Hammer Mill Days

No, this isn't spam. This is real life. Real as it gets, man. Gravity, oxygen, water, the whole nine yards. I was just thinking back to the bad old days in the 1970s when television was king and the internets were just a twinkle in DARPA's eyes. On about five million occasions - maybe slightly more than that - I can remember watching an ad for 120 Classical Masterpieces introduced by the well-known character actor John Williams (not the classical guitarist ... nor the composer of the Lost In Space theme song). Now that we are on the verge of releasing our third and perhaps silliest album ever, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , I only wish we had a marketing powerhouse behind us like John Williams. Or even Guy Williams. (Except that he 's dead too !) Looks like, once again, Big Green will do the legwork on our own. We have some volunteer help, as you know. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will tell all of his robot friends to download the album. (They don'...

While they're all talking about the Sopranos ... let's talk about something that's actually happening in the actual world. Like the uprisings in Turkey and in Brazil. First, the way the U.S. press covers the government response to these protests is interesting, to say the least. I suppose they are so overcome by the loss of James Gandolfini that they have forgotten how harshly our own various municipal police forces cracked down on the Occupy Wall Street movement just eighteen months ago or so. The developing world doesn't have a corner on repression, not by a long shot. Still, it's interesting that in both cases, the original impetus for the protest was a decision by the government affecting public services. Both Turkey and Brazil have been touted as relatively successful governments, and yet beneath many success stories there is often another story to tell, that of the poor, the working people, those left behind. You can see them in Brazil, in China, in India,...