we don’t have time for everything we’re paying for already! The new paradigm in TV streaming services is free with ads, because the networks know there’s no way the public is going to pay for one more service. But Quibi seems oblivious to this. The outlet could have pivoted, that’s the Silicon Valley way, but Katzenberg thinks he knows better. No, Ed Catmull knew better. Katzenberg had a moment, like a rock star, and he thinks he can keep innovating and we’ll care, even though after an initial window it’s hard for any musician to have another hit.

So, the second day downloads went DOWN! That’s heat for you! We see no ramping up, no hockey stick. Sure, Meg Whitman trumpeted 1.7 million downloads since launch, but that’s bupkes, and how many apps do you download and not use? I’ve got Disney+ and Apple TV+. I got both of the apps free, as did many, they came with a Verizon unlimited account and the purchase of an Apple product. I haven’t fired up either of the apps since the day I installed them, last fall, there’s no programming I have to see.

It used to be about platforms.

Now it’s about content.

Used to be you built your fame on someone else’s site, and then you broke free and created your own site, hoovered up all those dollars. But now, in an era where you can’t get enough attention, where there are so many options, you can no longer do that, be thankful anybody is paying attention at all, even if it’s on someone else’s site!

And speaking of the media…

Did you catch the multi-page spread on Quibi in the “L.A. Times” yesterday? Almost as much in the “New York Times”? Made me puke. Shows the power of public relations people, but even worse it shows the susceptibility of these “news” outlets. If you think they’re independent, and chasing news, you’re wrong, oftentimes they’re just printing what is fed to them.

Furthermore, this press blast has no lasting impression. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. And most of the target market missed it anyway, never mind not caring about it. There’s no virality whatsoever.

We’ve seen this movie again and again in Hollywood, the old powers trying to eclipse the young. Do you remember all those false starts in the music business twenty years ago? The Farm Club? And others I can no longer remember the name of without research firing my synapses (oh, that’s right, PressPlay!) Furthermore, it was labeled “Jimmy & Doug”‘s, only people in Hollywood would be so self-aggrandizing. The techies let their work speak for itself.

And the techies started with a clean slate. Sony got hung up with MiniDiscs and DRM and missed the MP3 revolution. Furthermore, those stuck in the past can rarely see the future.

So, there’s nothing new about Quibi, other than it’s chopped-up television. Do you think that’s appealing?

But all those investors bet on Katzenberg and Whitman because of what they’d done. But what they’d done had little to do with what they were attempting to do!

Now I doubt Quibi will expire. They’ll pivot and declare victory, and the media will repeat the fiction.

But I ask you, based on almost a week’s worth of numbers and reviews, are you ready to pay?

OF COURSE NOT!

Are you still scared?

I’m not seeing anybody face to face, but my anxiety is greatly reduced. The facts are hard to synthesize…Garcetti and Newsom say self-quarantining is flattening the curve, but more people died in L.A. yesterday than ever before. But you don’t have to read the papers from cover to cover every day, you don’t need to be glued to the news to have an idea of what’s going on. It’s clear, it’s here and you’ve got to stay home. For how long? WHO KNOWS!

But into this vacuum has seeped analysis.

The big story was in yesterday’s “New York Times”:

“He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus – An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.”

You might see this as preaching to the choir, the leftist cabal, but as I’ve written previously, the “New York Times” sets the agenda for the country, it’s tossed up on TV and people react to it. Rachel Maddow embellishes it, Fox News tears it apart.

But yesterday…

Chris Wallace confronted the panel with this story.

Then all hell broke loose.

Trump excoriated Wallace, and then Fox host Jedediah Bila bit back at Trump:

“Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling. Chris is doing his job. The news should not be any president’s friend, ally, or buddy. If it bothered you when Obama complained about Fox News, but you’re silent on this complete nonsense, then just stop. Seriously. Enough.”

But it didn’t matter. The right was calling for Wallace’s head. How did I find, out? Wallace was trending on Twitter. Although I listen to Fox News more than a bit, I do not watch any channel’s Sunday shows, they’re all spin, news is almost never broken.

