You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

“Imagine”
John Lennon

People are full of shit.

But not everyone.

My father was a skeptic. If someone told a story too good to be true, he pointed it out. I’m my father’s son. Where has that left me?

Oftentimes out of the loop.

One of the horrifying moments of this documentary, and there are many, is when the Theranos employees celebrate FDA approval of one of their tests. They’re playing music, people are dancing and…it’s scary. Because everybody’s caught up in the mania. False mania in this case. And our world is now run by groupthink.

Yup, whether it be the anti-vaxxers or the right wingers or the anti-Israel/Semites, these people are part of a mob, they pump each other up, they believe that they’re creating a bulldozer force that will run over every enemy.

But not one as strong as David Boies.

Legal intimidation. Most people are never put on the spot. But when you are…you first want to get out, your inclination is to sign anything to not be part of it, but then you start thinking…HOW MUCH MONEY IS THIS GONNA COST?

So Elizabeth Holmes was a dreamer. The experts told her it couldn’t be done. But she went ahead and tried anyway. Kinda like the musicians who send you their demos and you tell them to give up. They don’t believe you, they get angry, they double-down, they believe if they just work hard enough, they’re gonna show you.

But they’re not.

And let’s not underestimate the power of an attractive young woman. She charmed dirty old men. That’s right, we can talk all about the #MeToo movement, but biology never changes. Actually, we can’t talk about it, because the groupthink mob allows no discussion, they think they’re right and therefore there’s no working out of a continuum of offense, what the penalty might be…instead, men go underground and talk only amongst themselves.

A woman told Holmes it couldn’t happen. An MD, a professor at Stanford. She said her dream was good, but science wouldn’t allow it.

This was actually one of Holmes’s initial ideas. You see she wanted to get rich, she wanted to become a player, just like her idols Edison and Jobs. So she went in pursuit of it.

Was she a crook from the get-go?

Probably not. But when you’re running out of money, you’ll lie and cheat and do anything to survive. If someone’s desperate…STAY AWAY!

And we could talk all about the fear at the company and… The truth is, the employees needed the jobs. That’s what’s lost in the discussion of these tech titans, that their enterprises run not only on money, but people. Those people aren’t gonna quit without a new job. And they’ve drunk the kool-aid so it’s hard to do a 180. And when everybody tells you you’re wrong…

There’s that groupthink thing again.

And you and me wouldn’t lie to Walgreens, never mind investors. And you and me would ultimately admit our faults. But not Elizabeth, she’s a modern American, a millennial through and through, deny, deny, deny. Truth is a passe concept. Ever since Clinton lied about the blow job. Trump lies seemingly each and every day. Who’s gonna catch them?

The media. The print media. Which is also excoriated by Trump.

TV is talking heads, they do almost no reporting, other than fires and cat rescues. It’s entertainment. How do we know this? When he was struggling, Tucker Carlson appeared on Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show and said heinous things for ratings. Reporters don’t do that, or if they do, they’re fired.

So you’ve got a guy at the “Wall Street Journal” who gets a lead and follows it up.

Follow-through, that’s something that’s lacking in today’s society. They say half of getting ahead is showing up. A lot of the rest is doing the job assigned.

But that’s when David Boies comes in…

We laud people until the truth of their identity is revealed. Most people never get famous, are never in the spotlight, then again, think about all the people finding out their parents are not, as a result of biological testing.

If you’ve got money, you can bury the other side in paper. That’s what the big firms do. But the press’s job is to stand up to this. John Carreyrou of the “Wall Street Journal” did. I remember reading his stories in the paper, although at the time I knew nothing about Theranos other than its name.

But Carreyrou did his homework. There were pie charts. He just laid out the facts and it was clear that…

Theranos was a fraud.

And then we started hearing about Elizabeth Holmes. You think you want attention, but when you get it you’d better have your ducks lined up. Kinda like Olivia Jade, thinking she could get famous and rich by posting on Instagram featuring the products of sponsors. When there’s nothing there, it’ll be revealed.

And for over a week we’ve been inundated with stories about Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Sure, they’re offenders, but minor ones. I’d hate to see them behind bars, but that’s where they’ve got to go to restore confidence in our government, make the little people believe in the system, especially after the sentence for Manafort.

