I hate arts and craps.

That’s what my sister Wendy called them, back when we all went to Camp JCC, in Stepney, CT.

When you’re a six year old, riding the bus is a big thing. It picked us up in front of our house and escorted us upstate where at first our counselors were women, but when we got older men. Teenagers, in fact, but they seemed so old to us! And that’s where I learned to swim, in the pee-infested kiddie pool, I remember the first step being the Dead Man’s Float. I remember hovering in the water inside my mind, astounding I still do that today and I’m the same guy. And right after lunch…

We had arts and crafts.

I think I went once. But I didn’t only avoid arts and crafts at camp, but in school too, I remember my third grade teacher, Mrs. Trainor, commenting on it. I just have no skill, no talent, I can’t draw, I’m always amazed at those who can.

Like Ella. She was sitting next to us at the table. It was astounding to see her build her gingerbread house, you could see she had a future in the arts. But now, more than ever, it’s a low-paying dead end, so she’ll probably be a lawyer or a banker.

So I came in from skiing, and looking for hot chocolate, I stumbled upon a gingerbread house making activity. I entered the Cucina and watched the kids build and I said to myself “Felice has to see this.”

I thought she’d resist, but I got her to come on down and…

She refused to build a house. She said I could. But I don’t like to get my hands dirty.

Maybe that’s one reason I resisted arts and crafts. And also it seemed pointless, creating something amateurish that even my mother wouldn’t compliment.

But today, I decided to dive in.

Turns out the houses are pre-built. You’ve just got to decorate ’em. But how do you do this?

Well, there’s pastry you squeeze out of a foil tube and various candies you can embed in the pastry and…

I was completely flummoxed, I didn’t know how to start.

So I looked to the kids for inspiration.

Lexi had icicles hanging from under the eaves. I could never figure out how to do that.

Ella had built a snowman in the front yard.

Max’s roof was embedded with candies symmetrically.

As for Seely… She was enjoying playing with the pastry, she was only six years old.

But they all had pastry on the edges, so I imitated that. Then I didn’t know what to do next.

So Felice picked up the reins and created a treble clef.

That begat a conversation.

Seely’s brother Max, two or three years older, told her she didn’t know what it meant. But Seely did, she said MUSIC!

Ella turned out to play the guitar. And now keyboard. Funny how they no longer call it piano. She said she was in a band. The school teacher had exited the institution and started his own business and every Saturday they got together to play music. She picked up her phone, she’s a ninth grader, and played me a song one of her friends wrote, and damn if it wasn’t good. I mean one step away from commerciality.

Then Felice asked Ella what she listened to.

She said “The Killers.”

And Lexi chimed in that she’d seen them live.

Did they like hip-hop?

NO!

Lexi’s favorite band was Led Zeppelin.

Stifling my chuckle, I asked her her favorite track.

At first she couldn’t come up with it, but then she took to Spotify, both Ella and Lexi have Spotify accounts, Ella testified about Discover Weekly, and then Lexi scrolled through her library and she found it…

D’YER MAKER!

I almost asked her if she knew what it meant, but then I thought better of it, especially since she wasn’t old enough to understand anyway.

And Ella’s house had a chunk taken out of the roof. She said it came that way, but she liked it, because it had CHARACTER! She knew more about art than the people spending millions to buy it. If you hang it symmetrically, I know you’re ignorant. You’ve got to hang it so there’s a tension between the art piece and the wall it’s hanging upon. I learned this in college, Ella already knew it.

Meanwhile, the kids had used all the good candy, all that was left were stars and sparkles, and lord only knows how you got the sparkles to stick.

But Ella scrounged and gave us some of her rejects, and I installed some broken candy canes, and we were having a grand old time until…

The mothers came. That stifled the conversation. Suddenly, the kids weren’t so talkative, they weren’t revealing their inner thoughts, they were playing to their parents.

And I was worried if I kept up the conversation it wouldn’t look good, so we all resorted to finishing our buildings.

Ella posted hers to Snapchat.

