Is Cher the Anti-Christ?

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"I've been famous my entire life; I don't know any other way." -Cher

Dear Gentlereaders,

I (along with Bobcat Goldthwait), for reasons I am sworn not to reveal, have long believed that Scott Baio was the anti-Christ. 

However, I now believe it might be Cher. 

{Perhaps there's more than one, that would explain a lot.}

I don't know, my dear gentlereaders, if you're aware that she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last October, you might think that this alone is proof, but the RRHoF crossed over to the dark side a long time ago. Madonna was inducted back in 2008.

If you're not a geezer/geezerette of a certain age with a certain sensibility, that I will not attempt to put into words, you may not understand why this is appalling. But hey, if you like it (or it's all rock and roll to you), it's good music. 

However. 

Cher — who by the way has recently released volume one of her much-anticipated autobiography, 432 pages written by a ghostwriter, "fixed" by two additional ghosts, and then fine-tuned by Cher and a professional editor — proudly declared "I changed the sound of music forever, all right?" in her induction speech. 

As my millions of regular readers are aware, I'm a news nerd who keeps an eye on multiple news sources seven days a week. I know, I know... In my defense, nowadays I skim a lot more, read a lot less, and I have no shortage of other pursuits. 

When I recently came across the Cher quote in question I was brought up short. Say what? This required looking into. 

It turns out her insipid pop hit Believe was the first hit pop song to use a music producers tool, Auto-Tune, to make a singer sound like a robot. It had been around for a while but had previously been used to correct a given singer's off-pitch lyrics, subtly, so that the public was unaware that their favorite rock/pop star may not have been quite as talented as they thought.

The technology involved has come a long way since then. It's now possible to make the "live" performances of everyone from Taylor Swift to the band fronted by your obnoxious rich cousin's kid sound like sonic perfection. But I drift. 

It seems that neither Cher nor her producer, Mark Taylor, were happy with the sound of Believe despite much tinkering. At a certain setting, Auto-Tune will make any singer sound like a robot, this was considered an audio glitch at the time but Mr. Taylor thought it was perfect for Believe, and Cher (and ultimately many H. sapiens) agreed. 

Cher had to fight her record label, who disagreed, but she won the skirmish. The deliberate "glitch" became known as the Cher effect, and the rest is history. And that's how Cher changed the sound of music forever, all right? 

{I wonder when volume two will be released?}

We can only hope it's available before Cher, a remarkably well-preserved 78-year-old, releases it before she moves on to Rock and Roll Heaven, Dana.   

The age of the remakes and "franchises" continues apace. Given the number of updated versions of movies and TV shows, as well as the fact that sequels and prequels are now franchises (is it just me or are there 31 flavors of Star Wars available?) I would like to suggest a remake of a TV show that I loved watching that was on from 1955 to 1960, The Millionaire. 

Sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive!

When I went a-googlin' I discovered the show ran from '55 to '60, Since I didn't come along till 1953 for a moment there I thought that Mum's favorite child must have been an unusually precocious little bugger... till I discovered that reruns ran here, there, and even there till the 80s. 

And then, according to Wikipedia, "In 2015, the series began to air on CBS's digital subchannel network Decades...". 

{Digital subchannel network?}

Right? I don't know either. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a detailed explanation. Personally, I'm not. It's a broadcast thing and I've been tethered to my cable for decades. I'm a world-class streamer and if it were up to me I'd keep the cable for high-speed internet access and nothing else. But I'm no longer the Grand Imperial Poobah of Casa de Chaos, I just rent an overpriced room here. 

Suffice it to say, it seems to me that a black-and-white show made in the late 50s that's still around is a prime candidate for a remake.  

On a related note, in the course of my research, I discovered that 19 of the more than 200 episodes have been removed from syndication by CBS, which apparently has control of the show. I'd love to know why, but CBS hasn't returned my calls or responded to my emails.    