But the truth is they’re actresses. With almost no power. And relatively speaking, not that much money. Whereas the big boys…

And they usually are boys. Jump into the arena and be prepared. They’re protecting what they’ve got.

Kinda like the labels during the Napster era. Their only problem was ignorance. They thought the law would solve all their problems, they did not know the power of the internet and the people.

It’s gonna cost a lot to make it. Friendships, relationships. And when you get into the belly of the beast, you’ll find deception and the aforementioned groupthink… It’s not only Theranos, talk to anybody who has ever worked at a record label. Multiple offenses take place. From trying to game Spotify to lying about sales to…it’s endless!

And when Zach Horowitz was the lawyer at MCA/Universal, the legal department was seen as a profit center. Think about that.

So what we’ve learned here is it takes a certain kind of person to be an entrepreneur. Just wanting to be one is not enough. And ideas are nothing without execution. Elizabeth Holmes had a great idea, it just couldn’t be done. Furthermore, she’s not that good of a Silicon Valley titan, because everybody knows when you hit a wall, you pivot!

We’re inundated with stories of people who never gave up and made it.

But some people still win the lottery. Some people are struck by lightning.

You’re probably good at something, think about what that is.

And know that life is long. Maybe if Elizabeth Holmes had stayed at Stanford, she might have learned some lessons that would have served her. We venerate the youth, but the old have experience. Young people think they know everything, older people know they do not.

But we keep hearing the mantras… Failure is a badge of honor. Fake it till you make it. It’s like a religion, as bogus as the one with the little man in the sky.

But still, you watch this documentary and you come away with the same lesson you learned from the college crisis…the game is rigged, the odds are stacked against you. This is not “Boston Legal,” “L.A. Law” or “Ally McBeal,” David Boies is a real lawyer in a real situation and he’s fighting harder and more intensely than anybody on television. Furthermore, this film says Theranos spent hundreds of millions on legal fees!

I’m gonna leave you with a line that will turn your stomach, just to show you how the world really works. Most males are watching Elizabeth Holmes and at the end they’re debating…yes or no.

And you know what the question is about, not business, but sex.

But we can’t talk about that.

We can’t talk about so much in America because of the gotcha police.

Then again, almost everybody is ignorant. Holmes snookered investors and the government because they knew nothing about science. Every field requires expertise. And a lot of this knowledge is free, all you’ve got to do is read.

But people would rather fantasize, burnish their brand online.

And one day they wake up and find out the train has left the station, and no one has protected them, no one has given them a hand to get on board, that they’re on their own, with no destination home.

Let this be a warning signal. Watch this documentary on HBO. Consider it an assignment more valuable than those business courses you take or took at school. Because this is how the real world works. And the sooner you learn that lesson…

The faster you’ll get ahead.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday March 19th, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

1

We sang. Starting in the first grade. I don’t remember singing in kindergarten, coulda happened, but my memory of that year is sketchy.

But the first grade classroom was right next door, we lined up outside, and the teacher was Mrs. Godfrey.

We had two recesses. The first one included milk, but no cookies. I never drank the milk, I don’t remember EVER drinking white milk, but if you put enough Bosco in, I was down. And those brown boxes of Hershey’s in the grocery store…I’d implore my mother to purchase them, sometimes she’d accede to my wishes.

And I don’t have that many memories of first grade either, except for making a map with Mark Levy. That was the assignment, a map of our classroom. And I insisted that it needed red lines, roads, because I always saw them on my dad’s maps. I drew one, from the bottom to the top of the heavy paper, and then Mark convinced me not to draw any more. I didn’t, he was right.

And there was always music in school. Mr. McCann taught the junior high students, but we saw him too, at this point the elementary and junior high schools were still in the same building.

But in the afternoon, before the clock hit 2:30 and we exited, we’d sing with Mrs. Godfrey.

Now you’ve got to know, this was back before the boomers became parents and were overinvested in their children. Sure, we had some kids records, but our parents weren’t enriching us, scheduling us 24/7, we went to nursery school, that’s what they called it, what’s up with “pre-school,” and learned in the classroom, outside of it we played. As for watching TV…it was illegal in the daytime, at least in my house, you had to go outside, but at five we’d sit in the den, the three of us, my two sisters and myself, and eat buttered noodles and watch “The Mickey Mouse Club.”