And then Trump tweeted Fox’s call for Fauci’s head, and today the White House denied Fauci was on the chopping block. Then again, everybody else has been subject to the chopping block, the only person who’s been immune is Trump himself, and maybe his son-in-law Jared Kushner, because when your back is against the wall, family is everything, it’s about all you can rely on.

But irrelevant kerfuffles right? No one’s opinion is being changed here.

But today the “Los Angeles Times” piled on:

“‘It all could have been different’ – Trump administration disbanded team of pandemic experts”

This front page article blames Bolton.

But what’s interesting is we’re in the post-impeachment world. In other words, these stories are not being revealed to achieve a specific goal, rather they’re analyzing what happened, before the government does, which it always does, way too late.

So, once again, now that we’re all on the same page, now that spring breakers are not at the beach, now that we all know the consequences of interaction, the story has shifted.

But there are still facts.

The first sailor from that ship just died. You know, the one where the captain was relieved of his duties.

Now there are no mea culpas in the government, certainly not in Trump’s administration, but Brett Cozier is living in today’s world, where you make your own story, because the system no longer works. That’s today’s America, nobody abides by the rules, because they just don’t work. Supposedly, Cozier didn’t follow the chain of command. We can argue whether his statements were leaked or not, but where does sympathy lie when someone dies?

In other words, it’s everybody for themselves in America today. If you’re obeying orders, you’re a chump, no one else is.

Then there’s the chloroquine story:

“Small Chloroquine Study Halted Over Risk of Fatal Heart Complications – A research trial of coronavirus patients in Brazil ended after patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine, one of the drugs President Trump has promoted, developed irregular heart rates.”

Once again, do I think all this is going to change the hearts and minds of the Trumpsters? Absolutely not.

Then again, the DNC is out of touch with reality.

Rachel Bitecofer has gone on and on how it’s a waste of time to try and convince those who voted for Trump to come back to the Democrats. Ain’t gonna happen. This flow was established over years, it just wasn’t Trump. It was NAFTA and the Democrats’ focus on corporations as opposed to workers. In other words, the Democrats can only win if they get out the vote.

But they’re doing a piss-poor job of that.

The Democrats still believe the war is fought on TV and in the newspapers, when the truth is it’s fought online, where the Republicans are so far ahead it’d be funny if so much weren’t at risk. Donald Trump has 76.9 million Twitter followers. Joe Biden has 4.8 million. It’s like the difference between Drake and your local bar band. And one thing’s for sure, the bar band isn’t gonna get bigger unless it broadens its focus, plays in other locales, ties up with an entity that can bring the message to millions. But Joe Biden keeps making videos no one sees in his basement and posts an opinion piece in the “New York Times” that is so inconsequential it’s laughable. It’d be like the police chief speaking to the academy when there’s a riot outside. GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE!

But the Democrats don’t know how to do this. Because the DNC is run by oldsters who think they know technology, but don’t. Just because you’ve got an iPhone and a Facebook account, that does not mean you’re social media savvy. Here’s the dividing line…if you don’t know how to launch Zoom and go into Gallery View, get out of the way.

But Mark Cuban has 7.8 million Twitter followers, and he’s on TV seemingly every night. People know more about Cuban than they do about Biden, and Cuban is talking about running.

Now Cuban is not a Democrat. And if he does run, who does he negatively impact?

I’d say the Republicans. But I’m not sure. But today Mark Cuban is trusted more than Donald Trump, and Biden isn’t even in their league.

