SiriusXM streaming is now FREE!

(Well, at least until May 15th.)

Here’s how you do it:

Go to: SiriusXM streaming

Click on the blue box on the right that says “Start Streaming.”

And now you’re in!

Click on “Search” at the top of the window and enter “Lefsetz” and you can listen not only to today’s show live (4PM west, 7PM east) but all my past shows.

Happy listening!

They keep going out of business.

I resubscribed to “Automobile,” then it went under and they gave me a free subscription to “Motor Trend”‘s website, that’d be like “Rolling Stone” going under and then getting a free subscription to “Hit Parader,” WHO CARES?

But the two automobile magazines were owned by the same company. “Time” isn’t even owned by “Time” anymore, ditto “Sports Illustrated.”

I’m a magazine freak, I have more subscriptions than anybody I know. But not only do magazines keep biting the dust, like “National Geographic Traveler,” they’re reducing frequency. “Sound & Vision”…who knows how often it comes out anymore. “Ski,” same deal. They all keep reducing the number of issues you get per year. “Entertainment Weekly” is now monthly, I kid you not.

So, I certainly am not re-upping my subscription to anything other than “The New Yorker,” which will survive. As for “Vanity Fair”? There’s nothing in it anymore, the new editor has totally missed the mark, and she’s had the gig for over a year. As for Graydon Carter’s “Air Mail,” you want me to pay how much to read online?

And speaking of reading online, I finally bought into Apple News+. I didn’t previously because I get all the magazines in their physical iteration, and it’s much easier to read paper than on my iPhone (or iPad). It’d be one thing if these magazines were customized for online, but…you read ’em and you’re reminded how they were not that good to begin with. Used to be writing was scarce, now we’re inundated with so many links we don’t even want to click through. That’s the dirty little secret, you can send your links, but no one’s gonna click through, unless you’ve established credibility, which is damn hard to establish. And, once again, just because YOU’RE interested, that does not mean I will be interested, or your friend will be interested. Recommending is an art. That few are skilled in. But it gets no respect, because it doesn’t pay well, and if it’s not extremely lucrative, the best and the brightest don’t go into it.

So I signed up for AppleNews+ because to renew “New York” magazine would be seventy bucks a year, and AppleNews+ only a hundred and twenty. And a couple of years back “New York” switched from weekly to biweekly. And “Rolling Stone” is now monthly. Is anything monthly even relevant anymore, in a world where what happened this morning is already old news tonight?

So, I finally decided I wasn’t gonna pay for “New York,” I got it for Frank Rich and the occasional insightful article. That’s another thing about me, I don’t need to read a magazine from cover to cover, if I get a few good articles, I’m satiated. Then again, magazine subscriptions used to be cheap, before advertising went to the web, now they’re a serious commitment, and most people don’t want to make that commitment, and honestly, most of the magazines are not worth it.

So, Covid-19 is gonna kill the magazine business. There’s little advertising today, and who knows when it will rebound, and most of these magazines were barely staying alive anyway. We want information, but we don’t want it irregularly and late.

And so many of the brand names have taken a hit. I used to live for “Newsweek,” but other than the name, the magazine is not the same.

And to tell you the truth, with the plethora of information online, it’s clear that most of the writing in magazines is substandard. Yes, “The New Yorker” has good writing, a cut above, but most of it is flat, in “The New Yorker” style, there’s little excitement, little YOWZA, which is why Tom Wolfe excoriated it. And frequently, “The New Yorker” gets it wrong if it’s something you know about. But it’s head and shoulders above the rest. The rest read exactly like they are, an assemblage of freelance stuff that was mediocre to begin with and was edited down to further blandness.

As for photos? There are already too many photos online!

You can’t be nostalgic for the past. There might be a small business in the past, but that’s not where people are going. Didn’t we learn this in the transition from CDs to files to streams? Hey, still got those old LaserDiscs?

So what we’re seeing with Covid-19 is an acceleration of decline, a speeding up of disruption that might have taken years otherwise.

In other words, a lot of what is eviscerated should be. You might miss them, but really you’re missing what they once were. As for “Sound & Vision”… “Stereo Review” and “High Fidelity” merged and then they merged them with a video magazine and now there’s almost no music…I’m not in the market for a projection TV, I don’t want to build a home theatre. But the magazine is chasing customers down to irrelevance, it’s sad.

