Journal Archive - February, 2007

i was talking to a friend today about my on-line journal and she asked me why i never offer advice to people who might be reading what i have to write.
i know i'm an opinionated loudmouth, but i've always felt uncomfortable and presumptuous offering advice to people when i don't know their circumstances.
but i do feel moderately comfortable offering general advice to aspiring musicians.
so here's my presumptuous advice to aspiring musicians(a lot of it might seem cliche'd and self-evident, but hopefully it will benefit someone out there)-

1-first and foremost: what do you love and what are you good at? are you a great singer?
a great songwriter? a great dj? you need to figure this out, and usually your friends will be able to help. and you need to be willing to accept that you might not be great at what you've chosen to do. which either means:

a-you stop doing it or do something else

b-you get better

c-you learn to work around your shortcomings(like me. i'm a sub-par singer, but yet i've managed to have some success singing on some of my songs. adversity and limitations can be overcome...).

and you need to love what you're doing. if your goal as a musician is to make a lot of money and be famous, you're probably going to end up miserable and sad and desperate. if your goal is to spend your life and your time making music that you love, then you're going to vastly increase your chances at actually having success.

2-what do you want?
some aspiring musicians want fame and fortune. others want to make obscure records that will never find a mass audience. every person has their own goals and ambitions. what are yours? identifying and understanding your goals will help you to figure out how to pursue them. if you want to be a huge rockstar but yet you only want to play 12 tone obscure jazz, well, you might have a problem. conversely if you want a nice, humble life wherein you play music for a small audience then you probably don't need to to worry about getting timbaland to produce your debut record.
please note: fame and fortune, more often than not, make people confused and miserable.
fame and fortune are, statistically speaking, almost impossible to come by. they also rarely last. and their legacy is usually bitterness and sadness. history is filled with musicians who had a minute of fame and then spend the rest of their lives saddled with resentment and bitterness. and the musicians who are able to sustain their fame-and-fortune usually end up drug addicted and in trouble and jaded. fame and fortune are incredibly dangerous and volatile entities, and should almost be seen as liabilities when/if you encounter them.
so, ask yourself: what are your goals and what do you want? if you aspire to fame and fortune, be careful.

3-i don't want to sound too cliche'd, but 98% of the time you're well advised to be yourself. play music that you love. wear clothes that you love. write lyrics that you love. let's look at norah jones, for example. or kurt cobain.
both artists have/had tons of integrity and success. they also looked and sounded nothing like the successful artists at the time they were making their successful records. when norah jones was making her first record the charts were filled with britney's and christina's and beyonce's. how successful and happy would norah jones have been if she'd cast aside the music that she loved to try to look and sound like everything else on the radio/mtv? same with kurt cobain. before nevermind was released the charts were dominated by poison and skid row. should kurt cobain have move to l.a and teased his hair and worn spandex and written 'cherry pie' knockoffs? should norah jones have tried to make pussycat-dolls-esque records?
no, of course not.
so don't try to look or sound like everything else on radio/mtv. trends pass very very quickly.
if you look and sound like the current trend then in about 6 minutes you will look and sound like last years trend(remember all of the limp bizkit imitators?).

4-play live. you have to. and you have to be good at it. the only artists who have long and successful careers these days are those who can play live and develop a live following. a lot of very successful artists have learned not to rely on radio play and record sales in order to have a life playing music. the best artists have always been artists who can play live. there's almost no way to get around this, especially not in todays climate where revenues from record sales keep dwindling.

5-try, if possible, to learn a lot of different skills. learn how to play 3 or more instruments.
learn how to produce and engineer. learn how to read and write music. learn how to dj. learn how to score films. the more you can do, the better the chances that you'll be able
to have a long and happy life as a musician. and if you know how to play multiple instruments and engineer a recording session you'll not only have good skills but you'll be better able to make the records that you want to make, and you won't be beholden to other people's expertise.
what else are you going to do with your time? instead of watching tv learn how to play a new instrument. instead of playing video games learn how to use pro-tools. instead of going skateboarding learn how to read and write score.