The DNC pulled a fast one on Bernie Sanders. Everybody folded their efforts into the losing Biden and he beat out Bernie. Fine, but was Joe the person to put all that effort behind? I mean they would have been better off with Klobuchar or Buttigieg, at least they’re living in 2020. But so scared of Bernie, the insiders who are actually outside the public discussion, rallied around the wrong guy. This is what happens when you panic. If Amy or Pete were making pronouncements about Covid-19, people would be listening, especially to Amy, who is still in Congress. But the Democrats freaked out too soon. Especially in a world where Sanders’s platform no longer looks left field. Last night John Oliver featured an EMT without health insurance. His job doesn’t offer it and the ACA is too expensive. Is this the guy you want coming to your house? And in a time when people are worried about running out of cash, the giveaways are to the corporations and Wall Street titans.

“Too Big to Fail, Covid-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis – Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollo’s Leon Black ($7.5 billion). Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industry’s coronavirus losses will belong to all of us.”

Bottom line: hedge funds control pension money, and that can’t be lost, so the funds have to be bailed out. As for you? You’re on your own!

But it gets even worse!

Turns out we had the wrong story about fracking, we’ve been debating the environmental issues when we should have been debating the financial issues:

“Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream – America’s energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. All that’s left to tally is the damage”

The fracking boom was a scam. Sure, oil was produced, but at a loss, CONTINUOUSLY!

Meanwhile, the oil producing nations agree on an output cut and the stock market still drops. You can read all about it in the “Wall Street Journal,” whose editorial page has been in a fight with Trump. Which is like the Koch Brothers being in a fight with the Mercer family.

In other words, it appears that business has little loyalty to Trump. Trump’s true constituency is the people. But the people are broke and dying in this pandemic. And therefore, Trump’s approval ratings have gone down.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to anybody other than Trump. And Trump is still fundraising like a machine, it’s astounding how much cash he’s hoovering up. As for Biden? He’s looking to the corporations to kick in, nobody else cares. Unless you’re rich and have something to lose, you don’t want to give Joe anything.

Trump has a bizarre charisma.

Biden barely knows what day it is, he looks more like Grandpa Simpson than a Presidential candidate.

So that’s the world we’re living in.

Oh, one more thing, if you’re not scared already. You must, and I mean YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST, read Paul Krugman’s opinion piece from last Friday:

“American Democracy May Be Dying – Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.”

This explains the election in Wisconsin. Be afraid, be very afraid. It was all about getting a Republican Supreme Court judge elected. The Republicans figured city folk would vote against him, so they only had five polling places open in Milwaukee, instead of the usual one hundred and eighty.

Meanwhile, the latest studies say that voting by mail doesn’t hurt the Republicans at all. And even nitwit Georgian governor Kemp allowed the state’s primary to be delayed.

So, what have we learned here?

Most people are not paying attention. Now that they feel safe inside, they’re tuning out the news, especially anything that involves pointing fingers, that isn’t relevant to them today.

And we’ve also learned that nothing sticks to Trump.

And that despite all this news, the Democrats have no plan to defeat Trump in November other than Trump himself. There’s no agenda, no platform that people know about, that resonates.

We are in the midst of a giant sea change in American culture. The retirement of the baby boomers and the subsequent power of the millennials (Gen-X, once again, has lost out, being skipped over).

Unfortunately, Trump is more in tune with the millennials than Biden. He understands it’s a fast-moving culture where the truth is buried by the next event and the most important thing is to keep your name in the online scuttlebutt.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are running on old political theories. That people want gradual change and young people don’t vote. It might actually work this time, but it’s hard not to sleep with one eye open.

And when it comes to business as usual…are you willing to go to a restaurant, are you willing to go to the office? Ultimately, the end of self-quarantining will be decided by the people, not the government. Just like they had to be convinced to stay home, they’ll have to be convinced to go out, and that won’t happen instantaneously, no one wants to die.

And they keep dying.

Some, like Boris Johnson, recover.

But, triage is now even being done in the United States, if you’re over seventy with a preexisting condition, good luck.

So both parties and business depend upon you being ignorant, easily swayed with disinformation. So now is the time to educate yourself.

But in a country where lying is de rigueur and facts are fungible, don’t expect a sea change in public sentiment. People still believe they’re going to win the lottery.

The odds of getting the coronavirus are much higher.

All I Ever Wanted: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir

She got pregnant at twelve.

