Hero . . .

(from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/opinion/tendulkar-finally-retires-from-cricket.html?_r=0)

". . .But let me first be complimentary. Mr. Tendulkar, whom everyone calls Sachin, is the most revered cricketer in India; in fact, it would be entirely accurate to describe him as the most revered contemporary Indian, or even, with only a pinch of hyperbole, the most revered Indian since Mahatma Gandhi held the nation in thrall. Suspend your disbelief and think of him as a cross between Babe Ruth and Martin Luther King.

Sachin currently dominates India’s imagination even more than usual: Today, in his native Mumbai, he will begin playing his 200th test match (as the five-day version of cricket is called), when India takes on the West Indies, a once-mighty team now fallen on hard times. It will also be his last test match, for he will retire from competitive cricket after the game. As the moment of his departure looms, the country is in the fevered throes of one last, mammoth celebration, but also on the un-self-conscious brink of mourning. . . "


A Hero
©1994 Raymond M. Jozwiak




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Too Many . . .

. . . Cowboys. . .

Why don't you grow up
just as fast as you can
All of your innocence
Is a flash in the pan
It's overrated you say
Tryin' to be a nice guy
It's so much easier this way
So why even try
Too many cowboys

Everyone's watching
So you think all the time
Maintain the image
But it's all in your mind
What's so damned special about
Being hard as a nail
Banishing subtlety
Sets yourself up to fail
Too many cowboys

Just too many cowboys
Not quite enough men
Who will listen
Rather learn than
Only just pretend

You wear a big hat
It's a Stetson of course
Chew some tobacco
Take a ride on your horse
You've got some buddies I see
Just a little hard-boiled
They've got some dirt on their hands
They all dabble in oil
Too many cowboys

Can't say you're sorry
Can't say you're wrong
God is on your side
He's been there all along
It doesn't matter to you
If they're hurt or they're dead
You've been above it so long
I'll stick by what I said
too many cowboys

Just too many cowboys
Not quite enough men
Who will listen
Rather learn than
Only just pretend

Get in your big truck
And just drive away
You have no interest
in the things that I say
Nor did you ever
Listen that much at all
You set yourself up
For some big kind of fall
Too many cowboys

And just like a cowboy
Just the kind that you are
Virile and macho
But without a guitar
Into the sunset you rode
And the credits did roll
Not a regret did you feel
But you've taken your toll
Too Many Cowboys

Just too many cowboys
Not quite enough men
Who will listen
Rather learn than
Only just pretend



Too Many Cowboys
©2009 Raymond M. Jozwiak





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Undead? . . .

(from Cecil Adams' The Straight Dope)
". . . Myths about the undead have been around for millennia, and the relatively harmless automata of Haitian folklore have been getting the Hollywood treatment for the past century. But the current popular concept of zombies as shuffling reanimated corpses with a hunger for humans was inarguably forged by George Romero in his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. For decades after, zombies were merely part of the fright-movie pantheon, which also included slashers, aliens, and so on. Their ascent to the top of the horror heap is quite recent. Newspaper articles in 2006 noted an upswing in zombies’ cultural presence, but in retrospect the ball had just gotten rolling. Browsing through Google search-term trends from 2004 to the present, we find “zombie” and “zombies” showing sudden increases towards the end of 2008, as does “zombie apocalypse,” with a pronounced increase in early 2011. Meanwhile, searches for “ghost,” “witch,” “werewolf,” “demon,” “vampire,” and variants thereof stayed relatively flat.
What accounts for the heightened fascination? Theories abound:

1. Decaying corpses are horrifying. Get out, all monsters are horrifying. That’s why we call them monsters.
2. Decaying reanimated corpses are really horrifying. This gets closer. The scariest moment of my postcollegiate moviegoing experience was watching the Terminator come back to life, or whatever it is homicidal robots come back to after they’ve been to all appearances annihilated and you’re getting ready to head for the toilets.
3. “Zombie narrative presents us with a postcolonial consideration of identity and power, which allows us to challenge social and cultural hierarchies and power structures.” Please, professor, save it for the faculty lounge.
4. Let me throw in my own theory: If not zombies, then what? Vampires? Vampires have been the alpha pop-culture monster for at least 46 years. (See Barnabas Collins, Dark Shadows, 1967.) But let’s face it, the vampire = decadent sex metaphor, notwithstanding its ongoing box-office success, is surely running on fumes. We need zombies because they are relatively fresh.
5. Another hypothesis is that zombie films are more common when the U.S. faces war or societal upheaval. My assistant Una has charted 492 zombie films by year of release from 1910 to the present; she finds modest annual production until a spike of 15 zombie flicks in 1973, followed by fluctuating but fairly high output till 2003, when zombie filmmaking went through the roof. The 1973 jump coincides with Watergate, and I suppose 2003 might be a delayed reaction to 9/11, but more precisely it’s the year we invaded Iraq. Not to harp on this, but was there ever a time when we were more desperately in need of brains?
6. Paging through the scholarly journals, we find claims that zombies are a Marxist metaphor for the human face of capitalist monstrosity, or tap into a latent desire for racial violence, or somehow are connected with Hurricane Katrina. . ."

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Follow . . .

. . . the bouncing ball. . .

Maybe I'm dating myself, but remember the old cartoons (and even the Mitch Miller television show) that would display the lyrics to an old (not necessarily old at the time) pop song, and an animated ball would bounce over the lyrics as a recording would play allowing you to vocalize along with the recording?

Well, I'm not savvy enough to make a ball bounce over these lyrics, but they are shown below to accompany the video, allowing you to vocalize along with OHO, should you choose. . .