So a writer in the “New York Times” who excoriated screen time did a mea culpa this week. Even Walt Mossberg went back to Facebook. Digital is the way we connect today. And it happens via screens. And magazines don’t work well on screens. Hell, it’s taken newspapers years to figure out how to display their stories online, what to focus on, do you scroll down or click through. Magazines missed this step and now they’re hopelessly behind.

Do I miss the days of spending hours reading “Rolling Stone”?

Of course.

But we don’t even live that way anymore, we have so many other distractions, and I’ve got to ask, what do most of these nincompoop musicians have to say anyway, other than promoting themselves.

Magazines are inherently general, and we no longer live in a general world.

But it’s not only magazines, more will go.

Last night John Oliver did a whole segment on OAN.

You know OAN, that’s the news network that sends reporters to White House press conferences who ask sycophantic questions.

Oliver is very good at his craft, and despite working from home, with no audience laughing, his zingers hit just as hard (and I’ve got to credit his crack writing staff too).

So I’m watching this, laughing at the inanities, relishing in the takedown, and then I realize…IT’S NOT GONNA MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE!

It’s not left or right, it’s silos, and there are a zillion of them.

The world is having a hard time adjusting to what technology has wrought. Many of us are still experiencing future shock. And the only difference between the oldsters and the youngsters, who grew up in the internet era, is the youngsters accept that that there are too many outlets, too many interesting things to know all of them.

This is unfathomable to the oldsters.

First, they grew up in a three network world. Everybody literally knew everything.

And then HBO seeped into the cable world. You were hip if you knew “Dream On,” the first HBO series. “The Sopranos” blew up the paradigm, everybody knew it. And now I won’t say everybody knows nothing, but I will say everybody knows a different thing.

This is not a judgment on the quality. There’s a lot of great stuff you miss, some forever, some you discover maybe years later.

As for recommendations?

We ignore them, unless they’re from trusted sources. And your best friend might not even be a trusted source. It has to be someone who has recommended material up your alley before.

And there’s lowbrow and highbrow. Never mind different genres. Mindless and intellectual. And if you dig down deep enough you can find your stuff, but you might not find like-minded people, you might feel like you’re out in the wilderness alone.

Kinda like when I listen to XMU on SiriusXM, the “college” station. I’ll hear something great, and then I’ll wonder, am I the only one listening to this, am I the only one who knows this? After all, it’s not in the Spotify Top 50, you can’t even find it in the genre playlists, and there are so many playlists that honestly, you ignore almost all of them and just cherry-pick what you want to hear or don’t listen at all. But no one even talks about this, the streaming services and the media keep lauding the ever-shrinking in impact Top 50. But really, we live in a Top 2000 world.

And I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix. And the streaming giant’s paradigm is to promote its new shows on the home screen. And now it seems like there’s a new show every day, and a lot of them are interesting, but there’s no way I can consume all of them. Meanwhile, being a fan of “Ozark” and “Money Heist” and “Babylon Berlin,” I’ve got to catch up on those first. And “Fauda” is coming back this month, and “Bosch” too.

So I’m buried under product. And this is product I’ve got an affinity for!

Every day people e-mail me their recommendations. If it’s got less than 80% on RottenTomatoes, I ignore it. If it’s got over 90%, I’m intrigued. There’s no such site for music, but there should be. It’s not volume of listens, but whether anything is any GOOD!

But my big point is that in the old days it was all about crossing over, building your brand to ubiquity, to the point where everybody knew about you, whether they liked you or not.

Even the Kardashians… If they started today, they’d be a footnote. But they started in an era where basic cable still meant something. Now, basic cable is gonna expire, supplanted by streaming services, of which there are a plethora.

So, you grow your audience and grow your audience and then…

That’s all there is. There’s no crossing over. You are who you are, that’s it.

And for those playing the fame game, those in the Spotify Top 50, they get streams but they have no careers. They’re one or two hit wonders and then they disappear. But they get ink, from an antiquated media still living in the last century.

Kind of like newspapers. They’re dying with no advertising. The latest advice from insiders? LET THEM DIE! It’s a bad paradigm, don’t try to prop it up.