6-know your way around a contract.
some legal advise from me(keeping in mind i'm not a lawyer)-

a-the shorter the deal the better. if someone says 'i just got a 10 album deal!' that means that they've just sold themselves into pernicious slavery.

b-keep your publishing whenever possible. record companies are now trying to get the rights
to artists publishing and merchandising. keep these if you can. especially publishing. and never accept a publishing split wherein you get less than 75% of the income.

c-some standard percentages:
agents get 10%.
managers get, at most, 20%.
record companies get between 75%-85%.
publishers get between 10% - 25%.
keep your deals SHORT.
the only time to have a long deal is if the other person/company guarantees you something.
if you have a record deal wherein the record company GUARANTEES you that they'll release every album specified in the contract then you should sign it. most long deals only serve the interest of the record company/publishing company/merchandiser/etc. and get a good lawyer.
don't be a cheapskate when it comes to good legal advice.
but make sure that you agree upon the lawyers fee beforehand. some lawyers work on a percentage basis. some on an hourly basis. some on a fixed fee. try to get a fixed fee if you can.
most lawyers are honest but also self-interested and they'll try to make as much money as they can.
it's your job to be smart and monitor them and their billing and their work.
if a collaborator/manager/label/etc gets you exclusively, then they better be giving you something great in return. 'great' is open to interpretation. it could mean money or guaranteed services or, ideally, a combination of the two.
again: get a good lawyer.

7-don't hire friends or family. never, ever, ever.
this is just a given. i won't even explain, except to say that it will end in tears for all involved.

ok, that's a lot to digest...
maybe i'll write more if anyone's interested.
i hope that some of this will be of help to any aspiring musicians out there.
moby

my friend aurelia just sent me a quote from andre gide:
"you should always follow the one who seeks truth and run away from the one who has found it".

if i had a school that would be the quote over the entranceway.
-moby

a-the white house, in a fun fit of revisionist stalinism, have taken down the transcripts of dick cheney's pre-2006 interviews from the white house web site. so you now have to go elsewhere to read such gems as 'i think they(the iraqii people)will greet us as liberators'(march 2003), and 'i think they're in the last throes of the insurgency'(summer, 2005).
i mean, seriously, why do they even let scowling dick cheney out of his cage?
he's not a stupid man, but his obstinancy is almost like the theater of the absurd(recently he's been doing interviews trying to say that things in iraq are going well...).
i guess what's been galling about the 6 years of the bush administration has been how comfortable they(cheney, rumsfeld, bush, etc)have been with lying.
big, bold-face lies. and the fact that they were able to get away with it for so long.
ah well, nothing i haven't said 100 times before.
b-ok, non-politics. i watched 3 minutes of the oscars, specifically the part where will ferrel and jack black did their musical number. it was funny. perhaps i missed out by not watching the awards givern to 'best sound editing for a foreign documentary', or 'best assistant camera operation on a short film'. i know, most people were sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to watch editors give acceptance speeches, huh.
c-it's kind of late, so i'll keep it brief and go to sleep. goodnight.
moby

a-i'm glad that you all seemed to like 'schaumgummi'. i had to explain to a few people that it was supposed to be funny. see, i thought that the lines 'darth vader marshmallow', & 'you are a marshmallow' were kind of dead give-aways as to it's comedic intent, but maybe we were just too subtle...(cos nothing says 'subtle' like a guy dressed up like a giant marshmallow running around in a field).

b-are the oscars this weekend? again: i know nothing. is the super bowl coming up? is the world series this weekend? who's our president? the oscars are odd. you expect them to be interesting and fun and then they have 15 minute montages to 'the history of birds in early cinema'. and who can stand the nail-biting excitement of finding out the winner of 'best sound design in a documentary'?

c-oh, in case you wonder what i'm doing with myself these days, i'm working on my next record. as always i have about 400 songs that i'm trying to narrow down to the 20 or so that will comprise the next record. i don't know when the record will come out, september, maybe? but september's a tricky time to release a record, cos EVERYONE puts out records in september. so suddenly my little record is competing with the heavy hitters. so we'll see. maybe september's the right time to release a new record. maybe it's not. i'll keep you updated(in my clueless way).

d-in playing scrabble last night i spelled 'witch' with the 'h' making 'hex' out of 'ex'. do i get extra points for this? no, unfortunately. although making 'witch' and 'hex' with one turn is pretty good, right?