And in Mrs. Godfrey’s class we sang “The Volga Boatmen.” Funny thing about the internet, now I can listen to it on Spotify, but it’s different, I remember it in my head at six.

2

We took piano lessons. I didn’t know a house without a piano. Not that they were Steinways, mostly Knabes, compacts not grands. I started at six, a the Dranoffs’ house. With five other people. Three of us on each piano. I learned to read music, we played “Hot Cross Buns,” but then baseball interfered and practice was so boring and Mrs. Dranoff was a taskmaster and I stopped playing. For a while anyway, when the Beatles hit, I could play chords and did, occasionally.

3

We sang at summer camp. Mostly folk music. We had singdowns. That’s where you have to come up with a song using the topic provided by the other team. That’s right, you not only had to come up with it, you needed to SING IT! I remember faking “The Days of Wine and Roses” at Camp Laurelwood, but it got us over the hurdle.

And when I got to junior high, we had club period, I tried out for the Glee Club. One year they admitted me, the next I was cut. This was the sixties, when everybody did not get a trophy. I ended up being in the shop club, and ultimately didn’t build anything.

And when the Beatles hit, everybody got a guitar. It was kind of like everybody buying a computer to be on AOL back in the nineties. Then again, today’s college students may not have even been born in the nineties. I’m trying to think of something that ubiquitous. And instant. We all have smartphones, but it didn’t happen overnight. Ah, I guess you had to be there.

And you’d take your guitar with you, and you’d sit in groups, and SING!

4

Most of my social life revolved around the Aspen crew, Jim Lewi’s conference in Colorado. But a funny thing happened in the last twenty years. People lost their jobs. Labels became secondary to live. And now it’s a whole different slew of people. Some of whom weren’t even old enough to attend back in ’96.

Used to be everywhere you went you had an Aspen friend. Show up at a gig, there they were. You got privileges. Institutions roll on, people do not.

But in the last few years, some new people have come into the family and when Marty said he was gonna be in L.A. last weekend, Craig reached out and said we were all invited for a party at his house.

I came late. I was doing my taxes. I was lucky I could get a Saturday appointment as it was, I booked it a month in advance.

And the atmosphere was festive, and Craig made Mexican food. And we were hearing about how Craig and Rick marry people. Craig’s done ten, Rick eight, Craig’s had one divorce, Rick two. And then…

I moved over to the couch where the women were talking. The women’s conversation is much more interesting. It’s not about cars and sports, but people and feelings. And then when we heard the singing from the other room, Felice asked why I wasn’t joining them. I told her I was talking to Lewi. But when I was finished with Jim…

5

Craig Newman is an agent at APA. He came to L.A. and tried to make it as a performer, but that didn’t take, he had to make a choice, and he did.

But the truth is your passions never leave you. You can suppress them, but they’re still there.

So Craig has a music room. At one end of his living room. On the other side of the fireplace.

He’s got a bunch of guitars. A Martin twelve string, a mellow-sounding Gibson. And bongos. And a snare drum.

And a piano.

Turns out Craig showed interest and his parents got him lessons at six, and when he purchased this house, they bought a piano for him, believing every house should have a piano, a twentieth century construct if there ever was one.

And when I got to the music room…Marty, Rick and Craig were preparing to do “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.”

HUH??

We never sang Billy Joel songs, and certainly not ones as complicated as this.

And the thing is, Craig hews to the record. He doesn’t cut verses, he includes it all. And he’s a maestro on the keys as well as the frets and off we went.

And suddenly I understood the story of Brenda and Eddie.

Oh, I’ve heard the song zillions of times, but when you’re singing along to your smartphone…

At first I just sang from memory, but I didn’t remember every word, so I dialed up the lyrics on my iPhone and…they made sense, they resonated, in a way they never have before. I could see Brenda and Eddie out on the Island, and I wondered where they were today. In their New York State of Mind.

Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood

It was never a hit. But after 9/11, “New York State of Mind” really got traction. And if you grew up in New York or New England you get it.

It was eighty degrees in L.A. And I yearned for the change of seasons on the east coast.

And I thought what a marvelous song this was.

And now I was so energized I asked Craig if he knew “Summer, Highland Falls.”

What closed me on Billy Joel was the album “Songs In The Attic,” a live LP where he recut all his initial songs the way they should have been produced, after he started working with Phil Ramone. And “Summer, Highland Falls” is a keeper.

