AKA Herman of Herman’s Hermits…need I say more?

Yes, that Peter’s a fabulous raconteur with great stories, he’ll have you riveted. He’s been there and done that and is still here to tell the tale!

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Who?

If I hadn’t heard him on Howard Stern I’d have no idea who this comic was. Furthermore, I watched some of his Netflix special and had to turn it off, I didn’t find the guy funny.

That’s how far we’ve come. Then worldwide stars begged to be on the VMAs for exposure, to the younger set the show was more important than the Academy Awards, and in 2019 not only are they completely irrelevant, they’re hosted by a guy most of the world has never heard of.

The Video Music Awards started to tank when they had them at the Metropolitan Opera House. That was 1999. Just before the music business crashed, just before Napster got traction. The host was the superstar Chris Rock, known by everyone, but that’s the iteration wherein Macy Gray turned around and her dress featured an ad for her new album. Which she promoted vocally too.

In other words, it was strictly promotion.

Sure, that was the understated reality of the VMAs, the awards were nearly worthless, even though they meant much more than a Grammy, but no one came out and said it.

Macy Gray set the template for the internet era, the twenty first century, where it’s all ME ME ME and self-hype is part of the game, to the point where the hype often exceeds the quality of the music and the audience is so overwhelmed it has no idea what is going on. Some completely tune out, listen to oldies, and the younger generation has its favorites, but music is a second class citizen, something you dance to, play videogames to, see at the festival while you’re taking selfies and making connections.

Meanwhile, the music business is like a Talking Heads song…it’s the same as it ever was. Major labels promoting radio acts and the mainstream press echoing their efforts. Sure, the press also reviews records by minor acts, but if you don’t have the time or inclination to listen to the hits, why would you wade through all the dreck to find stuff that isn’t even as good as the nineties, which was not a notable era in music to begin with!

But no one will admit this.

These are the same clowns who missed the internet, tried to beat down Napster and only approved the iTunes Store because at first it was Mac-only. And no one’s money is at risk, everybody’s got a corporate job and is just trying to make their bonus.

We’re truly living in a Tower of Babel society, where only one person is a star. A guy who used entertainment precepts to make it. Trump was on TV and continues to tweet even though everybody in the music business infrastructure does not. Oh, we’ve got acts on social media, but it’s that Macy Gray paradigm. You know who I am, you’ve got to give me more money. And oftentimes that money isn’t even related to the music!

The VMAs were a party. Not only at the show, but at home. They were the hottest ticket in town. And they played on MTV for months thereafter, years! Hell, RuPaul dissing Milton Berle was more memorable than anything that happened on the Oscars in the last ten years. Come on, tell me otherwise… Ellen DeGeneres taking a selfie? Jimmy Kimmel inviting people off the street? Do you even remember those now!

The VMAs represented the zeitgeist of the culture. And we were all living in the world MTV built and were paying attention. We were living in a monoculture.

In the sixties and seventies we were living in a stereoculture. AM and FM.

Now, there are so many channels, so many records, so many TV shows, so many movies, that it’s literally impossible to know the entire scene. On a regular basis albums go to number one that insiders are unaware of. Turns out this Christian act has a following, that Texas act. Huh?

So when someone tells you they’re a big star, laugh. When labels and PR people hype you how big someone is, ignore them. No one is that big anymore!

There used to be hipsters. Who reigned above the hoi polloi. Now there are no hipsters, if someone puts you down for being out of the know, you can turn the tables and mention ten things they’ve never heard of. We’re all foraging, we’re all trying to keep up. If you miss something, you never go back to it, there are too many new things. Everybody knew Run-DMC, believe me everybody hasn’t heard Kendrick Lamar, never mind Jay Z, they may be rich but their mindshare has severe limits.

Meanwhile, the boards are plied with old acts, touring ad infinitum. And a Broadway musical, i.e. “Hamilton,” is bigger than any act out there. Then again, the music for “Hamilton” was great. You got historical icons dissing each other. Now we’ve got almost nobodies throwing their weight around online, it’s like a scuffle in a nursery school.

But even if you are that great, you may not make it. “Hamilton” played for nearly a year before it got serious traction, despite all the hosannas. What luck is there for your project?

So now we’ve got a relic of the past hosted by a second-rate comic. The VMAs are just entertainment, completely missable. You’re more interested in the Democratic debates than the VMAs. At least they have meaning.

So this is what the internet has wrought. And everybody in the ecosystem likes it, they don’t want clarity, otherwise they might be left out.

So we’ve got majors and minors, talented and untalented, seemingly everybody is going for greatness on the internet. Not only wannabes uploading to Spotify…seemingly the entire country is putting their best image forward to gain followers on Instagram. Classic rock was built on being down to earth, what you wore was secondary, now the paradigm has completely flipped. No wonder Trump is President, he promised order in an inherently chaotic world!

But the truth is there is no order. And Trump can’t generate it.

We’ve got an entertainment business of winners and losers. The winners dwarf everybody else, even though their footprint is nowhere near as big as those of the pre-internet stars, the losers just clutter the landscape and if you’re one of the few in the middle class, you’re lucky to eke out a living on the road, good luck getting significantly bigger.