-moby

in 1997 my friend paul and i started a fake teutonic techno group called 'schaumgummi'.
i hadn't seen the video since 1997 and someone just forwarded it to me.
i'm the guy in the wig and glasses.
mo

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DCjXH3j0GPY

p.s-we thought that 'schaumgummi' meant 'marshmallow' but it actually means 'foam rubber'.

p.p.s-just for the record, it's supposed to be funny. um, as if the dancing marshmallow wasn't a give-away...

emphasis on 'kind of'.
more interesting than funny.
kind of interesting.
ok, more than 'kind of' interesting.
actually interesting.
here goes.
a recent gallup poll asked americans how likely they would be to vote for a qualified
presidential candidate if they were black, latino, gay, female, etc.
here are the results:

Black 94%
Jewish 92%
A woman 88%
Hispanic 87%
Mormon 72%
Married for third time 67%
72 years of age 57%
A homosexual 55%
An atheist 45%

so, basically, 94% of americans would happily vote for a black candidate for president, but only 45% of americans would vote for an atheist.
the reason this is kind of funny is that the 3 leading gop candidates are:
a-a mormon(mitt romney, 72% of americans would vote for a mormon)
b-72 years old(john mccain, 57% of americans would vote for someone 72 years old)
c-twice divorced(rudy giulianni, 67% of americans would vote for someone who was on their 3rd wife)

other variables obviously come into play, but it's still interesting to see what americans are purportedly comfortable with.
the poll is encouraging in that it seems to show that americans are not as racist as widely believed.
the poll is discouraging in that we seem to live in a country of homophobes.

ok, that's it. nothing too earth-shaking, just an interesting poll about americans and what they're willing to tell a complete stranger who calls them at home during dinner-time.
one could make the case, based on supposition, that what the poll really reveals is the extent to which americans are comfortable sharing their biases and prejudices with strangers on the phone.
americans might be deeply racist, but maybe they're ashamed to admit their racism to the nice people from gallup.
in most parts of america being prejudiced towards gays and atheists doesn't carry the same social stigma as racism and anti-semitism.
that might explain, to an extent, the poll numbers.
i'm such a nerd, i really like reading polls.
zogby's are the most fun, especially when you really get into the nuanced nuts -n- bolts of the responses.
waxing enthusiastic about the nuts and bolts of political polling?
wait, when did i stop being cool?
oh, that's right, to paraphrase a simpsons clip show: 'i was never cool'.
i really should think about going to rockstar camp so i can learn how to be cool and esoteric and vague.
then i could start writing esoteric blogs.
that would be fun.
like:

"the moon stole the mice. again.
like the ghosts of aldous huxley and rimbaud, playing skee-ball at the midway of america.
i guess it's better to put it all on red.
be good, y'all."

see, that's what i need to start doing.
learning how to be vague and esoteric.
cool people are vague and esoteric.
the wolverine is in the cistern, drunk on the rhapsodic butter of elvis chomsky.
like that, right?
i need a vague and esoteric make-over.
perhaps that would be a good reality tv show for pbs.
moby

http://www.greenbrownorange.com/auction/221.jpg

a drawing of mine being auctioned to help a friend who's in the hospital.
you'll notice my suggested starting bid of $5.
my goal is to never ask for more than $5 for a drawing.
there are other good things in the auction, too (although mine is the least expensive...).
moby

give yourself 5 minutes to watch this.
it's deeply entertaining.
moby

http://www.dailymotion.com/loranger/video/x12565_beatbox

over the weekend john mccain:
a-said that he'd work to overturn roe-v-wade
b-spoke at an abstinence rally in south carolina
c-missed a vote on the troop surge in iraq