You can see ours here:

The gingerbread house: pic.twitter.com/GNO4Rh52Ad

— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) December 22, 2018

We’re watching “Mrs. Maisel.”

I know, I know, it won all those awards, but it’s on Amazon, not Netflix or HBO, so there’s just not the buzz, and the tone of the show goes from reality to farce and just when you’re about to give up there’s a moment of truth and your heart sighs.

Actually, I wanted to write about the first episode last night. The Lodge didn’t have enough bandwidth for the big screen, so we ended up watching it side by side on the iPad, like Robin and John, that’s Hickenlooper and I don’t like to drop names but it’s when we reveal our humanity that we bond to people, our insecurities, our peculiarities, our habits, we see ourselves in others’ behavior, or we’re just happy to know they’re weird too.

Like Midge.

Actually, she’s not that weird, she’s just not doing what’s expected of her. You grow up in a Jewish family and there are steps. You get good grades to get into a good college so you can become a professional so your parents don’t have to worry about you. I know, I know, the gentiles read about the entertainers, the tech titans, but the rank and file Jew is looking for safety, then again, they’re not boring in real life.

Like when the Weissmans checked into the Steiner Mountain Resort. They were bitching and talking over one another and that’s exactly how it’s always been in my life. Especially when my dad was alive, when we went on regular family vacations. Back before he passed in ’92 and the estrogen trumped my testosterone. I can still whomp it up, but there’s not room in the family, there are too many people talking, I just retreat into my own cocoon. That’s where the books and records come in. “In My Room” is not one of my favorite Beach Boys songs, but I resonate with the sentiment. That’s what I love about the internet, the stimulation at my fingertips. Those with enough action in their real lives abhor the internet, but for those of us a bit more introverted…

So in last night’s episode, Midge spoke about the inspiration. Her husband leaving her. That’s when she tried comedy. She spoke her truth, she was honest. And all the great work emanates from a similar place, someone with no place to go decides to press forward, because they just can’t stay where they are. They don’t worry about the consequences, they don’t worry about the risk, they just act, in an unfiltered way. Which is why most people can’t do it on a sustained basis. Once the rewards come in, they’re inhibited, they’re uncomfortable, except for legendarily irascible people like Van Morrison. That’s the conundrum, you’ve got to be on the outside to make it on the inside, or to quote Bob Dylan, to live outside the law you must be honest, and Zimmy is coping by staying on the road, in his own personal fog, so he doesn’t have to think too hard about his fame and his life, he just keeps playing, he’s stripped it down to the essence.

And what draws people to “Mrs. Maisel” is story. It’s king in America. We want to be taken on a journey, we want to forget about our troubles, we want to know how it all plays out.

And we want that honesty and truth, that’s what we resonate with.

Like when Midge does her act at the wedding. At first there are laughs, then it’s “Springtime For Hitler.”

Jews know about this.

It’s changing now, with intermarriage, but back when boomers were all told they had to marry within the faith, they went to shul, they went to summer camp, they spent most of their time with the tribe, and when they intersected with the goyim…

I remember working construction, however briefly, lifting I-beams did not mix well with my back and I put out my thumb and left home, but that’s another story.

I took some rye bread and Hebrew National salami from the fridge and my co-worker criticized my meal, as he ate luncheon meat on Wonder Bread.

Sure, everybody’s now into bagels, then again, bagels are not what they used to be, they’ve been homogenized, they’re just circular bread as opposed to donuts that could break a tooth.

And you stick out on a regular basis growing up. You’re with gentiles and you talk too much. Jews are not silent, they speak, they ask questions, they live for conversation, arguments, and when they do their act with outsiders…

It is not pretty.

Some learn as they get older.

Some never do. They never tone it down. They believe irreverence and being the life of the party is de rigueur, until it isn’t.

So Midge is cracking jokes, putting people down, not understanding that she’s misfiring. She’s so caught up in who she is, what her experience has been, that she cannot see another perspective.

And it’s uncomfortable.

Then again, being a Jew is oftentimes this way. Especially when people don’t know you’re Jewish, and they crack anti-Semitic comments. Happens all the time, and all the ignorant are not poor, seemingly the more pure-bred they are, the more racist they are, they believe their tribe is better.