Do all artists come from a fucked-up background? After all, if you’re loved and complete, what do you have to bitch about?

Plenty, but not as much as the broken people.

Kathy Valentine drank and drugged with her single mother, who established absolutely no limits. Valentine says kids are looking for limits, I don’t know, because I can still remember my father screaming at the top of his lungs, insisting I behave in one way or another.

And then she was bitten by rock and roll.

You remember the people who were bitten by tech, right? The ones who moved to San Francisco, the ones who started developing apps? Very few made it,

But a few did.

Same deal with rock and roll and Kathy Valentine.

The boomers’ past is fading in the rearview mirror, and being rewritten by those who either were not there or would rather erase the battles and freedoms won in that era. There was a complete upheaval, the young ‘uns against the establishment, and the establishment had no clue, all it could employ to combat the youth was scolding and in extreme cases the police.

And what fueled that upheaval?

Music!

People always say the turning point was the Beatles, and that definitely was a significant event, but you should never forget the impact of the folk movement that preceded it. After all, that’s where Bob Dylan got his start, that’s where he became famous first.

And you didn’t have to go to Newport. If you went to camp, those folk songs were sung. And they were inherently different from what was on the hit parade, they were not mindless drivel, they had subterfuge built in.

And then the Beatles came along and all hell broke loose.

There’s a music business now, but it’s nothing like it was back then. As a matter of fact, today’s music business resembles the pre-Beatle era more than it does the post-Beatle era. People didn’t froth at the mouth if you worked in the music business, you could get a gig at a record store no problem, and then the entire world flip-flopped. Getting a gig at Tower Sunset was akin to getting into Harvard, maybe even better, you made better connections. You dreamed of working at a record label! I don’t think that tops the dreams of today’s kids.

So, Valentine is bitten by the bug. Only the lightbulb went off for her seeing Suzi Quatro on TV, not the Beatles.

Quatro never really made it in America. She ultimately appeared on “Happy Days,” but that show had no edge, none of the thump of her bass or the intensity of her records.

And Kathy Valentine wanted to follow in Suzi Quatro’s footsteps.

She got a guitar, and a lame Peavey amp that she regretted buying nearly immediately.

And then she infiltrated the scene.

That’s another thing that’s different, you couldn’t hook up on the internet, that’s why everybody went to New York or L.A…that’s where the players were!

But living in Austin, Valentine got to see and meet all that city’s royalty, she knew Stevie Ray when he said his brother Jimmie had more licks than he did, when he just got on stage and played everything he knew.

So, Valentine and Carla Olson got together in L.A.

Well, Valentine moved there with their drummer, her best friend Marilyn, who immediately ditched Kathy because she wasn’t old enough to get into the clubs.

So, Valentine and Olson formed the Textones and…

Olson never made it.

If you lived through the era, all the names and locations are familiar. They may seem glitzy from afar, but Club 88 was a dump far off the beaten path. A scene was building, but no one broke through until the Knack, and most of the bands did not get record deals and those who did tended not to make it. You couldn’t turn on KROQ without hearing the Plimsouls’ “A Million Miles Away,” but that was the only place you heard it, until it was ultimately featured in the movie “Valley Girl.” There was a scene, with famous players, who even got a ton of local ink, like Olson, but they never broke out of the city, they kept their day jobs.

So Valentine lucks into a gig with the Go-Go’s, she’s a better player than the girl she replaces, and she gets the gig and goes on a wild ride until it ends.

Oh, she’s drinkin’ and druggin’ and fuckin’ and then…BOOM! The brand breaks up.

In hindsight she places blame on the manager(s), and the way the band mishandled some of their own decisions.

Bands are always ungrateful. They’ll leave a manager on a whim. They always think they can make it without the manager, but the truth is they never do. Ginger Canzoneri was inexperienced, but she got the band where they were.

As for Valentine?

The Go-Go’s had no loyalty to her, she came late, just before the breakthrough, she did not fight in the trenches with them, with only one goal, to make it, and a million minefields in their way.