i've always grudgingly admired and respected john mccain.
he's bright and personable and, i had thought, independent.
at present he seems to be bending over backwards to endear himself to the religious right, which is making him seem like a hypocrite, as up until a few years ago he only had contemptuous things to say about jerry falwell and his ilk.
and...an abstinence rally?
what's next? forced castration/sterilization rallies?
maybe dust off eugenics and take it out for a 21st century spin?
eugenics and forced sterilization seemed to work well for republicans in the early 20th century.
maybe as a return to traditional party values the republicans can hearken back to the good old days of eugenics and forced sterilization for undesirables?
and promoting abstinence is, statistically speaking according to the w.h.o and even the n.i.h, a dangerous waste of time and resources.
forgive me if this gets a bit graphic/distasteful, but do you know how a lot of girls/women in the 'christian' south and other parts of the world get around the issue of abstinence?
anal sex.
yup. it is common practice for girls in the south to have anal sex long before vaginal sex because somehow that means that they're virginity remains intact.
(i can just see the scene on the wedding night. 'honey, i've saved my virginity for you. i mean, i can't count how many guys i've had unprotected anal sex with, but i'm still a virgin, right?')
as a result of this, rates of anally spread std's are skyrocketing in 'christian' communities, all in the name of abstinence and virginity.
it's also worth noting that rates of std transmission and abortion and teen pregnancy are much higher in communities without sex-education and with active abstinence campaigns.
another charmer from the religious right...'christians' are trying to restrict access to a vaccine that would protect women from hpv.
hpv can cause cervical cancer and other health problems in women, and it's incredibly wide spread and not protected against by using condoms.
so why are the religious right trying to restrict access to the hpv vaccine?
because they believe that if women are vaccinated against hpv(which most women under a certain age are not even aware of, even though a woman's chance of getting hpv is about 15,000,000 times higher than getting hiv)then that will lead to promiscuity.
this same religious right who john mccain is prostrating himself to.
sorry to be a bummer on a monday morning, but:
a-it's a shame that smart, independent john mccain feels it necessary to kow-tow to the religious right.
b-it's a shame that the anti-science, anti-women, anti-public health religious right are in a position to influence public policy.
ok, i'll be more fun the next time i write, i promise.
moby

the holiday with the best acronym.
hopefully not the most appropriate acronym.
i was just walking through the trendy district of soho('somewhat horrible'. another abbreviation/acronym) marvelling at the desperate couples battling the cold(minus 3 degrees fahrenheit with wind chill)and the lack of cabs.
i would just like to take this opportunity to provide a tlc(taxi and limousine commission)public service.
ready(he asks pedantically)?
ok, here goes.
on the top of every taxi cab in nyc is a little rectangular box.
when the box is dark that means that the cab is occupied(boo).
when the box is lit up in the middle that means that the cab is available(yay).
when the whole box is lit up that means it's off duty(boo).
sometimes an off-duty cab will take you where you want to go if it's convenient for them, otherwise you have to keep looking.
so, if you or someone you know are in nyc trying to get a cab please:
refrain from yelling at cabs that are occupied or off-duty(aforementioned yelling might entertain the natives but it's a waste of your precious emotional energy, right?).

some other taxi trivia:
98% of nyc taxis can only take 4 passengers. that's the law. if they take 5 passengers they get a huge fine or lose their job. so don't try to talk them into taking 5 passengers.

taxis 'switch over' from 4pm-5pm. this is the single dumbest thing about life in nyc.
right when people need taxis the most is when most of them are off-duty.

and here's an observation that i've probably made before:
most taxi drivers are awesome. 95% of the time they're from the middle east or africa and they're great and helpful and competent.
every now and then you get taxi drivers who are insane and incompetent. it's best just to grin and bear it. and wear your seat belt.
so here's the observation:
some cab drivers come from conservative islamic countries where women are 3rd class citizens, jews are seen as the enemy, and homosexuals are put to death.
so imagine how they feel picking up a successful, gay, jewish woman who then tells them where to go?
i sometimes wonder why islamic cab drivers don't move to oklahoma.
one time i had a cab driver who was just spouting profanities against jews and gays and women the entire time he was driving me. i kind of wanted to pull him aside and say, 'sir, might you not be happier in a different city, perhaps? new york is a city that is happily run by jews and gays and women.
in fact new yorks character is largely defined by jews and gays and women. wouldn't you be happier elsewhere?'