But Jews were always outcasts, we’re just trying to survive. The jokes are to keep us happy in sad situations. Seeing the humor in life allows you to keep on going.

But when you watch a show like “Mrs. Maisel,” you both resonate and wince, you think about your family members, how they’re smiling while watching too, but you’re also thinking about outsiders… Sure, they recognize Yiddish, but does it all seem foreign to them, are they judging us, you see Jews don’t want too high a profile, because they’re afraid of the consequences.

But when you get them alone, with their tribe…

It’s just like the show.

Tricky Dick and The Man In Black | Official Trailer

This is utterly marvelous.

Then again, would you expect anything less from two time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple?

With cheap video equipment, today everybody is a documentarian, especially in the music sphere. But the result is oftentimes unwatchable, because of lack of talent.

But not “Tricky Dick And The Man In Black.”

If you watch this, and I don’t expect many youngsters to do so, you’ll get what I talk about when I speak of the spirit of the sixties, of music having a voice, of having power.

Then again, back then most of the youth was on the same side. Whereas today, that’s not the case. ROTC has come back to university campuses. Young Republicans have triumphed not only at Dartmouth, but so many other institutions.

Then again, none of them had to worry about getting their ass shot off.

So we see pictures of Johnny Cash’s boyhood home, in Arkansas. We’ve had a recent President from Arkansas, but I doubt many people from the coasts have been there. And neither have I. The closest I got was the view across the river from my hotel room in Memphis. What makes people move to such a place?

Opportunity. That’s what the government used to give people, a chance to start over, to get ahead.

But the Cash family didn’t make much headway, and Johnny’s father Ray kept putting his brooding, sensitive son down. Telling him he should have died in the farming accident, not his older brother.

And no matter Johnny’s achievements, Ray never thought they were much. So Johnny kept at it, kept trying, to prove his worth to a man who would never acknowledge it.

This is the foundation of an artist.

It’s not usually the foundation of an entertainer.

Today our scene is loaded with entertainers, thinking about the opportunity to become rich and famous, not that either of those have anything to do with art. But the internet tools have allowed everybody to play. And not only does mainstream media want to amplify the antics of these no or little talents, so do websites set up for just such a purpose.

It seems if you’re an artist, you’re a loser.

Cash went to Vietnam, he was learning, searching for truth. That’s what an artist does, experience the world through their eyes and then feed what they see back to us. They give us insight into the world we inhabit, insight that we oftentimes don’t have ourselves. This was not only the mission of rockers in the sixties, but rappers in the nineties.

Now, we’ve just got tattooed media properties. And just because you have a good voice, that does not mean you’ve got something to say. I’ve got nothing against Ariana Grande, but the media anoints her a new Joni Mitchell, as if she had gravitas, but she doesn’t.

But Mitchell did. As did Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, all of whom appeared on Johnny Cash’s TV show.

And Cash was for the war before he was against it.

You could change your mind in the sixties.

But not today.

So Nixon believes he can use Cash to shore up his southern base. He insists Johnny play “Okie From Muskogee” and “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House.

You may have never heard “Welfare Cadillac.” It’s exactly what you think it is, a guy with ten kids and a shack driving a Cadillac. He’s a “taker.” Some things never change.

Like truth.

Johnny refuses to sing Nixon’s requests, instead he sings a new song about the youth wanting truth

Sound familiar today?

Nixon lied all the time. But usually about big things, like the war winding down as opposed to amping up. Trump lies about everything. To the point where there is no truth. And the Democrats are afraid of the millennials, afraid to run to the left, but if they don’t, the millennials don’t vote.

They call that the generation gap. It’s still alive today. Baby boomers are always talking about the bad work habits of millennials. Then again, the millennials are all about supporting charities while they struggle to pay off their student loans.

But let’s not argue about today. Because it’s a no-win situation. Used to be we all got our news from Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather and John Chancellor. Now we’re in our silos. And misinformation reigns.

And there’s no hope.