I've previously noted elsewhere that I've often been a day late and two (inflation-adjusted) dollars short over the years. I've successfully avoided the burdens of fame and fortune for multiple decades, and now that I've reached my seventies I suspect the odds are I will continue to do so. 

I've reached a point in my life where I'm glad I've never been even a minor celebrity but I still dream of winning FU (that's feck you, not the other one) money via a lottery ticket  — or being paid a visit by John Beresford Tipton's executive secretary, Michael Anthony.   

The executive secretary introduces each show. He's charged with delivering a check for $1,000,000.00 to the subject of that particular episode by his boss, John Beresford Tipton, a reclusive billionaire, one of the world's 19 multi-billionaires.  

{Nineteen? Aren't there like, 3,000 billionaires nowadays?}

Yeah, more or less. Billionaires, just like we thousandaires, experience occasional streaks of bad luck and are reduced to being mere millionaires, convicts, or plant food.  

Anyway, you never actually see the reclusive billionaire (think Charlie's Angels) and the executive secretary character gets minimal screen time. The bulk of the show is about who gets a check in that particular episode and its impact on their life. 

This same formula, resuscitated, would result in relatively modest production costs and serve as a showcase for current stars looking for publicity or career resuscitation, and wanna-be (i.e. cheaply and easily obtained) TV stars.

Check out the show's Wikipedia entry and scroll down to view a list of guest stars who were, or became, famous.  

Potential audience? The Precariat. The hundreds of millions of us out here dealing with transitory inflation and little to no confidence in what's next who get up every morning wondering if this is the day the other shoe drops.

{Speaking of inflation, according to my calculations, Mr. Tipton would have to cut ten million dollar checks nowadays. A mere million won't even buy a nice house in no shortage of Zip codes.} 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

  

Duck and Cover

A blast from the past. 

CDD20

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Just dive under your desk and kiss your ass goodbye." -Jimmy Buffett

Dear Gentlereaders,

The Cuban Missile Crisis — which according to Wikipedia "...is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war — occurred in the fall of 1962. I was nine years old in '62 and I remember Mum and Dad obviously being freaked out but pretending they weren't so as not to freak out their kids.  

I now understand that having lived through the Great Depression and World War Two they were understandably a little jumpy. But I was a Boomer. Boomers, the first generation to grow up with television, knew just what to do if the nukes started flying and there was a commercial to remind us. All you had to do was duck and cover!

 

I don't remember the commercial, but I do remember seeing the official Civil Defense film at some point that starred the famous Burt the Turtle the commercial mentions. I went a-googlin' to try and find out if anyone is officially credited with modifying the tagline duck and cover to a popular and widely known slightly different version — duck and cover, and kiss your ass goodbye — but had no luck. 

My fellow Boomers and I should've all been subject to debilitating existential trauma. Instead, some unknown one of us turned our trauma into a joke, a pre-meme era meme if you will, a poster that was quite popular. I know this because I owned one. An alleged original copy of the one I owned in the early 1970s that I purchased for, maybe, five bucks is nowadays a collector's item that sells for $270.

Given the price of concert tickets for Boomer rock bands (that may or may not feature original members who nowadays look like death sucking on a LifeSaver), it seems like there's good money to be made in the nostalgia business.     

{Official Civil Defense film?}  

Civil Defense, as my fellow geezers/geezerettes hopefully remember, was the purview of various and sundry agencies of The Fed'rl Gummit that were sorta/kinda early versions of what we now refer to as Homeland Security, Dana. 

Very long story short (there's a long Wikipedia version available) a ton of tax money was spent to teach Americans how to survive a nuclear war, info about everything from stocking up your pantry to how to build personal nuclear fallout shelters. 

Nowadays, it's generally agreed that this would all be ultimately pointless, which is the primary reason the world has to worry about the Pooteen, kids. Mr. Putin, despite the fact Russia continues to fall apart, still has enough nukes in his basement to end the world. 