Kind of like physical bookstores. They’re time-stamped. But a small group of people can’t stand their evaporation, so they constantly rally around them. Kind of like record stores, do you really miss them? Would you rather have record stores or all of recorded music history at your fingertips for $10 a month? Oh, I’ll get e-mail from people, I always do, telling me EVERYTHING is not available. Well, everything was not available in physical retail, no way. And these are the same people propping up the souvenir shops selling vinyl records today. It’s nostalgia, with no impact on the mainstream, but you constantly read about it in the mainstream press, it’s a feel-good story, but most people don’t read the mainstream press, and at best they end up with misinformation. Streams are net income. Physical they always tell you about the gross. And I won’t go all economic on you, but the bottom line is very few vinyl records are sold and they don’t make that much money, however acts can employ them as the equivalent of merch.

And small acts can sell to a dedicated fanbase.

At least they’ve got a dedicated fanbase.

But their fanbase won’t expand that much. Kind of like Kickstarter, no band ever broke from the site.

Patreon is all about your own little niche.

So, we’ve got reality, and systems that don’t comport with reality.

We’re inundated with TV shows when we can only watch a few.

The mainstream media is interested in movies, an antiquated format, as opposed to TV, so they review films and not TV shows, leaving readers in the wilderness, having to forage alone.

The mainstream media is interested in the horse race of charts, or the niche product that they can champion that no one else will, but if you don’t fit into either of those buckets, you’re SOL.

But we all have the tools. They came with the technology. The building blocks. We can all build it. But will they come?

Probably not.

P.S. Here is the link to last nights OAN segment. That’s right, you can watch for free on YouTube that which is on the pay service HBO, that’s how hard it is to reach the audience!

OAN: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Everybody’s freaking out. And it’s not about the coronavirus, but the government.

If you’re intelligent and informed, you’re staying at home, wearing a mask in public, doing your best not to catch the virus. But every day there’s more governmental insanity and you get scared for your future.

It was never like this, even in the heyday of Nixon.

Well, Nixon could send you off to battle, irresponsibly, for a war that could never be won. But now Trump is putting your life at risk and everybody feels powerless.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The nuclear codes, the button, that’s what we were all worried about. Everybody said there was only so much damage Trump could do.

They were wrong.

It comes down to the courts. They’re gonna lean right for the rest of your lifetime.

And it comes down to credibility and the rule of law, they’re now meaningless, out the window.

Now when I went to school we had fire drills, and nuclear drills, even though we subsequently learned hiding under your desk was not going to save you.

Now schools have active shooter drills. The thought of a gun on campus? Never crossed our minds. Boys had cap guns, and maybe BB guns, and if you went to camp you could shoot a .22, but most people didn’t own guns, you had a hard time finding someone who did, at least if you grew up on the east coast, in the suburbs, where I did. But now, gun sales are through the roof. Think about that, why? These people are obviously expecting bedlam. We had bedlam in the sixties, riots. But they were over race relations. What kind of riots are these people preparing for? Ones in which the rule of law is out the window and it’s every person for themselves?

So, they blew the testing. Today Newsom apologized, said it was on him, even though really it’s on the federal government, and if anything Newsom should be lauded for shutting down California early, at least compared to the other states. But the right now controls the narrative on California, it’s a state where real estate is through the roof and homelessness is rampant and taxes are out of control, so whatever California does is written off as insane and inapplicable, truly.

But Trump has never apologized, nor owned his failures. And if you’re paying attention, all you can see is incompetence. I’ve never met a person like this in my life. Maybe, just maybe there was someone in school or in Boy Scouts who was power-hungry and crazy, but we quickly cut them off at the knees. Meanwhile, Trump keeps gaining more power.

Yes, he missed on testing. Yes, he missed on self-quarantining. Yes, he missed on masks. But now that the government is finally getting up to speed on masks he refuses to wear one. Isn’t this just like the people refusing to stay home, refusing to stay off the beach?

And there’s that insane governor of Georgia, insisting the beaches stay open. Why? You read about those Texas college students who went to Florida for spring break, there were 70 and 44 came back with the coronavirus. What part of “infectious” do people not understand?

And then there’s “exponential.” We’re seeing that right now, in NYC, and also in the country at large. But New York is Cuomo’s fault. Yes, I know your head is spinning. Cuomo did not invest in ventilators and all those elite New Yorkers were asking for it. Read the right wing press, it’s horrifying.