Craig explained the history, the war between right hand and left, AND THEN HE PLAYED IT!

No one else knew it, but Craig and I sang it at the top of our lungs, we felt so good.

And if you’re singing Billy, you’ve got to sing Elton.

And now Jamie and Greg are in the music room. Andy and Amy. Felice. We’re huddled around the piano singing the songs of our youth.

6

Now I’ll be honest, I thought this was an impossibility with today’s generation. The records don’t usually have melody, but it’s something more, back then music was everything, it drove the culture, we all knew the hits, people don’t today.

And Craig’s whipping out one after another.

And then we get to Simon & Garfunkel. He plays “Mrs. Robinson,” which he used to open his sets with when he moved to L.A. and played the bars.

And we did “Homeward Bound.”

I’m sitting in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination…

What exactly was that destination?

I never wanted kids, except for when I turned forty and my ex was living separately and ultimately rejected the idea.

I never wanted to be rich. I mean I didn’t want to dedicate all my time in the pursuit of money.

I did want to go skiing, which I still do.

And I wanted to pursue feelings, explore my identity and art.

And “Homeward Bound” is wistful. The story is clear. The musician is on the road and he wants to get back to his love and his music and…he wants to feel comfortable, not out of sorts and lonely on the road.

And the truth is we all feel lonely a lot of the time. We go to the gigs of oldsters to assuage this feeling. We want to be connected. The music connected us. Sure, the players made money, but it was about feelings, setting your mind free primarily.

There was experimentation. There was always something new. New sounds, different styles.

And the thing was the music was made by the musicians, but it ultimately became ours, we own it.

And when you’re singing along to the hits of yore, the songs you think you know by heart, you’re brought back to who you once were, there’s a thread from then to now, you’re ten once again. You can see the old girlfriends, the teachers, the Little League games. It’s all laid out before you, both the victories and the losses, the good memories and the bad.

And you never run out, there are always more songs to sing.

And I’m always the last to leave. I guess I don’t want to be alone. But even more, I want that feeling, with the music in me, thinking of nothing else but the moment.

That’s the power of rock and roll.

They’ve broken the system.

We used to get it, there was a ladder to the top, a room where everybody was inside doing dope with the cool people. If you wanted to make it, you knew how to do it.

But not anymore.

Not that the media has been alerted. The media keeps going on like it’s the twentieth century, and we’re still interested in charts, lists, a veritable pecking order of what’s important and what is not.

But that just does not work anymore.

It started happening about six or seven years ago. The internet cacophony. Everybody was online, everybody had an opinion and they wanted to express it. Meanwhile, the institutions to do just that were established. We thought everybody was gonna have a blog, but the truth is we just wanted to post on Facebook and then tell stories on Snapchat and are now all on Instagram.

Actually, that’s not true.

Oldsters are on Facebook. Hipsters are on Twitter and vapidity rules on Instagram. As for Snapchat, it’s like Second Life, something overhyped that never broke through.

This is important. Because now you no longer get the jokes, you cannot connect with others on a superficial level, because they have not seen the same movies, the same TV shows or listened to the same records, even though certain products are vaunted as being ubiquitous. “Game Of Thrones” is not, it only reaches a small fraction of viewers of a hit show in the pre-cable era. Drake and Ariana Grande are acts inhabiting the lower half of the Top Forty in the sixties. As for politics, we’ve all got our own sources and don’t disabuse us of our beliefs or disbeliefs.

It’s a veritable crisis of culture.

But in America, where it’s only about money, don’t expect anybody to address this. At best we can debate climate change, but our society, its likes and its mores? No way.

Not that anybody studying for a business degree has any idea what a more is, at best they believe it’s part of the title of an Andrea True track.

So we’re isolated and lonely. Not because we have smartphones, they allow us to interact with our friends, but how do you become a part of the culture at large? It’s veritably impossible.

You go somewhere and everything they’re talking about you don’t know or you haven’t seen.

The only icons we know are the tech companies. Apple, Amazon, Google and the aforementioned Facebook and its variants. You can pledge fealty to one, abhor another, but it’s all we have in common.

