The Devil's Rejects

The LA Archdiocese settled a record case of molestation; $660 mil.

Thoughts & tidbits:

-I love legal parlance that, in one word - "settled," glosses over decades of terror.

-The defendants' lawyers will receive 40%.

-Pig Mahoney settled the very day before jury selection was to take place.

-Pig Mahoney said that he was "beginning to understand..." the magnitude of suffering, etc. Huh??? I thought as a high priest muckety muck that was the very foundation of his faith; empathy. But it takes a road leading to half a bil for his high holiness to "begin" to understand. Right.

-The Chicago newspaper otherwise masquerading as the LA Times reported that the archdiocese would have to sell off some of their real estate holdings and I guess liquidate some of their no doubt expansive portfolio in order to make payment. Boo fuckin' hoo.

-I came up in a heavily steeped catholic environment and love it when these holy rollers are exposed as the sick fuck hypocrites they are.

-I wonder what the Holy Ghost thinks of this...?

The Sky is Falling... in LA?!

I snapped this earlier this year while driving westbound on the 10 heading out of the city back to the westside. It was impressive.

To get a better sense of what I was experiencing, CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO ENLARGE IT...

Les Paul: The Players Player

How did he do it?
-Phil Ramone upon hearing Les Paul for the first time

Here's what I look for in artists of any stripe and people in general; enthusiasm. I don't mean blind fellowship. And I don't mean the frivolous, flip attitude of the casually hip.

So let's say I learn about or even meet someone who has enthusiasm. Well, there's actually a sub-class of that group who take it a step further.

These peeps are the creative types, the ones who are somehow imbued with an authenticity. Kinda like what Stacy Peralta was getting at when writing about Jay Adams being an original, an archetype.

And so it is with Les Paul. I'm writing about LP here because I've just seen the American Masters doc, The Wizard of Waukesha, and it reminded me of when I briefly flirted with my first love (music) by playing (piano, then guitar).

Now, among musicians Les Paul is revered; among guitarists he's a legend; and among creatives, inventors and the like, he's in the hall of fame. For he was "the man, the real deal, the original, the first. He is the archetype of our shared heritage." (Peralta on Adams)

His inventing the famous sound on sound dual-head Ampex is one of those ground-breaking moments in human history that forever alters things. Indeed.

But on the popular front, he's on center stage with his world-famous Les Paul solid body guitar. From Allman to Beck to Page and even Jimi (who dabbled with one while straying albeit momentarily) from his beloved Strat, the guitar occupies a special place in music history. Along with the Strat it is without a doubt the most coveted rock instrument in the world.

Les Paul and Mary Ford's music may not suit everyone's tastes; it's corny, homespun hokum. But so is the Carpenters. (Richard Carpenter has a meaty piece in the doc, bowing to the master) But musicians all know how great the Carpenters and Richard in particular were.

At the top of this I said that there were certain people in this world who take enthusiasm to another level, and clearly I had Les in mind. But there's a scene in the film that speaks so clearly to the love of creativity, the pure fun in doing creative, artistic things. LP is walking through one of his and Mary's old homes where, freed from the drudgery of the studio due to LP's sound on sound innovations, they used the natural acoustics of the house; the hallways, the bathrooms... and LP walks in the hallway and reminisces about stringing cords and wires here and there and everywhere, and the look on his face is one of total satisfaction, just fun, like what Welles said about a movie set: "It's the biggest, best erector set ever."

It's tragic to live in a time like this, in a pr crazy world where lame, mediocre and at best just run of the mill crap passes for "deep" and "amazing." Kids these days. (And we haven't even mentioned Tal Farlow, who's also still alive. Talk about a monster.) Yes, Les Paul's music is forgotten, but his mark is forever, whether "they" know it or not. His passion, nee, obsession, creative genius and just outright determinism put him in that special, exclusive club. He is one of the titans upon whose shoulders others stand.


Boy, they were something else, weren't they?
-Bonnie Raitt, on listening to LP & his beloved Mary Ford

Sicko

Say what you will about Moore, but he's got big brass bowling ball sized nuts. With Sicko, he's crafted an in-your-face indictment of corporatized health care that's not just eye-opening for Americans but funny (expected) and really entertaining.

There's a moment in Sicko that's poignant and moving: after having given us firsthand looks at countries that take care of their citizens it shows the mother of all publicized cases of patient dumping by Kaiser - the world's largest HMO - on LA's infamous Skid Row.

To those unfamiliar, HMOs ("health management organizations" = corporate run hospitals) have been caught cutting costs by taking those expendable to their business model - ie: the poor/uninsured and therefore defenseless - and just dumping them on the streets. In this way, the poor and therefore defenseless suffer obscenity in terms of American health care in the same way they suffer obscenities with the legal system. For instance, the great work that Barry Scheck, Cardozo Law School et al and The Innocence Project have performed, freeing over 200 wrongfully convicted poor folk.

But when I or anyone says "patient dumping" it's not just any street. It's skid row. As in, You've hit the skids, kid.

Now, let me not just shunt aside what skid row truly and actually is to those who've never seen it. It is, in the worst of senses, a human garbage heap, a sort of modern day charnel house where death grinds deliberately without recourse. To those Skid Row denizens who don't die and exist on, it's a concrete miserablism machine that slowly and pitilessly consumes flesh and will. A friend who was not from here who visited once said that it looked like a war-torn third world country.

Talking about LA and Skid Row reminds me of sheltered folks who visit Waikiki or Ocho Rios and go back to their mother countries and brag about how they've seen "the islands." If they only knew how natives loathe their condescending asses. So it is with LA, proving once again the ageless rule that truth is indeed an illusion, but it's also a conveniently hidden reality for those it benefits.

Back to patient dumping. It was at that point, about 3/4 of the way through, after seeing how Canada and France take care of their own health-care-wise, that Moore offers a poignant question over the grainy urban cam video of "patient" shuffling aimlessly along skid row:

What have we become, what kind of country are we that dumps people like so much garbage? [paraphrased from memory]