I'll be your Blood Brother
By your side through thick and thin
I'll be your Blood Brother
Just as long as I don't have to bloody
My hands hands

Bar rooms sure have a funny way
Of bringing loyalty out in a man
Buy a drink and tell a joke
And buddy you've got you a friend
But keep a good eye upon that friend
Because he really doesn't give two hoots
And don't say anything about his Mom
His  girlfriend or his army boots

I'll be your Blood Brother
By your side through thick and thin
I'll be your Blood Brother
Just as long as I don't have to bloody
My hands hands

Walked into an auto-mo-showroom
I need some wheels but got no money to spend
When a guy with an ugly tie
Walks out and acts like he's my long-lost friend
I said hey Buddy I've a purpose here
And if you please I will accomplish my goal
So don't you slap me on the back again
Cause if you do I might just lose my control

I'll be your Blood Brother
By your side through thick and thin
I'll be your Blood Brother
Just as long as I don't have to bloody
My hands hands

So please be careful when you meet someone
Who'll make a promise at the drop of a hat
And don't provide them with encouragement
You will regret the day you offered him that
Cause everybody needs some empathy
But just how willing
And how far will they go
To really help you when the chips are down
Can they be trusted half as far as you throw them

I'll be your Blood Brother
By your side through thick and thin
I'll be your Blood Brother
Just as long as I don't have to bloody
My hands hands

©1998 Raymond M. Jozwiak

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More . . .

(from The Hidden History of 9-11, Edited by Paul Zarembka)
". . . On of the gravest omissions from the Commission Report concerns the sworn testimony of Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta on May 23, 2003.  Mineta's testimony throws crucial elements of the Commission's narrative into doubt. 

Here are the key passages from Mineta's testimony regarding his memories of the actions of Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) bunker on the morning of September 11, 2001:

Mineta: during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon.  There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 10 mils out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?"  And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the order still stand.  Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

. . . Though Mineta makes clear that he did not hear a shoot-down order given that morning, and therefore could not confirm that the conversation between Cheney and the young aide regarded such an order, Commissioner Hamilton nevertheless assumes that the "order" discussed by Cheney and the young aide was in fact shoot-down order. . .

. . . Further evidence of an orchestrated cover-up of this information comes from the fact that videotape of Mineta's testimony has been excised from the Commission's video archive. . . "

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Folds. . .

. . . Ben Folds . . .


(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Folds)
". . . Ben Folds eventually got a music publishing deal with Nashville music executive Scott Siman who saw Folds open for musician Marc Silvey (as well as playing bass for Silvey's band Mass Confusion), and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue it in 1990. He played drums for a short stint in Jody's Power Bill, headed by Millard Powers, Will Owsley, and Jody Spence. Jody's Power Bill was later renamed The Semantics. Folds did not take a creative role in the band. He, again, attracted interest from major labels. He ended up playing drums there as a session musician.

"In Nashville, I was running eight miles a day, hanging out with my friends, walking around eating chocolate-chip cookies and playing a lot of drums, which I enjoyed. Life was easy. I was never frustrated – even though I wasn't fulfilling my contract obligations. If you are failing in Nashville, at least your standard of living is nice. Nashville is a nice way to fail."

Folds attended the University of Miami's Frost School of Music on a percussion scholarship, but dropped out with one credit to go before graduating. He devoted a lot of time to working on piano technique. "I spent maybe six months just running scales with a metronome like a freak," Folds said. "I suppose that did something."

Folds tells audiences about a jury recital when he was a student at the University of Miami’s music school. A jury recital consists of playing a prepared repertoire (and sometimes unprepared pieces from prior years of training) before faculty members who apply a grade for the entire semester. Folds, a drummer, showed up with a broken hand from defending his roommate from bullies the night before, but was required to play anyway. He ended up losing his scholarship and in desperation threw his drum kit into the campus' Lake Osceola.

After leaving Miami, Folds moved to Montclair, New Jersey and began to act in theater troupes in New York City. He enjoyed it in 1993 to the point where he didn't want to keep pursuing a musical career. He also played weekly gigs at Sin-é, famous for being the cafe which had helped start Jeff Buckley's career.

Soon after, Folds moved back to North Carolina. The trio of Folds, bassist Robert Sledge, and drummer Darren Jessee formed Ben Folds Five in 1994 in Chapel Hill. As Folds put it, “Jeff Buckley was being signed at that time by Columbia and I was talking to Steve, his A&R guy, and somehow we knew the same people or something."

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Unanswered. . .

. . . questions

(From bloggulator on Sun, 05/19/2013 - 2:04pm)
* why did VP Cheney make a request to Senator Tom Daschle "not to investigate 9/11?
* why the obfuscations and the 441 day delay in getting the Commission started,
* why was the Commission paced under severe time constraints?
* why was the Commission badly underfunded?
* why did the Bush White House demand that Commission's scope and its access were to be heavily restricted
* why did Bush and Cheney refuse to testify to the Commission under oath, and secretly, with no transcripts or reporting?
* why the constantly changing accounts by NORAD?
* why was 90% of the material presented to the Commission omitted in its final report?
* why the appointment of a Bush Administration insider (Zelikow) as the exec. director of an investigation publicly billed as "independent"?
* why the destruction of evidence and wholesale tampering with crime scenes without prosecution of such?
* why the initial appointment of Henry Kissinger of all people (who stepped down rather than reveal his client list)?
* why did CIA chief Tenet lie to the Commission in closed hearings?
* why were numerous 9/11 witnesses intimidated and harassed by government "minders"?
* why did so many of the senior Commissioners make statements trashing the findings of their own inquiry, including the two co-chairs?
* why did Zelikow bury the option of a criminal referral by the commission to the Justice Department for a perjury investigation?
* why did the 9/11 Commission wrongly describe the internal structure of the Twin Towers,
* why was there not even a mention of the demise of WTC7?

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