ok, that's all for nyc taxis.
wear your seatbelts.
really. don't be afraid if you look like a nerd wearing your seatbelt in the back of a taxi.
if you're in the back of a taxi there's a 3 inch thick piece of lucite about 18 inches from your face.
you might look like a nerd wearing your seatbelt, but you'll look like a disfigured freak if you end up hitting the 3 inch thick piece of lucite with your face at 40 miles an hour.
did i mention the fact that it's cold in nyc?
oh, yes, i guess i did.
g'night.
moby

the 3 minutes wherein the police performed.
and they were surprisingly good.
sting, it must be said, looked great.
i had this vision of the switchboards at yoga studios across the country lighting up on the morning after the grammy's, with thousands of people asking, 'so, uh, what kind of yoga does sting do, and if i do it will i look like him?'
so my question: did anything interesting happen during the rest of the grammy's?
that's kind of a rhetorical question, as i'm 99.8% sure that the answer is 'no'.
an interesting fact about the grammy's: the actual award announcements start during the afternoon in the staples center.
they save the high profile award announcement(album of the year, etc)for the televised part of the show.
but the, for lack of a better expression, 'less' high profile award announcements happen during the day when no one is paying attention.
that's when there are 20 people in the staples center(it holds 18,000 people, i believe receiving grammy's for 'best polka song' and 'best rock instrumental', etc.
if you're ever bored on grammy day you should try to get into the staples center to see people giving acceptance speeches to the empty staples center, it's kind of heartbreaking and touching at the same time.
i was there one year and i remember very distinctly the person who'd won 'best polka record' yelling 'polka forever!!' as a part of his acceptance speech. the 20 or 30 people in the staples center clapped perfunctorily. unfortunately the sound of 20 people clapping in a space designed to hold 18,000 is kind of depressing.
please let me know if i missed anything by not watching the grammy's. who was the host?
john stewart was the host the year that i performed, and he was great. we were talking about the blue man group, and john was telling me that in college he and the blue man group guys were part of the same catering company, although he said that the blue man group guys worked the floor(much better job), while he worked in the kitchen(much shittier job, as anyone who's ever worked in an industrial kitchen can attest to. one of my first jobs was washing dishes at the macy's restaurant in the stamford town center. it SUCKED.).
ok, from grammy's to dishwashing.
randomly yours,
moby

a-unrelentingly cold in nyc. and parts of new york state have received over 7 feet of snow this winter. one of those towns is 'mexico, ny'. ironic. sort of. kind of like 'paris, texas' being a republican stronghold.

b-my friend stacey's fashion show(she owns a clothing company called alice&olivia)was tonight.
the highlights were: the clothes. her pregnant sister walking in the show. and stacey and i coming out at the end as andy&edie(yes, i wore a white wig).

c-most of the models in the show were 11 feet tall and looked to be about 12 years old. have models always been so young? and so skinny? it's a weird phenomenon.

d-but stacey's show was great. she started her clothing company 5 years ago because her friends wanted her to make pants for them(stacey was designing web-sites at the time).
now alice&olivia is a huge success. hooray for stacey. she deserves it. she works harder (and better)than any person i've ever known.

e-did i mention that the models were 14 feet tall, 6 years old, and weighed somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds? it's true.

f-congressional democrats were questioning paul bremer(the republican who oversaw the re-construction of iraq...good job, paul)a few days ago. when asked where NINE BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH had gone, paul bremer said, simply, 'i don't know'.
NINE BILLION DOLLARS? IN CASH? that's almost 400 TONS OF CASH. another republican congressman tried to make the case that NINE BILLION DOLLARS isn't a lot of money to lose.
oi vey, what the hell is wrong with these people? they've lost billions and billions of dollars
of our money. yes, our money. they take it from us. they print it up into friendly little pieces of currency. they send it to iraq(400 tons of it). and then the republicans in charge lose it. or sit idly by while it's stolen by terrorists. good times in iraq. maybe we should ask for it back?

g-ok, truth be told the models were actually 35 feet tall, 2 months old, and utterly devoid of mass. really.
it's true.

h-nothing like a list for some good old fashioned non-sequiturs.

i-i guess that's all for now.

j-have a nice weekend.

