Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Obama's foreign policy . . . of denial and misdirection

So, our President's foreign policy (is there one?) gets slapped around like a trollup in Kiev, and in addition to anemic "sanctions" and brave words, his response to Russia's expansion into Ukraine is to dismiss them as a weak "regional" power? 

A regional power still with enough nukes to turn America into a glass desert, and one devoting more and more of its resources to modernizing and building its military; a regional power that is actively thwarting peace efforts in the Middle East.

No wonder, then, that as I watched this president, for whom I once voted, give Putin the raspberry in his news conference Wednesday, I thought of the crazy Emperor Caligula.

He took an army to the English Channel to invade Britain, only to declare victory and telling the troops to collect sea shells as their spoils of war.

I would have a lot more respect if The President just said, "Hey, our military is exhausted by war, and public won't support any new adventures, and frankly, we just don't much care about Ukraine."


Monday, March 17, 2014

What's in a name? Consider rock bands Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones . . . and Electric Prunes?

In 1967, I was 14 and had just gotten a "portable" stereo system for Christmas (a 50-pound suitcase thing with a flip out turntable for LPs, and speakers that detached from the sides).

Along with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and every Steppenwolf album that came out, I bought the first (and arguably only "real") Electric Prunes album.

EP was a an experimental "psychedelic" band, and their song "I had too much to Dream (Last Night)" ended at No. 11 on the top 40, despite the band's laughable  name.

EP kind of disappeared in the U.S. after than, going through a lot of attrition and wild creative swings before disbanding about '69. There is a current EP, reformed from geezers who comprised one of the last rosters of the band -- none of them original members -- that "reunited" in '99 and began touring Europe (they were big in Sweden).

But for about two weeks in '67, after an American Bandstand appearance, the original EP was considered groundbreaking in the so-called "acid rock" movement.

But come on, Electric Prunes? (What? They give you static regularity?) Not quite the literary props of Steppenwolf, or the poetic quality of Rolling Stones,  cool imagery of Led Zeppelin or the dark metaphor of Black Sabbath. The other bands went on to greatness on a path that followed, and eventually overtook/succeeded the Beatles. 

So, time travel with me a bit. It's a hot eastern Washington summer afternoon, humid, the windows of a 14-year-old kid's upstairs bedroom open to a limp, ineffective breeze.

You lie on the linoleum floor, sweating, stripped down to an old pair of cutoffs, forgetting for a moment that the longer you try to grow your hair and bushier and curlier it gets, a sort of celtic version of an afro.

The needle drops into the groove, a bit of static erupts from the speakers, one inches from each ear, and this is what you hear.