Given that a full-fledged nuclear war could end the world in about a minute, why isn't anyone gluing themselves to streets and/or splashing paint on famous paintings like the traumatized delicate flowers obsessed with global warming?

Anyways... originally, this was supposed to be a full-fledged column adhering to a now-defunct company policy, that is to say, at least 1500 words in length since I now only publish every other week. But it was at this point that I hit a wall and not only lost interest in the subject at hand, I contemplated shutting this enterprise down. 

I repeatedly opened my free (which means you no longer have an excuse) Google-supplied software — "Blogger" according to Wikipedia "...is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries." — and just stared at the content above. 

Stumped. 

Holly crap, do I have writer's block? I am, of course, aware of this phenomenon and have even suffered from a mild case of it from time to time but this was different, it felt like I was done and had nothing else I wanted to say. 

Fortunately, my spiritual advisor (for lack of a better term), the Daozhang of a secret Taoist monastery in China's Wudang Mountains, was recently gifted with a free Starlink connection by our mutual friend, Elon Musk, so I was able to give him a call and ask for advice. 

I'll tell ya, beats the hell out of having to take a sabbatical and make my way there in person, all the while having to worry about being tossed in the jug by one of the Emperor's minions, possibly for years, while hoping for a hostage exchange. 

Sometimes I hate to write and I wish I didn't have to.

{Have to?}

Often I enjoy it, when the words flow freely, other times it's too much like work. Sometimes I'm satisfied with the results, but often I'm not. 

{Huh. Sounds like someone's off his psych meds again.}

Balderdash! I don't take psych meds, Dana, thank you very much.}

{Balderdash? Have to?}

It's a cool word that I don't believe I've ever used before. As to have to, writing is my psych med. If I don't write, my nogginal neurons tend to get tangled. I've done a bit of research and I'm led to believe that if you're at all creative and don't have an outlet this is what happens. 

{Didn't Freud give a famous lecture on tangled nogginal neurons? Anyway, what's your problem? just write. You don't even have to publish the results if you don't want to. Chill, dude.}

Remarkable, that's pretty much what the Daozhang said. 

{What's so remarkable? I'm smarter than I look, just like you.}

Alrighty then, new company policy. 

Going forward I shall continue to publish a new column every other week. Without a minimal commitment, to this and no shortage of other things in my life, I might just stop getting out of bed or even just float off into space, never to be seen again. 

{Say what?}

It's a jaded geezer thing. I'll strive for at least 750 words but there might be far less (or more, like this particular column). Anyone who doesn't like the new policy can request a refund, no questions asked.

Note to Theo: I'm thinking of resuscitating my would-be novel. Don't tell anyone.  

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Hooterville Falls?

 I'm, like, not bein' judgy, I'm just sayin'. A (2) Random Randomnesses column.

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”. Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it”.  -Elizabeth Powell/Ben Franklin 

Dear Gentlereaders,

Are you familiar with the fictional town called Pottersville, formerly known as Bedford Falls?

Without getting out of bed I can fire up one or more of several competing sports betting apps and gamble away my fortune...alright, my limited resources, but still.

Or, I can roll out of bed, get dressed, head outside, and walk about 100 yards due north from my front door to a convenience store and choose to buy beer, wine, or "hard" iced tea, lemonade, etceterade from a relatively small but fairly representative selection of alcoholic beverages.

On the checkout counter there's a display of colorful cardboard tickets, scratchcards, with easily removable coatings for sale ranging in price from one to twenty dollars each. By removing the coatings, by "scratching" the cards, you can participate in instant gratification gambling games run by the State of Ohio, which by law, has an exclusive monopoly on this sort of thing.

Behind the counter, multiple brands of various and sundry nicotine delivery systems are on display that come with government-mandated warning labels, nicotine being a highly addictive substance that kills a lot of people in the long run. Both nicotine delivery systems and alcoholic beverages are sin taxed by both the State of Ohio and The Fed'rl Gummit. Both products also come with a sales tax mandated by Ohio and the City of Hooterville.  