-moby

a week ago i was given 'catching the big fish' by david lynch, and i've been reading it sporadically ever since.
more than anything else it's a charming(i know, odd choice of word)book about transcendental meditation and creativity.
the chapters are all brief and fairly random. ok, they're not fairly random, they're completely random.
the shortest chapter, entitled 'the box and the key' is: 'i have no idea what those are'.
but my favorite chapter so far is 'texture', here it is:

'i don't necessarily love rotting bodies, but there's a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable. have you ever seen a little rotted animal? i love looking at those things, just as much as i like to look at a close-up of some tree bark, or a small bug, or a cup of coffee, or a piece of pie. you get in close and the textures are wonderful'

it almost sounds like a deep thought by jack handey.
i love the image of david lynch looking at a piece of pie and then looking at a close-up of a decaying squirrel.
elsewhere in the book he talks about lost highway being inspired by the o.j simpson trial, which made me feel slightly vindicated, as when 'lost highway' was released i was talking to a few friends and i said that i thought that it was inspired by the o.j simpson trial. my friends vehemently disagreed. so i was right. they were wrong. so, to my friends who disagree with me: nyaah(that's me making a very petulant sound).

in other david lynch news...i watched 'the elephant man' the other day. i hadn't seen it in years. what a beautiful movie. did john hurt win an academy award for his portrayal of john merrick? he should have. when john hurt finally starts speaking in the movie it's so hearbreaking.
as an aside, why are british actors so good? is it something in the water? there have been some good american and canadian and australian actors, but it seems as if 90% of the british actors in the world are just innately good. why is that?

ok, have a nice weekend.
-moby

the former head of the national council of evangelical christians who was discovered spending the churches money hiring male hookers and buying crystal meth?
ring a bell?
hmm?
when he wasn't campaigning against gay marriage he was out trysting with male hookers and buying crystal meth on the mean streets of denver?
well, it turns out that the church has cured him of his homosexuality(not sure what they've done about the crystal meth problem).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR200611...

so, what's next?
do they cure him of his caucasian-ness?
maybe cure him of his having mass and weight?
i love that 90 days of not paying for sex with male hookers makes him straight and 'cured'.
i mean george bush has supposedly been sober for over a decade and he's still an alcoholic(as i'm sure he'd be the first to admit).
i can just picture the dinner table conversation at the house of the church guy who 'cured' ted haggard.
'so, dear, what did you do at work today? minister to the poor? visit people in prison? look after the sick?'
'no, honey, i had a more important calling, i cured a man of his homosexuality.'
'oh, that's interesting, how exactly did you do that?'
'we kept him from having sex with male hookers.'
'and he's "cured"?'
'yup.'
'ok honey. would you like some more yams?'
'no, i want you to truss me up in the basement and hit me with a riding crop while singing 'kokomo'.'
'ok, honey, you're the head of the household.'

we live in fun times.
do you ever wonder what interesting scandals might come our way in the next year?
i mean last year we had:
mark foley
ted haggard
dick cheney(remember when he shot the old guy in the face and then went and sobered up?)
britney(just pick one)
and so on.

who will be the awesome scandal provider of 2007?
will it be me?
will i be photographed at an nra meeting with bacon in my pockets?
will i be found to be the baby daddy of condi's love child?
my life is kind of boring and scandal free.
any suggestions on fun scandals i could possibly be involved in would, of course, be taken to heart.
-moby

democrats in the senate tried to pass a motion allowing a debate on the iraqii war. republicans in the senate blocked the motion.
senator dick durbin, D-illinois summed it up pretty well with this quote:
"If the Republicans want to stand by their president and his policy, they shouldn't run from this debate. If they believe we should send thousands of our young soldiers into the maws of this wretched civil war, they should at least have the courage to stand and defend their position."

the republicans are so afraid of discussing the war in iraq that they'll even block debate?
hooray for free speech?
moby