We’re beholden to Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. Apple seems to be a bit more on our side, but you can’t challenge these behemoths, loved by Wall Street for their wealth creation.

But back then…

Many were only one step removed from poverty. Some were still in poverty. And the President was not a buffoon, but a skilled man with flawed ideas.

Then again, Nixon opened China and Trump wants to close it.

And most of the population never lived through the sixties, never mind the seventies, they don’t know that Nixon had to go because the Republican Senators told him he had to. It’s gonna go down the same way today, if it happens at all.

But in the sixties, the youth, with their long hair and their music, were aligned against the establishment. And Johnny Cash aligned with them. He felt young people did not get an honest shot based on their appearance, never mind their ideas. But long hair was a statement, face tattoos are a fad.

So if you’re a boomer, you’ve got to see this documentary, it’ll remind you of who you were and maybe still are.

If you want to learn about history, if you want to be inspired, if you’re a young ‘un, you should view this too.

Then again, the youth always think they know everything. They don’t need any lessons.

But back then the youth stood up and had impact, they stopped the war.

And their leaders were musicians.

“What Is Truth”

“Welfare Cadillac”

Ed Sheeran.

In a business that only cares about money, he triumphed. He grossed $432.4 million dollars, and an incredible percentage of that was net, because just like a comedian, it’s just Ed on stage, albeit with a bit of production, and think, about that, in an era where it’s all about the spectacle, one guy, on stage, enthralled millions. And he did it with SONGS!

They tell us it’s beats.

But they’re wrong, it’s songs, with melodies, that you can sing along to.

Not that Ed gets a concomitant proportion of press. There’s no story there. Hard-working man pays his dues and triumphs, there is no penumbra, just the music!

But insiders hate him, if for no other reason than he’s got so much success.

So what does Ed do? He just keeps on singing, he rarely reacts.

Meanwhile, those much less successful are involved in online feuds, proving once again that music triumphs over all.

And the press is clueless.

The press is all over Taylor Swift. She grossed $345.1 million, and did it with 2,888,892 tickets sold, as opposed to Ed’s 4,860,482. But let’s see if Taylor can do these numbers the next time, I doubt it, not only because of the failure of “Reputation” in the marketplace (it was a dud with little mindshare, don’t tell me about the late single’s success), but because she charged what the market will bear.

I.e. slow ticketing.

What a bunch of hogwash. You don’t see Metallica doing this. Metallica is only about their fans, they’re trying to protect their fans, Taylor is doing battle with scalpers, who cares?

And if you really want to do battle with scalpers, go paperless, just don’t raise prices.

Because it hurts you. That’s the dirty little secret. People are pissed.

People are nowhere near as pissed when they can’t get into a sold-out show, they pay the scalpers or shut up and get wiser next time.

But by going to slow ticketing, you’re just illustrating your greed. Which is fine for the Stones, they’ve been mercenaries for decades, but if you’re not on your retirement tour, it’s a bad idea. Money flows through your fingers, you want to be able to make more, credibility and identity are everything.

And that’s what Sheeran sold.

He was the only act to go clean in stadiums in the U.K. That’s how hot the demand was.

And he’s in the game, making new hit music. Hell, they had to change the U.K. charts to undercut his dominance.

So…

First you’ve got to pay your dues. The empty suits propped up on hype rarely last.

Second, you’ve got to put out a steady stream of material.

Third, what kind of material is that? Classic or evanescent.

Be true to yourself, don’t follow trends, and don’t react. This is why all the popsters failed, they added beats, they tried to be hip-hop when they were not. And once you start reacting… You’re playing into their hands, playing their game, and you can never win, like Elizabeth Warren with her Native American heritage and Obama with his birth certificate.

You play your own game.

And you don’t need extras.

Music is enough to get rich. Gig merch is enough…t-shirts, hats, stickers. Once you start endorsing products, selling water, you’re no longer a musician, you’re a brand, and brands fall out of favor.

But art is forever.

Expect to hear Ed Sheeran’s songs at weddings in decades hence.

As for the rest of the Spotify Top 50?

I doubt it.