Choice is not going away. But I think there will be a line of demarcation between the worthwhile and the worthless.

Meanwhile, be happy you have an audience at all!

“Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed”

I’ve met Lori Gottlieb. She spoke at Kate’s bookstore. She was promoting a book about anorexia. How she fought back the disease in her teens.

But we all agreed she still had it. She verged on painfully thin.

And she boasted. About going to Yale and Stanford. But the funny thing was after talking down to us, she wanted to be friends with us. It was so strange, as if an Ivy Leaguer told community college students that they were inadequate and had no chance in life and then asked them to go to lunch and discuss their hopes and dreams. We all got a bad vibe from her. We discussed it at dinner. And then I forgot about her.

But then she wrote a book entitled “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.” But the funny thing was she was not married, she had not settled for anyone. And she decided to have a baby by her lonesome. I’m not talking about getting knocked up and not getting an abortion, I’m talking about consciously finding a sperm donor and having a kid. And call me old-fashioned, but I think a child is better off with two parents, gay, straight, whatever. But what truly bugged me in this case was she could not find a father, she could not be in a relationship, and having met her I could see why!

And now comes this book. I wouldn’t have read it based on principle, but my sister purchased it, because all her therapy patients were talking about it.

It’s really pretty good.

Having finished it last night, I went on Amazon to read the reviews. I started off with the one star ones. They said Lori was arrogant and elitist and I had to chuckle. They also said that she was living in an alternative universe, where people could afford to talk about their problems.

That’s what’s wrong with America, people don’t talk about their problems. And therapy is underfunded. Furthermore, most therapy is bad. The shrink we see in couples therapy lamented that. He said he’d had bad experiences. That professionals told him it was his problem he didn’t want to get married. So he did, and he got divorced. That’s another thing you have to be wary of, shrinks telling you what to do. Caused the worst mistake in my life. My present shrink would never give me advice, even though at times I crave it.

So “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” starts off with Lori Gottlieb getting dumped. She says she was gonna marry this guy, they’d agreed, but then he suddenly pulled out, saying he didn’t want to raise her kid, that he didn’t want to raise any kid (although people are famous for saying one thing and then doing another…wanting to be childless and then marrying someone with kids or having one of their own and doting on the offspring and testifying what a wonderful experience it is…chances are Lori’s ex didn’t like her, but she didn’t want to acknowledge this, it’s all about self-knowledge folks, but most of us live in the dark).

Being dumped sends Lori into therapy. Where she wants the shrink to tell her what a horrible person her ex was. But one of the big problems in this book is when you get to the end, and it’s quite long, over 400 pages, the reader gets no answers. It’s like Lori went on a journey from L.A. to San Francisco and stopped in Buellton. Or didn’t tell us anything past Buellton. It’s kind of strange, she reveals intimate details about everyone but herself!

That’s a feature of the book, her patients. And at first you start to wonder how she covered up their identities. Then you believe she must have made them up entirely, because of the details. So, either she has a great imagination or she’s breaking the doctor/patient privilege.

Still, the stories are fascinating. The arrogant TV writer/producer whose family feels disconnected from him. The lonely 70 year old. The bad-acting twentysomething. The ill woman. You get to know these people, you see their transitions in therapy. Although you might wonder if it was worth all that time and money. I believe in spending on therapy, as my shrink says, change one little thing and the whole picture can change. But most people, especially men, do not. Believe in therapy that is. It’s all about bucking up and keeping your emotions down. Now, more than ever. The sixties are over. The military went from abhorrent to loved.

And hearing Lori’s story is fascinating too. How she’s lost and trying to find her way in life. Now once again, if you’re not privileged, this is gonna bug you. An elitist flitting from one thing to another. Then again, you’re probably happier than she is.

And there’s an explanation of therapy concepts, which you’ll find insightful and rewarding. But don’t take them as gospel, see your own shrink. Then again, if you see a shrink, some light bulbs will go off, you’ll gain knowledge.

And Lori says she dropped out of medical school to write, but she’s not like Amor Towles, with an untapped ability. Lori’s writing is workmanlike (workwomanlike?) But she does get the story across.

And although my mind wavered at the end, before that the book called out to me, the organization was well done. You were interested in how it turned out for the patients and Lori, but as I said above, we’re left hanging with Lori. I don’t know why she blinked, after having revealed so much already.

And Lori appears on TV, supposedly they’re developing a TV show on this book. She’s working it. But shouldn’t she just be practicing therapy, shouldn’t that be enough? Of course it isn’t, Lori is searching for some elusive goal, thinking it will make her happy. As if knowing famous people and gaining adulation will somehow fix her life. This is no different from a mute male musician believing the same thing. And it doesn’t work for the musicians and it won’t work for her.

And she writes the “Dear Therapist” column in the “Atlantic.” That’s right, she needs fame. But those columns are nearly worthless, hell, Cheryl Strayed did a better job with “Dear Sugar.” And the truth is no therapy is instant. If you’re looking for answers right away, don’t even bother to spend the money. And Lori says this, but then gives instant advice… It doesn’t square.