and, no, i'm not talking about our commander in chief, i'm talking about me.
and my complete ignorance as regards professional sports.
on friday someone asked me, 'so what are you doing for super bowl sunday?'
to which i replied, 'uh, when is super bowl sunday?'
it was yesterday, huh.
i had no idea. but someone just told me that the colts played the bears, right?
i've written about this before, but when i was really young(aka-pre-adolescent) i was utterly and disturbingly obsessed with professional sports.
i had a subscription to the sporting news, and when my favorite teams would play i would make scorecards and statistics sheets of my own and i could tell you the most unnecessary and arcane things about almost anyone in professional sports.
but then, like the overquoted robert frost poem, two paths(or one path?)diverged in the woods and i took the one as previously travelled by david bowie and john lydon and ian curtis and kraftwerk(aka-music instead of reading the sporting news cover to cover every week, as i did when i was 9. yes before being a music nerd/political nerd i was a sports nerd. well, unless 'sports nerd' is oxymoronic enough to be meaningless).
i did go to a super bowl party a few years ago, and i think that i was an embarassment to just about everyone in the room by asking questions like: 'the raiders are from l.a now? such and such city has a football team? you can score points by doing that?'
ok, and now some politics.
see? i'm sneaking the politics in after something innocent, like how i didn't know that yesterday was super bowl sunday.
so...gw bush's budget?
very simply: a big increase in the defense budget, a big increase in money for iraq and afghanistan,
and huge cuts in domestic spending.
personally i think that he's just being petulant cos his approval ratings are so low.
i imagine his thinking to be something like: 'fine, if the american people don't like me, then i'll give their tax money to defense contractors and people in iraq and afghanistan.' somewhat akin to the 'well, if you won't invite me to your party then i'll take my ball and go play with the other kids.'
i mean, seriously, cutting education and health-care and emergency services in the united states so that we can spend more money on defense and oil-production in iraq?
do you think on his last day in office(or before he's impeached)gw bush and dick cheney will say, 'oh, and by the way, we REALLY hate americans. please forward our mail to riyadh.'
you have to admit that it's a little bit(ok, a lot of bit)weird to cut domestic spending so that you can spend more overseas and on the defense budget(which is currently higher than the defense budgets of china, western europe, japan, and southeast asia COMBINED).
-moby

big clubs involve:
a-crowd barriers and velvet ropes outside.
b-decidedly unfriendly door people and security people.
c-loud, eclectic, and oftentimes annoying music mixes(50 cent into gnr, etc).
d-men and women looking for love/sex in all the wrong places(literally and figuratively).

you'll notice that i'm being whiney.
aka-i'm complaining.
what is appealing about:
a-waiting in line(i almost always wait in line, as doing the 'walk to the front of the line and inform them of my celebrity status to facilitate entry' makes me uncomfortable. so i wear a hat and wait in line),
b-being treated like garbage by door-people/security,
c-paying $15 for a drink,
d-listening to predictable and predictably loud music,
e-watching bankers try to hit on fashion publicists?
i mean, really?
as i was leaving aforementioned loud/annoying club and watching:
a-bankers hitting on fashion publicists
b-underage girls throwing up while their friends hold/held their hair
c-everyone texting/emailing looking to get laid before the night was over
d-white people dancing poorly to hip hop from 1986
i wondered to myself:
'are we really all so desperate to perpetuate our genetic lineage that we're willing to subject ourselves to these sort of institutional and expensive degradations?'
oh, and don't get me wrong, despite the awfulness i managed to have fun.
i had some nice convesations.
i sang along to 'sweet home alabama' mixed into slick rick.
but the whole thing just felt sad and desperate, like a petri dish for drunk bankers.
i guess it's all based on the lure of the predictably unexpected.
in 'microcosmos', a book by dorion sagan, a theory is posited that all life serves purely to perpetuate single celled organisms and our shared dna.
it's kind of a hard theory to refute, when examined empirically and objectively.
we are multi-celled and incredibly complicated organisms, but we're relatively short-lived, and single celled organisms have been around for 4 1/2 billion years.
it might be an overly reductionist theory, but it does make a lot of sense.
and it does explain why seemingly educated and self-interested human beings would dedicate so much time, money, dignity, and brain mass to the pursuit of another persons 23 chromosomes(what is bought/sold when a mate is either deemed worthy or lucky).
are we just corporeal vessels for single celled organisms?
is consciousness a convenient chimera for perpetuating biological life?
are nightclubs usually depressing petri dishes, filled with the celebratory stink of ambitious desperation?
ok, i can't answer questions 1 & 2, but question 3 is rhetorical and kind of answers itself.
oh, and to argue the other side, nightclubs can also be dark, transcendent places where bourgeoisie conventions are left at the door and atavistic impulses, both benign and malignant, are given free reign.
so i'm not judging.
but a bunch of bankers buying $15 drinks for fashion publicists is enough to make anybody kind of bummed out, right?
but i guess that even bankers and fashion publicists need love, too.
so who am i to complain?
-moby

