Blake burned me a DVD of Tiger.<\/p>\n
Blake has Asperger’s.\u00c2\u00a0 From what they tell me, it’s a mild form of autism.\u00c2\u00a0
Struggling with social skills, his condition preventing him from filtering his
comments, Blake is superior in narrow genres.\u00c2\u00a0 Like computers.\u00c2\u00a0 Blake’s a
computer genius.<\/p>\n
Today I went to Blake’s high school graduation.\u00c2\u00a0 It was held at the
California Yacht Club, in Marina Del Rey.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re from the east coast, never mind
the midwest, you would have plotzed.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a cloud in the sky, millions of
dollars of boats serving as the background, on a day like today it was easy to feel
everything is right in the world.<\/p>\n
Blake has struggled in a number of schools.\u00c2\u00a0 They just weren’t attuned to his
issues.\u00c2\u00a0 But his mother, my sister, is so tenacious, so on the case, that she
found this special school in West L.A., that changed Blake’s life.\u00c2\u00a0 There
they weren’t concerned with how his deficiencies could cause disruptions, rather
they nurtured his strengths.<\/p>\n
Blake told me how they called him from the school on Saturday at 9 a.m.\u00c2\u00a0 He
was the only one who could fix the computers.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did he upgrade the DVD
drive on his PowerBook to 2x, finding software on the Web the average music
business executive would not even know how to locate, Blake also built his own
PC.<\/p>\n
But, cavalierly, he burned me a Tiger DVD on this PC, and it didn’t verify,
it didn’t work.<\/p>\n
But when I came back from the graduation, I decided to take a risk, with this
new DVD, which Blake had burned on his PowerBook, which he GUARANTEED would work.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I was emboldened by his teacher’s words.<\/p>\n
You see at Blake’s school, the tradition at graduation is to ROAST the
students.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, some of the teachers gave classic performances, worthy of SNL,
in the old days.\u00c2\u00a0 Imitating the student who lost his paper to the Net the way we
used to lose them to our dog.\u00c2\u00a0 Speaking of how one student was PHILOSOPHICALLY
against homework.\u00c2\u00a0 But when Blake stood up, his computer teacher commented on
his tics, his style, how he was the man to go to if you needed a CD or DVD, how
his Asperger’s made him an ENCYCLOPEDIA of sports facts, but he also went on
about Blake’s computer skills, how the future of the school computer lab would
be dicey without him.<\/p>\n
I was proud.\u00c2\u00a0 That at least this one kid wasn’t lost in the educational
system, that there are people making a fraction of what the people in the business
pages do, but don’t care, they want to work one on one, they want to change
LIVES!<\/p>\n
For a minute there, I was cursing Blake.\u00c2\u00a0 This new DVD took an AWFULLY long
time to verify.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to quit.\u00c2\u00a0 But I got one of those error messages that
makes you think twice, this one said if I quit now, odds were the computer
would NEVER reboot.\u00c2\u00a0 So I let it ride.\u00c2\u00a0 And after my PowerBook upgrade was
successful, I inserted the DVD into my desktop machine.<\/p>\n
Stunningly, with five years of files on my main machine, over 9,000 MP3s,
Spotlight indexed the hard drive in only twelve minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s truly astounding.\u00c2\u00a0
You can find anything INSTANTLY!<\/p>\n
But the real reason I wanted Tiger immediately, was I wanted to download this
widget that scrolls the lyrics of a song when you play it in iTunes.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried
it on Felice’s PowerBook, but it didn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 And it being HER computer, I
was loath to fuck with it, to find out why.<\/p>\n
But now I’m ready.<\/p>\n
Now I feel good.<\/p>\n
I feel Blake’s gonna make it.\u00c2\u00a0 You might not be able to understand and follow
all of his tech help, but there’s no doubt he can find the solution.\u00c2\u00a0 We NEED
people with these skills, we pay them A LOT!<\/p>\n
And it appears that Andrew will take my old car.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to give it a good
home.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the STEREO is worth more than the book value of the entire machine.<\/p>\n
And being in a good mood, I laid down on my bedroom floor and started doing
my back exercises.\u00c2\u00a0 I started listening to Pete Townshend on my iPod.<\/p>\n
I started off with "Let’s See Action".\u00c2\u00a0 It fit my slightly giddy mood, one
wallowing in all the events of the day.<\/p>\n
And after that came a live version of "Give Blood" featuring David Gilmour on
the guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why I love P2P, who even knew this EXISTED!<\/p>\n
And then came "English Boy".<\/p>\n
Everybody considered "Psychoderelict" a failure.\u00c2\u00a0 It was Pete’s last album of
original material if I remember correctly.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody cared anymore.<\/p>\n
But ten years later, god, there’s a JOY, an EXUBERANCE in "English Boy" that
makes you want to DANCE!\u00c2\u00a0 Not in the way those skinny, good-looking girls and
boys do at the disco, but the way the dateless lumpy, zit-faced kids do in
front of the MIRROR!\u00c2\u00a0 The way true ROCK FANS do!\u00c2\u00a0 Compared to what’s purveyed
today, ENGLISH BOY IS PURE GENIUS!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the way the performance is not mannered, the way Pete is singing his heart out purely because he’s got the
music in him, because he HAS TO!<\/p>\n
I started reflecting how although he seems to be done today, toast, how all
those artists of yore somehow have lost the gift, the motivation, even Bob
Dylan, yes, "Love and Theft" is CRAP, hell, he even STOLE THE LYRICS, Pete had a
LONG career.\u00c2\u00a0 There were THREE generations of Who material.\u00c2\u00a0 Pre-"Tommy".\u00c2\u00a0 The
famous rock opera.\u00c2\u00a0 Post-"Tommy".\u00c2\u00a0 And solo.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean I don’t know ANOTHER song
that captures the excitement of love and the fear it is evanescent quite like
"A Little Is Enough".\u00c2\u00a0 More like this, and the music business would be SAVED!<\/p>\n
And then I heard "I’m One".\u00c2\u00a0 Not the version from "Quadrophenia", but the
live one from the Maryville Academy CD.<\/p>\n
Every year is the same Somewhere along the line, music morphed from alienation to stardom.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, And it turns out many more people consider themselves to be losers than But is everybody truly a loser.\u00c2\u00a0 No, like Bob Dylan said before he lost it, Blake used to be burdened with the label of an outcast.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t fit in Actually, while roasting Blake, his computer teacher, imitating him, said And so did everybody else.<\/p>\n But I’m one <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blake burned me a DVD of Tiger. Blake has Asperger’s.\u00c2\u00a0 From what they tell me, it’s a mild form of autism.\u00c2\u00a0 Struggling with social skills, his condition preventing him from filtering his comments, Blake is superior in narrow genres.\u00c2\u00a0 Like computers.\u00c2\u00a0 Blake’s a computer genius. Today I went to Blake’s high school graduation.\u00c2\u00a0 It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-12","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
And I feel it again
I’m a loser, no chance to win<\/em><\/p>\n
those original English rock stars, they were losers.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine Jimmy Page
in high school?\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind Pete?\u00c2\u00a0 But these musicians listened to a ton of 45s
and decided to form their own bands, for the recognition, to get laid, to
vent their ANGST!\u00c2\u00a0 To tell everybody what it was like to be them…<\/p>\n
winners.\u00c2\u00a0 Many more people identify with Napoleon Dynamite than Lindsay Lohan.\u00c2\u00a0 And it used to be legitimate to say so.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’ve got a bit of nerd power in our
society, but really, turning on the tube, reading magazines, you just feel
inadequate.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to be good-looking, have a fancy car, a fat bankroll, be
POPULAR!\u00c2\u00a0 And if you’re not???\u00c2\u00a0 "Cribs" isn’t about losers.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a
loser, you’ve got to stay inside, you don’t dare show your head in modern society.<\/p>\n
each of us has his own special gift.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know this was meant to be true.\u00c2\u00a0
And…if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.\u00c2\u00a0 But, to
believe in yourself, can you?<\/p>\n
easily.\u00c2\u00a0 But I realized this afternoon something had changed, he’d become an
incredible WINNER!\u00c2\u00a0 He finally had friends, who were not fair-weather.\u00c2\u00a0 His
teachers appreciated his IDENTITY.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’s got genius skills,
when most people are just average.<\/p>\n
"I’m the man." after every accomplishment of Blake’s he playacted.\u00c2\u00a0 And then I
realized this had become Blake’s mantra.\u00c2\u00a0 It had slipped in so gradually, I’d
missed it.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, recognized for his computer skills, Blake truly was the MAN!\u00c2\u00a0
And he dug it.<\/p>\n
I am one
And I can see
That this is me
And I will be
You’ll all see, I’m the one<\/em> <\/p>\n