To the point we’ve got a whole culture of “influencers” online. All in their own niche promoting products via these tech titans, they own a sliver of eyeballs. And it’s all about selling, even if it’s just yourself, and even though we’ve been told over and over again these people are icons, not a single one, from Jenna Marbles to Logan Paul to PewDiePie, have broken through in the culture at general. It’s like hearing over and over about a minor league pitcher who never makes it to the majors.

So you sit and wonder, am I the only one, who feels out of it, who doesn’t want to invest in trying to catch up and finding out it’s not worth it, like viewing every episode of “Orange Is The New Black”?

And the truth is a lot of what’s successful is not hyped, and takes time to percolate. Like “Fauda.” New episodes are in the past, but the show is just reaching critical mass.

This is the opposite of “news.” News is about the new, what’s happening now, it’s not about the old, it’s not even about trends. It’s as if you have to run and see all the movies that open each weekend, even though it would eat up all of your time, and then next week there’s a whole new crop and only one is successful and is not remembered that long anyway.

No wonder people live in their silos.

And the reason we’re in a golden age of television is it’s all about story. We’re searching for humanity. And you’re certainly not gonna get it in pop music, nor in superhero movies, but on the flat screen.

And it’s still like the internet in the early days. They’re not exactly sure what works, so they’re trying new things, which leads us to “Dating Around,” which I don’t recommend watching if you’re single, which I don’t recommend watching at all unless you want to delve into the human condition.

To what degree are we self-aware? Have we developed our personalities? Are we good conversationalists? How do we manage uncomfortable situations? These are the building blocks of life, pushed under the rug in the news, but more important than ever in a world where we feel lost, where we cannot identify with what we’re being force-fed.

Moving to the big city, in this case New York…

That used to be a thing, now most people can’t afford it. And they’re too tied to their families to do it.

Your career. Is it all right not to be on the path to fame? Certainly the media says you’re inadequate if you’re not striving to be a world-beater.

Are you willing to bend, or do you need to be accepted for who you are, to your detriment and ultimate aloneness?

Do you judge too early?

Beauty fades. You’re intrigued by the most beautiful people and then you know them and don’t want them.

And what we have in common is our fear, which very few acknowledge.

And do you know how to get along? You may be right, but is it working for you?

All these concepts come up in “Dating Around.”

Netflix green-lit this show obviously thinking they had to get into the reality/dating show genre. But it being Netflix, they needed credibility. The problem with network TV is it’s all manipulated, cut for drama, starring bozos who will do anything for their few minutes of fame.

But “Dating Around”…

Is inherently uncomfortable.

How do you meet people if you’re single?

This show is a great advertisement for meeting people at work or through clubs or charity. Where there’s no pressure. Where you can truly get to know somebody.

And is there a shoe for every foot? Watching this, I’m not sure. One woman says she never has a relationship and then abandons the man after dinner.

Then again, do you know when you know?

These are the questions we ask ourselves every day. These are the questions not in the media. How do we navigate our own lives? What should be the target? How do we meet people?

The twentysomething Luke is a bore. The women run circles around him.

The divorced Gurki really isn’t looking for a relationship, she hasn’t looked at herself, she’s too busy looking outward.

As for Leonard…

What happens when you’re single and old. Even if it’s not your choice. Leonard’s wife died of cancer.

Leonard looks weird and acts a little weird. Is there someone for him?

A couple of these people you think would have a hard time finding anyone.

And then there’s the widowed gym teacher who reads texts from her live-in post-college daughter during the date. Reminds me of a woman I went out with who took calls from her mother. Just hearing her revert to her adolescent self, servicing her mother, convinced me this was no one I wanted to end up with, even though we’d had such a good conversation the night we met.

Conversation. Do you know how to do it?

You might think dressing up nice solves all problems. And I’m not underestimating attractiveness, but if you think it solves all problems you’ve got a lot to learn.

“Dating Around” is a funny show. It can be boring, but you can’t turn it off. Because of its humanity.

That’s what we need to focus on more, we’re all just people, human, what’s it like to live in 2019?

It’s not about arguing about politics, dreaming of being a rapper… The truth is almost none of us will be famous, and fame ain’t what it’s cracked up to be anyway, neither are riches. Sure, a modicum of both are to your advantage, but overload yourself with these and you end up chasing something that doesn’t exist while you get more and more unhappy inside.

Watch a couple of episodes of “Dating Around,” you’ll have more questions than answers.

Just like life.

Dating Around