according to the u.n, livestock(aka-cows, chickens, sheep, pigs) production is responsible for 18% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
that's a lot.
it's also why i found it so odd that al gore didn't mention livestock production in 'an inconvenient truth'.
kind of like making a movie about global warming and not mentioning cars.
'an inconvenient truth' is a great movie, don't get me wrong. i'm just confused as to why he didn't mention a sector of industry(livestock production) that's responsible for 1/5th of the greenhouse gas emmisions contributing to global warming.
that's all.
have a nice weekend.
ironically, it's sort of snowing here in nyc.
luckily it's not orange siberian snow.
moby

a big, gigantic, serious, weighty, substantial report was released today in paris wherein it was reported that global warming is:
a-real
and
b-the result of human activities
and
c-not such a good thing.
the big news, however, is that the bush administration is actually, slowly, tentatively acknowledging that global warming might be:
a-real
and
b-the result of human activities
and
c-not such a good thing.
so that's a plus.
what can we do?
well...very little?
lobby governments and politicians and industry to sign on to the kyoto protocol?
stop subsidising old and outdated industries that create and/or rely on fossil fuels?
stop subsidising animal production(a huge source of greenhouse gases)?

but the sad truth is that we're not really going to do much, because:
a-it would require effort(and we're all pretty busy)
and
b-it would mean giving up a lot of the things that we like(cars, for a start)
and
c-it would force governments and industries to do things differently.

so, what do we do?
i know that i'm an opinionated loudmouth, but i have no idea.
divest our real estate portfolios of coastal real estate?
think twice before moving to a european ski resort?
get some hurricane insurance while they still offer it?
ok, those are selfish things.
the truth is that with india and china(over 2 billion people)becoming affluent and industrialized we're basically screwed.
suppose we buy eco-friendly lightbulbs and take public transportation.
great.
but what about the 2 billion indians and chinese who are understandably rushing out to buy cars and lawnmowers and airplanes and etc?
can we ask them not to?
wouldn't they just say, 'hold on. you've done nothing but make and drive gas guzzlers for 100 years and now you're telling us not to? isn't that like a leopard advocating vegetarianism?'
we are, as i said, screwed.
to somehow attenuate global warming it would require a global effort the likes of which the planet has never seen.
it would be great. we would end our reliance upon oil. end our dependance upon animal products. stop subsidising old and inefficient industries. and so on.
but, not to be too pessimistic, will any of this happen?
i dunno...doubtful?
which isn't to say that we shouldn't try. but i have a feeling that the phrase 'far too little, far too late' will become the mantra by which future generations curse us.
i don't mean to be such a bummer, and i really do hope that i'm wrong.
i hope that we all come together as citizens and politicians and consumers and turn back the tide of global warming.
but thus far there's nothing suggesting that this will happen. which is sad.
oh, happy groundhog day.
i do love rodent related holidays, like squirrel-sunday, mole-ee'n and rats-mas.
-moby

exxon reported profits of $39.5 billion dollars on record earnings last year.
and, fun fact, our tax dollars subsidize oil production here in the united states and abroad.
exxon also receive billions in corporate welfare and subsidies.
i mean, call me crazy, but shouldn't a company that is making record profits be exempt from receiving subsidies and tax breaks?
i know, i'm just a crazy lefty, but that seems like it would make sense, no?
what if, and i know this might sound nuts, our government subsidised sustainable domestic energy production and stopped subsidising companies who increase our reliance
upon foreign oil?
ok, i'll stop with the crazy talk now.
in other news: my refrigerator is about to be photographed for a fancy magazine photo shoot.
this is all well and good, except that i'm concerned that my refrigerator might start to make prima-donna-ish demands as it becomes more and more famous.
my refrigerator has already battled drug addiction and eating disorders, and it has been notoriously petulant when the papparazzi take it's picture on the beach in tulum or anguila.
maybe i should be a good celebrity refrigerator parent and restrict it's involvement with the media.
and other news: jonathan ames had a show last night at mo pitkin's that was fun and shambolic.
any show that involves:
pillow fighting
paddling
people wrestling while wearing prosthetic genitalia(but with prosthetic legs removed)
hula-hoop-ing
and whatnot,
is ok with me.
-moby