Kind of like Hannity insisting Cuomo give patients chloroquine.

This was started by a doctor in France, Didier Raoult. But the truth is there were only 24 patients involved and they had mild symptoms when they started treatment. But do you know who is to blame that everyone is not taking chloroquine? THE JEWS! I kid you not, it’s a conspiracy! Big Pharma is controlled by Jews and chloroquine is not patentable, so they’re preventing its distribution. And Jews in the government are trying to kill off the elderly. You’d think I’m making this up, but it was in “Le Monde.”

But Trump isn’t quoting the progenitor, he’s quoting a doctor in New York who seems to have pulled his statistics out of his rear end. Isn’t that what they teach you in high school biology, the scientific method? But there’s no science anymore, just emotions, facts are irrelevant, if Trump says there’s a cure there must be.

And the person holding power over Cuomo is Jared Kushner, who made one of the worst media deals of all time, buying the “New York Observer,” overpaid on his family’s one big real estate deal and this is the guy managing the operation, one whom we did not even elect?

And then, in the midst of all this, Trump fires the intelligence community’s inspector general, because he forwarded the whistleblower complaint that ultimately got Trump impeached. Who the hell is gonna blow the whistle in the future, who is gonna stand up to Trump? Not even Fauci can, really, no one can!

And it gets worse and worse. There seems to be a Trump connection in the firing of the of that aircraft carrier captain trying to get attention for the coronavirus outbreak on his ship. The cover is he wasn’t following the chain of command. But the chain of command wasn’t responding and the sailors were all getting infected. Didn’t we used to applaud initiative in America, didn’t we used to laud mavericks?

So, you obey the rules until the ruler changes them.

And you’ve got the left saying the election will happen and if Trump loses he’ll leave because that’s the law…SO WHAT?

Meanwhile, the right doesn’t want voting by mail, doesn’t want any change because they’re afraid too many people will vote and they’ll lose! Their whole campaign is based on voter suppression.

I don’t care if you agree with me or not, I don’t even care if you’re a Trumper, science knows no bounds, you’ll wake up when the virus hits your neighborhood, maybe even your family.

But that’s not my point.

Let’s say a Democrat gets elected. Let’s say Biden. Do you think the 30%+ who are Trumpers are just gonna roll over and accept this, even if both houses of Congress turn blue? No way!

As for Biden, he’s got so much dirty laundry. Today Sarah Silverman retweeted news video from 1988 about Biden’s plagiarism: bit.ly/2wifauM Do you think the right is not going to harp on this?

Our country is so broken it’s nearly unfathomable.

We can’t agree on the facts, Kellyanne Conway says there are “alternative facts.” This used to be funny, but not anymore.

And Trump plays favorite with states, you’ve got to be nice to him or you don’t get supplies to combat the coronavirus.

And it doesn’t stop there, Trump excoriates corporations too, even when they’re doing what he’s asking them to!

So what happens now?

Some people will recover, some people will die, and at some point in the future we’ll go back to business as usual, even if it means more people dying.

And the believers in Jesus will try and pray the virus away, but even Rod Dreher in the “American Conservative” said no smart Christian would jump into shark-infested waters and that “all of us lock our doors at night, do we not?”

But reasonability has gone out the window.

And politics is a team sport. If Trump was convicted at the impeachment trial, the Republicans still would have held the Presidency, but it’s equivalent to the police blue line, cross it and you become a pariah.

But, once again, the he-said, she-said is no longer really that important. What we all can agree on is we’ve got a President who acts on whims, denies what he just recently said and demands total fealty, cross him and you’re done. Is this the country we want to live in?

But the right says the Democrats are so evil they cannot hold power.

Meanwhile, if you want an abortion, go to the back of the bus, we’ve got to focus on Covid-19 patients first. But they also have closed down abortion clinics and said you can’t get an abortion after a certain point in your pregnancy.

And then they say college campuses are bastions of liberal ideas, that they’re filling the younger generation’s heads with falsehoods and this must be stopped.

What they’re really saying is education, thinking for yourself, must be stopped.

The right is fighting on every front, and the left doesn’t understand this.

So, if Trump gets re-elected, and this could happen, what will the left do? NOTHING!

But if Biden wins…

Hold on to your hat.