Which is why supergroups never seem to last. The bands did not grow up together, ride in vans together, schlepp their own equipment together.

But it was a different era.

The Go-Go’s told their label IRS they did not want a third single from their album and they nixed endorsement deals. Can you imagine that happening today? NO WAY!

Actually, money was not a factor until the checks came in, and then it was clear the songwriters were making much more. And when you split your other income five ways…that makes a difference.

Maybe the band never recovered from that.

Maybe the band never recovered from nixing Jane Wiedlin’s desire to sing her own song.

Bands are not corporations. Well, maybe they’re incorporated, but you can’t learn how to build one by getting an MBA. And you can’t learn how to form and break one in any school music program. Every band is different, and there are a lot of great bands that don’t make it. First and foremost, can the band stay together? And if it does…who is the champion, who gets the band notice, and who writes the songs…oftentimes they’re different people. The introvert writes the songs and the extroverts break the band. Can you say Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth? And the resentments run deep. And luck is always a factor. And usually, the only people who can get excited about you have no music business experience.

It was very different from today. Now the label will sign an act for a single, hope to make its entire investment back on that. But in the old days, signing a band was a commitment, of money, time and effort, you didn’t do it on a whim.

And even if you got signed… Did the record come out right? Is your champion still at the label? Did MTV and radio change formats, leaving you out?

The Go-Go’s blew up as a result of MTV.

Today MTV is meaningless.

And today kids are smart. There are two types:

1. Those who know the score.

2. The ignorant who will do anything to make it and most times won’t.

No one worried about their future back then, they didn’t graduate from college and get a gig from a recruiter. I kid you not when I tell you that when I graduated from college, I had no idea what an MBA was! And studying and going into business? What could be more boring!

Which is another reason why MBAs have not been successful in the music business. When asked by the Warner Music brass how he planned to have better numbers the next year, Ahmet Ertegun didn’t make a spreadsheet, never mind a PowerPoint presentation, he said…HAVE MORE HITS!

You fly by the seat of your pants in the music business.

It’s a game of musical chairs, and Kathy Valentine got left out. She didn’t really make that much money, a pittance compared to the techies, and then she blew it. You would have saved, but you could never have been a rock star!

So this book is different from every rock autobiography I’ve ever read.

Usually, they’re ghostwritten, or done with a collaborator. And usually, they’re just a recitation of the facts, with some wild stories mixed in. They’re little different from an episode of “Behind the Music.”

But you can be sure Kathy Valentine wrote this book herself.

Overwrote in fact. She includes too many descriptors and allusions, they’re well-done, but they detract from the narrative, a little anyway. You see this is her first book, and experience counts. You’ve got to write for the audience, not the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the book must first and foremost be readable.

But Valentine is aiming much higher than the rest of the rock biographies. This isn’t one and done, just the first journey on a road of writing.

And writing is a skill. And she’s definitely got something.

So, this is not like Linda Ronstadt’s book, there’s plenty of dirt, even if that’s not the focus.

And it’s not tied into a bigger promotion.

It’s just Kathy Valentine’s story.

Now I don’t know her, and I’m still not sure I know her after this book. Was she the wild chick who alienated people or the glue that kept things together, or did she have to get sober to become complete?

Now let’s be clear, Valentine is more forthcoming than most musicians. Oh, they’ll tell you about their bad behavior and how they’re clean now, but you don’t get much of their inner life.

I’ve still got questions.

Valentine does an excellent job of describing how it feels to be left out. Caffey ties up with Carlisle and they have great success and great incomes, and Wiedlin has a hit and Schock gets a deal with Capitol. One day you’re on top of the world, the next you’re a has-been, not a complete unknown, but definitely a rolling stone. How do you cope with that?

Well, Kathy Valentine got sober. She even went back to college and got her degree, something almost unheard of from those who’ve had success. She still plays in bands, but her glory days, and her big income, are behind her.