If I wanted to access a much larger selection of alcohol, scratchcards, and nicotine delivery systems I could continue to walk or drive north over a small bridge into downtown Hooterville and pay a visit to my local Giant Eagle supermarket.

There's an entire aisle devoted to wine, a beer department, and a store within a store, a "State Store," where liquor is for sale by the State of Ohio which benefits from a monopoly on same as well as the requisite sin and sales taxes.

I can also bet money on the daily number, daily numbers actually, as I can bet on 3, 4, or 5 numbers twice a day, seven days a week. 

{Even on Sundays?}

Well sure, why not? We go to great lengths to separate church and state in this country, Dana, even in solidly Team Red states like Ohio. Besides, I'll wager that any given day of the week is somebody's sabbath day in our 24x7x365 culture.

There are daily, weekly, and national progressive jackpot games available as well. Don't forget, ya gotta play to win! 

Ohio has four real casinos, i.e. ones that include table games and scantily clad cocktail waitresses, as well as seven "Racinos" that are pretend casinos attached to race tracks where there are no "free" drinks available from very modestly dressed cocktail waitresses. 

There's a racino a 10-minute drive due south from my driveway. 

Racinos all come with Ohio lottery terminals disguised as slot machines (no table games allowed) where you can pretend to be playing real slot machines. You've probably heard the house always wins? In this case, the house is the State of Ohio.

All winnings on all of the above-mentioned games are subject to local (yeah, I said local), state, and federal income taxes. 

Heavily taxed and regulated weed is also available for sale in Ohio; there's a "dispensary" about a 15-minute drive from my house and others are coming online. I'm told that street weed is cheaper, but I don't know if this is true as I'm so old and boring that I don't purchase either alcohol or weed nowadays.

Many convenience stores sell legal "delta"-8, 9, or 10 forms of weed, that I don't much about, that will allegedly get you high but our five-foot-tall governor and the Ohio Legislature have sworn they're gonna put a stop to that soon.

Certain synthetic recreational pharmaceuticals, for the more adventurous among us who like to roll the dice and ingest substances concocted by who knows who and who knows where, are illegal, but may be purchased "under the counter" if one knows where to shop. 

Others are perfectly legal, till they're not. See, there's an entire industry devoted to inventing new products by tweaking a molecule here or there and creating a substance that must be evaluated by the powers that be before being added to the official list of prohibited substances. 

Ain't technology great? 

Unlike in Pottersville, there are no venues in Hooterville with marques advertising Girls! Girls! Girls! However, there are all sorts of places in Ohio where one can view women (and I assume men) partially or fully nude. I understand they're heavily regulated and there are different rules depending on whether or not a given performer's genitals are on display.  

I've never been to one although I confess to having visited bars featuring "topless" dancers while briefly living in Texas in the course of my misspent youth, which was, unfortunately, a very long time ago. I'm so old and boring that if I walked into a joint featuring totally naked female dancers I'd be too embarrassed to stick around.

I'm so straight that if I walked into a joint featuring even partially naked male dancers I'd vacate the premises ASAP.     

{So, is there a point to all this verbiage?}

Nope, I'm just sayin'. I'm just puttin' it out there for the consideration of my gentlereaders. I'm not bein' judgy. 

I recently accidentally discovered that Patrick Cadell is dead, but Sidney Blumenthal is still very much alive, and I, you're semi-humble correspondent, have willingly begun interacting with AI technology for the first time. 

I thought that Mr. Cadell was the one officially credited/blamed for the Permanent Campaign concept which I've written about at some point in the murky past. But according to Wikipedia, Mr. Blumenthal is. I went a'-googlin' and discovered that both men are credited/blamed to one degree or another by all sorts of people as you might expect given the nature of the WWCK (the Worldwide Web of Contradictory Knowledge), which is how I came to consult Perplexity.  