But the book will probably boost her therapy business, even though she says she’s not taking new patients right now, she’s too busy promoting the book. What are her patients doing while she’s away? How about her kid?

But if you’ve got more questions than answers. If you’ve hit a wall and want to know how to pick yourself up and keep going… You’ll enjoy this book.

And most readers are women. Women can ask these questions, men can’t, proving they still live on a different planet. But that’s all we’ve got in our lives, our feelings, our connections.

Now as you can tell, I’m not up on Lori Gottlieb the person. Then again, that doesn’t disqualify her from writing an interesting book. It’s kinda like an abhorrent rock star who makes good records, there are tons of those.

So if you’re a feeling person. If you’re the type of person who can afford to go to therapy… This could be the best book I’ve read on the subject. It’s not a self-help manual, but a delineation of the process.

Hopefully you’ve been through it, or will be taking the plunge.

What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Why in hell does the left think that pointing out Trump’s peccadilloes will cause his base to do a 180 and suddenly decry the President?

This is what’s wrong with the Democrats. They don’t know how to fight. Hell, the press doesn’t even know what the issues are! That’s why Sanders and Warren are making such inroads. Biden is lost in the past, with no direction home, and all he does is attack Trump and tell us it won’t be long until our national nightmare is over. But will it?

Furthermore, Trump’s base is loving it! Hell, he eats at McDonald’s!

While the left keeps going on about transgender rights, the white right are wondering when they’re going to get their fair share. I know this is unpopular in the rainbow coalition of the left, but times have changed, we don’t have a homogeneous middle class population keeping the minorities down…we’ve got rich and poor and the poor are complaining. It’s about jobs, about safety, immigrants and minorities are just scapegoats. Meanwhile, the left keeps focusing on these faux pas, as if they point out flaws long enough those on the right will agree to the ethos of the college campus, where you’ve got to give trigger warnings, ask explicitly for sex and you can’t defend anybody on the right, hell, what was up with clipping the wings of that Harvard professor defending Harvey Weinstein. Isn’t that a basic tenet of the United States, that everybody’s entitled to a defense? As for the court of public opinion, turns out Richard Jewell was not the Olympic bomber and you’ve got to have pushback against government abuse. Isn’t that what impeachment is all about? Trump runs rampant over the Constitution and the Democrats sit on their hands saying it’s not prudent. Prudence went out the window back in 2016. And you can’t go viral unless everybody’s eyeballs are affected/tuned-in. As it is now, the right gets totally different news, if there were impeachment hearings the right would be forced to see Trump’s obstruction of justice, their news outlets would be forced to air it, with whatever spin. But right now the right sees Trump as innocent!

It’s not about getting Trump out of office, it’s about making sure he’s not elected in 2020, that Congress retains power, that we don’t end up with a strongman running ragged over our nation.

Meanwhile, things are turning left. Look at the vote in Turkey last weekend, or the Czech protest. And Hong Kong, where demonstrators changed the course of law. But no, in America you’ve got to sit on your hands. There are no leaders, and the parking meters are owned by hedge funds.

Speak to the underlying issues, not the penumbra. That’s why Warren is getting such traction, the same way Sanders got traction in 2016, by pointing out the inequities in society, with plans to solve them. Sanders was on to something, but it turns out the DNC and the media are still living in the past. Just because you’ve figured out how to make it work, with your professional job and your BMW, what about those who’ve lost their jobs and have no opportunities? And plenty of these people are not racist. Hell, try getting a new corporate job if you’re over fifty, good luck. And the safety net is not strong enough for these people to retire. Hell, they spent their safety net so their kids could go to college. Do you think they care about transgender rights and E. Jean? Of course not!

The left is kind of like rock. Believing it will never die. But rock has died. By refusing to reinvent itself and enter the future. And rock fans cannot stop bitching about hip-hop and pop. But at least those two genres are alive.

And the right wing media advocates.

And the left wing just reports.

Facts are not enough anymore, spin is everything. There are no left wing opinion pieces in the WSJ, at least most days, meanwhile the NYT keeps arguing over Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss…

We’re fighting a war here folks. And it isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about the fact that America no longer works, the American Dream is in the dumper.

Oh sure, some on the right are racist and Trump encourages them, but pointing out their bogus beliefs is not going to change the course of history. This is like the Jews in Germany believing if they just put their heads down and obeyed the law, things would turn out all right. No, you’ve got to fight back, especially when there’s no place to go.

Of course facts matter. Of course they should be published. But that’s like saying Madonna entering the chart at #1 means something. Other than to her, it does not. Her new album, which you don’t know the name of, only garnered 4.5 million streams. That’s like a tree in a forest that fell and you didn’t hear it. That’s the land of unknowns. Maybe bubbling under, but still. As for redemptions of albums with tickets… Believe me, people aren’t going to the show for the new material…that’s when you take a bathroom break. And, the reason she’s playing small buildings is because she can’t sell out stadiums, at any price. She’s playing to the hard core. So, this isn’t even a blip on the radar screen. But it makes news in the NYT.

If the left was really about helping their brother, they would reach down and aid those on the right, or the middle, those who used to vote Democratic. Instead, they’re fighting with each other over what they can say.

Ridiculous.