And now, the Go-Go’s are living on their legend, none of them can have a hit, as a matter of fact, the hits of the others dried up pretty fast. So, there are a couple of years of success and then everybody runs on fumes, sometimes for the rest of their lives, which is sad. At least Valentine seems to have broken the mold on this.

But what really makes “All I Ever Wanted” interesting, is it’s the viewpoint of a girl/woman, how she wanted to be in rock and roll, which was dominated by men, and found a way to succeed. We hear all about sexism in the business, but rarely through the eyes of those who made it.

The road is like a pajama party with drugs and alcohol, this is not the male world of groupies.

But they’re women, so they’re hit on, they can’t live normal lives, they have to be on guard all the time, this is what the Me Too movement is all about. The basic is…CAN WOMEN FEEL SAFE AROUND MEN?

Many times no.

But Kathy Valentine tested the limits. She hitchhiked, she wasn’t afraid of the world, she did not know any better, she ran on instinct, being in a rock band was all she ever wanted, she lived her dream.

But dreams never last.

“The Dutch House”
Ann Patchett

This is a huge bestseller, and deservedly so.

Most of the big sellers today are genre books, mysteries, thrillers and lowbrow stuff that cannot be recommended. But “The Dutch House” is a good old-fashioned story, about people and their lives. And just like real life, everything doesn’t always work out. I’d love to tell you more, but I don’t want to give away any plot points. I read for the surprise, for the experience, which is why I essentially never reread or watch movies again.

I’ve been hit and miss on Patchett, she wrote one of the few books I could never finish on my Kindle. But this book called to me, to stop doing anything else and finish it, and that’s what I’m looking for in a read.

One quote that resonated:

“I’d never been in the position of getting my head around what I’d been given. I only understood what I’d lost.”

I’m a glass half-empty guy. My shrink brings this up all the time.

The Dutch House: A Novel

“The Glass Hotel”
Emily St. John Mandel

Mandel shoots higher than Patchett, but she does not hit her target. “The Glass Hotel” is really two books, one about the lives of siblings, the other about the situations they find themselves in later.

I’d purchased the book, had started it, and then all the papers reviewed it and put the key plot point in the headline before I’d gotten to it. Makes me crazy! I don’t want the review to be a CliffsNotes version of the book, I just want to know what kind of book it is and whether it’s good. As for the reviews, I haven’t gone back and read them, why? Especially in the “New York Times,” the reviewers frequently make it about themselves as opposed to the book and this drives me nuts.

Anyway, I loved Emily St. John Mandel’s previous book, “Station Eleven,” so I bought this the moment it came out. And that’s Monday at midnight for those in the Kindle world.

Despite not achieving its goal, “The Glass Hotel” has tons of wisdom, whereas “The Dutch House” is to a great degree just a story.

“Easy now, he told himself. He was aware of a weakness for rhapsodizing on his industry at excessive length.”

I wait for the signal, I never jump in uninvited. If people are really listening, I’ll go on forever, but usually they aren’t, they don’t really care. Then there are the people who get you on the phone and they go into deep detail on minutiae, they want to be heard, they don’t really care if you get up and make a sandwich, they’re out of touch with the listener. If I’m talking, I’m constantly gauging the response, I’m so fearful of burning people out.

“and that’s when I realized money is its own country.”

St. John Mandel nails the bubble the rich live in, with no consciousness of how the rest of us live our lives, that’s one of the great things about the book.

“because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money.”

EXACTLY! You don’t want to be a starving artist, because if you’re starving, that’s all you can think about, unfortunately I know from experience. Those on the bottom are just one foible away from a crisis. They get a flat, their TV goes on the fritz and they can’t afford to fix it. People romanticize the poor, non-rich people are proud that they’ve got less, our values are screwed up, no one should have to worry about getting fed and having a roof over their head.

“if you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life.”

Whether you had it and lost it, or never had it, poor is also a different country. In a land where those in power have only read about the poor, oftentimes the rich and those in power just don’t get it. This is how Trump got elected. The Democrats are still out of touch with their core constituency, unless they consider it to be the educated boomers, and there are not enough of them to win an election.

You need to read Rachel Bitecofer on this. The following article was written in the middle of March, before it was clear Biden would win the nomination, but there’s more wisdom here than I’ve read in the WSJ, NYT or the WaPo:

Political savant Rachel Bitecofer: Democrats face “major disadvantage” going with Biden

You’ll understand more about the populace and how it votes if you read this interview. The truth is, those in big media, at the DNC, have no idea how their constituents really feel and what decides elections. Once again, Bitecofer was the only person to call 2018 correctly.

“all of the stalling motions that smokers perform when they’re not sure what to say and have seen too many movies.”

We all experience this, but to see it articulated makes you feel connected, which is why you read fiction.

“It turned out that never having that conversation with Vincent meant that he was somehow condemned to ALWAYS have that conversation with Vincent.”

When you don’t say it, you think about it all the time. When you do, there is movement, the situation changes, and you forget about it.

The Glass Hotel: A novel

RECOMMENDATIONS

“Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup”

Even if you think you know the Theranos story, you MUST read “Bad Blood,” it’s the hardest book to put down that I’ve read in a decade.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

“Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice”

You’ll learn more about Russia than a year of reading the newspaper. Easy to read and jaw-dropping.

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

The above two books are non-fiction, I’m loath to recommend fiction, everybody has different taste. But I’ll take a risk.

“The Great Alone”
Kristin Hannah

I loved this book, I loved the darkness of Alaska. When a book takes you away, it’s best.

Some may see this as woman slanted, I guess it depends on what kind of guy you are. If you’re the kind of guy who reads fiction, not only non-fiction, maybe.

I could list all the highly-touted books that are unreadable, like Leslie Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams,” but that’s a different article. Just know the higher brow the publication is, oftentimes the less reliable the reviews are.

The Great Alone: A Novel

“Ozark”
Netflix

The first two episodes give you the impression that season three will be a let-down, it is most decidedly not. There’s way too much action, but the performances are so stellar and so integrated. This is not watching Meryl Streep act outside of the ensemble, Laura Linney is astounding, she truly embodies the character. And Janet McTeer is icily cold. And the kids know and the tension is high and despite being fiction, there are so many lessons on how the world really works.

“Money Heist”
Netflix

Season four. Good, but a disappointment. Some of the action seems truly implausible, but you watch waiting for a conclusion and…

I enjoyed it. But it’s a mindless diversion.

“Babylon Berlin”
Netflix

Season three. The best shot show on television. However, the plot doesn’t quite measure up to that standard. A main plot point concerns a movie, and when moviemakers use the movies as main feature of the story, it’s like when authors write about authors and musicians sing about musicians, we all don’t live in their worlds, we all can’t relate to them.

And the strangest thing about season three is…

Season four of “Money Heist” was obviously shot at the same time as season three. But season three of “Babylon Berlin” was obviously shot later than the first two seasons, and the actors have aged, and it throws you a bit off guard. Liv Lisa Fries is suddenly a woman as opposed to a girl on the cusp of adulthood. She’s still phenomenal, but the vibe is a bit different.

And when there’s a long hiatus between seasons, it’s jarring, you don’t remember everything, which is why I’d rather binge…four, five or six seasons. Because not only is it hard to pick up, it’s hard to end. I know, they’ve got to write and shoot more, but I’m ready for the next seasons of “Ozark” and “Money Heist” today!

RECOMMENDATIONS

“Happy Valley” on Netflix, start there. And if that resonates, move on to “Broadchurch,” “The Fall,” “The Killing” and “The Bodyguard.”

As for Amazon, I’m partial to “Bosch,” which is returning with its sixth (out of seven!) season on April 17th.

And you know I love the French shows, “Spiral,” “A French Village,” but not everyone is up for subtitles, so I don’t recommend you start there. Then again, there was that story in the “Wall Street Journal” about people leaving subtitles on all the time, that’s what I do!