{Wait-wait-wait. I've perused the preceding paragraphs twice and still have no idea what...} 

Puh-leeze! It's my schtick as you well know, or should by now. And now that you're intrigued, I shall proceed and all will be revealed. It's but one of the reasons my millions of gentlereaders love me. 

As anyone who has ever gone a-googlin' is aware, the Goog's search results seem to have a tendency to favor advertisers and often seem to reflect the progressive political positions of Google's bosses and minions. They're also full of contradictory and/or out-of-date responses. 

I've always wondered why there was no mechanism in place to at least delete out-of-date material. Google's hard at work on updating their cash cow but Perplexity is...well, I asked Perplexity, "What is Perplexity?" and it replied that "Perplexity is an AI-powered (my emphasis) search engine that combines advanced language models with real-time web searching capabilities to provide comprehensive and accurate answers to user queries."

{Cool, thanks for clearing that up.}

Long story short, there's a free version without ads (for now at least) that works waaay better than Google. I'm not going into detail as to why I think that's true, just merely recommend that my online gentlereaders check it out. Perplexity succinctly explained why two different people are credited with the permanent campaign concept without choosing a side, provided the sources it used, and didn't throw a million contradictory links at me. 

I'm impressed, and this old crank is not easily impressed. 

Apropos of not very much but for the record, I communicate with it by typing in my queries on a keyboard connected to a computer as I much prefer to use my phone, as a phone. I realize that "resistance is futile" and privacy is dead, and far be it from me to object to my fellow H. sapiens' apparent eagerness to become cyborgs, but talking to machines creeps me out for reasons that many of my fellow geezers/geezerettes (and some younger weirdos) will understand. 

I'm sure you've seen news stories about people developing relationships with an artificial intelligence of some sort. I don't want to have a "relationship" with a computer program, I don't even want to be just good friends with one. 

In the meantime, back to Messrs Cadell and Blumenthal. 

I blame both of these guys for the fact that whoever the current POTUS happens to be, as well as most members of both houses of Congress, campaigning never ends. 

Perhaps you've noticed? Professional pols...

[Professional Pols: career politicians, often with minimal real-world work experience due to the fact they consciously chose to be career politicians.] 

Professional pols...

(Particularly at the federal level since term limits are an unachievable dream given that for some mysterious reason there's an excellent chance of getting "lucky" playing the stock market or via assorted investment opportunities while selflessly serving the Citizens of the Republic.)

Professional pols who have embraced the Permanent Campaign strategery govern with one eye always on the polls. The way they go about governing isn't primarily motivated by what's best for the country, it's done while always keeping track of which way the political winds are blowing to ensure reelection... or that a cushy job will be waiting if reelection fails.

From Wikipedia: "Strategies of this nature have been in active development and use since Lyndon Johnson, where priority is given to short-term tactical gain over long-term vision. The frenzied, headline-grabbing atmosphere of presidential campaigns is carried over into the office itself, thus creating a permanent campaign that limits the ability of policies to deviate from the perceived will of the people (hence, intensive polling."

The Founding Pasty Patriarchs, many of whom were intimately familiar with those dusty tomes written by ancient Pasty Patriarchs that contained their thoughts on politics and history gave us a democratic republic, not a democracy (if we can keep it) to avoid certain problems. Your semi-humble correspondent has previously summed up these problems by pointing out that if 51% of the citizenry voted to murder the other 49% there might be downsides.    

But as my late wife used to say, there's always a bright side. If the people we send to the Swamp are preoccupied with divining the "perceived will" of the people why don't we just get rid of them all (think of the money and time we'd save!) and use our smartphones to vote for a national CEO to run things who we can vote out of a job whenever we don't like the results and get a new one? 

We could enjoy all the benefits of having a temporary king/tyrant/dick-tater. What could go wrong? Just Sayin'. 

 Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved