Taylor Lorenz, Pushing 40, Jumps to Washington Post, Still Grooming Teenagers for Clicks

This is a bad woman. Very bad.

At Free Beacon, "MEME GIRL: Taylor Lorenz Unites New York Times, Washington Post in Opposition to ‘Cringey’ Influencer Journalism."

Joe Rogan Speaks the Way Men Do With Each Other in Private

And that's the fundamental basis of his appeal, which is gargantuan with 11 million viewers. 

Andrew Sullivan has thoughts:

No, the left is not calling all masculinity toxic. But they get pretty quiet when you ask for a definition of non-toxic masculinity that doesn’t end up sounding like being a woman. And, no, they’re not explicitly denying that there are biological differences between men and women — they just speak and act on the premise that there aren’t, that boys do not need a different kind of education than girls, that all-male groups are problematic, and that finding a way to direct masculinity to noble ends is somehow enabling the oppression of women, or gay people. The result is that men are subject to left derision, right machismo, and complete cultural derailment.

And that’s where Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson come in. They too, of course, are mocked constantly, demeaned as chauvinists or white supremacists, etc. But what Rogan does is speak and talk the way men do with each other in private, which, in this media era, is a revelation. He doesn’t entertain the woke bromides of gender theory because he’s lived a life, clearly loves being a man as much as Adele says she loves being a woman, and believes, as he once put it, that “bad men are just bad human beings who happen to be men.”

He lifts weights, watches fights, eats elk meat, smokes pot, dabbles in DMT, and asks the kind of questions normie men might ask of experts. Which is why they listen. They feel at home with him. Unlike so much of the MSM, he feels real: not a throwback to patriarchy but an opening to a kind of brotherhood that feels sane to many disoriented men in America — especially the majority who haven’t yet bent the knee to the doctrines of the successor ideology.

He’s in no way a bully or blowhard. Just listen to him: his tone is mellifluous, curious, amused. His masculinity is unforced, funny and real. He’s genuinely ingenuous — the way most humans are, possessing the kind of credulousness journalists are trained out of. But that’s why he has 11 million listeners and CNN has a little over 500,000. One of his most frequent guests is the brilliant comic Tim Dillon — openly gay and stereotypically male.

Rogan’s politics are eclectic, but they reflect a male concern with practical things, straightforward people, and solutions. The idea that he is a right-wing ideologue is silly and untrue. He readily admits when he’s wrong and often self-deprecates. He’s not afraid to show emotion and choke up — whether it’s over the triumph of female fighters or putting down a puppy or the death of Chadwick Boseman. Rogan is simply not the brutish caricature that left-Twitter and CNN would have you think.

The same goes for Peterson. The Canadian prof and clinical psychologist is cantankerous, yes, but also compassionate...

RTWT: "Between the World and Men Truckers, Rogan, Peterson and the revolt of masculinity."

Teen Girls' Sexy TikTok Videos Take a Mental-Health Toll

Our society’s completely FUBAR.

At WSJ, "Girls are often anxious and overwhelmed by the attention they get after posting suggestive videos; therapists say more are suffering emotionally":

When Jula Anderson joined TikTok at age 16, her first video featured her family’s home renovations. It got five likes. After seeing others post risqué videos and get more likes, she tried it, too.

“I wanted to get famous on TikTok, and I learned that if you post stuff showing your body, people will start liking it,” Jula, now an 18-year-old high-school senior near Sacramento, Calif., said.

Sudden TikTok fame is catching teens off guard, leaving many girls unprepared for the attention they thought they wanted, according to parents, therapists and teens. In some cases, predators target girls who make sexually suggestive videos; less-dangerous interactions can also harm girls’ self-esteem and leave them feeling exploited, they say.

Mental-health professionals around the country are growing increasingly concerned about the effects on teen girls of posting sexualized TikTok videos. Therapists say teens who lack a group of close friends, and teens with underlying mental health issues—especially girls who struggle with disordered eating and body-image issues—are at particular risk.

“For a young girl who’s developing her identity, to be swept up into a sexual world like that is hugely destructive,” said Paul Sunseri, a psychologist and director of the New Horizons Child and Family Institute in El Dorado Hills, Calif., where Jula began receiving treatment last year for anxiety and depression. “When teen girls are rewarded for their sexuality, they come to believe that their value is in how they look,” he said.

He said approximately a quarter of the female patients at his clinic have produced sexualized content on TikTok.

Carter Barnhart, co-founder of Charlie Health, a virtual mental-health care provider, said a growing number of teens she treats report their self-esteem is dependent on the quantity of likes they get on TikTok. “Many of them have figured out that the formula for that is producing more sexual content,” she said.

Videos just ‘for you’ 

Teens’ dependence on TikTok for social validation has risen as the app has become their favored platform. TikTok overtook Instagram in popularity among teens last year—and became the most visited site on the internet.

TikTok’s algorithm regularly propels virtual nobodies onto millions of viewers’ For You pages. TikTok weighs whether viewers show strong interest in a particular type of content, measured by whether they finish watching videos, the company says. Its recommendation engine then chooses videos to send to those viewers, regardless of the creator’s follower count or past video virality.

Platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Twitter work differently, serving content to users based on search terms and friend connections, so developing a sizable following—and going viral—on those sites can take longer.

“We think carefully about the well-being of teens as we design our safety and privacy settings and restrict features on TikTok by age,” a TikTok spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’ve also worked with youth safety experts to develop resources aimed at supporting digital safety and literacy conversations among parents and teens.”

A company fact sheet says “content that is overtly sexually suggestive may not be eligible for recommendation.” The spokeswoman said content from users who state they are under 16 isn’t eligible for promotion via the recommendation engine, nor would it appear in search results.

Teens are known to lie about their age when creating social-media accounts. Users must be 13 to create a TikTok account, and it is company policy to suspend the accounts of kids the safety team believes to be underage.

At Newport Academy’s outpatient treatment program in Atlanta, 60% of the girls treated since the program started last summer have posted sexually inappropriate videos on TikTok, said Crystal Burwell, the program’s director of outpatient services.

One 16-year-old girl Dr. Burwell is treating made progressively more suggestive videos. “The more likes she had, the more revealing her outfits became,” she said.

The girl ended up chatting with a man who urged her to take their conversation off TikTok and into a messaging app. The girl sent the man partially nude photos of herself and the two were making plans to meet in person when her parents discovered the texts, according to Dr. Burwell.

“When you combine human behavior and algorithms, things get messy,” Dr. Burwell said. “We’re trying to clean it up, one client at a time.”

TikTok famous

A few months after she joined the app in the summer of 2019, Jula Anderson’s wish for TikTok fame came true. A video of her wearing a tightfitting tank top and lip-syncing the pop song “Sunday Best” blew up. For reasons Jula and her mother, Shauna Anderson, still don’t understand, TikTok’s algorithm pushed the video to viewers’ For You pages. More than a million people viewed the video and nearly 500,000 people liked it, they both said.

Jula’s following went from a few hundred to more than 200,000. There was nothing overtly sexual about the video, she and her mother said, but her video’s comments were inundated with boys and men saying how hot she looked. Buoyed by the success, Jula made her videos more risqué, including by lip-syncing lyrics about sex and getting more revealing in her wardrobe choices. “I’d wear clothes that I wouldn’t wear to school but that I felt good in,” she said. “I didn’t view them as that sexual, but other people did.”

By then, she was constantly checking her likes. “It was my whole world,” she said.

Her parents weren’t aware of how suggestive the videos had gotten until Jula’s grandparents, tipped off by cousins, alerted them.

“To us, she’s this sweet girl, so it’s almost like this split personality between who she really is and how she portrayed herself on TikTok,” Ms. Anderson said. “When we confronted her about it, she was like, ‘Mom, that’s what everyone is doing.’”

Ms. Anderson said that her daughter didn’t have a close group of friends, and she thinks the isolation of the pandemic intensified her need to find connection. “She thought this was a way to be liked and have friends,” Ms. Anderson said. “I struggled with what to do, because the thing I love about TikTok is that kids can be really creative, and we encouraged that as a family.”

Worried about dangers that might arise from publicly viewable videos, Jula’s parents asked her to delete the suggestive ones. They also discussed the issue in family and individual therapy sessions.

Jula, who said she had a history of anxiety before joining TikTok, said the widespread attention and creepy comments from men had become difficult to handle. Comments critical of her appearance also stung.

Following the intervention, she chose to step away from TikTok for a few months. She said it was hard. In the middle of last year, she returned to the app but created a new account that she set to private. She has just a few followers—people she knows in real life. She said she rarely posts now.

Jula said she ultimately decided that the suggestive videos weren’t how she wanted to portray herself to the world, or to younger girls who might see them. She has four younger sisters and said she doesn’t want them to seek or receive attention the way she did.

“I think I tried growing up a lot faster than I should have,” Jula said...

Keep reading.

 

Backlash Against Dave Chappelle's 'The Closer' (VIDEO)

If you've watched Chappelle's latest and last comedy special on Netflix, you might be flummoxed by all the hullabaloo. Then again, if you're up on despicable cancel culture, maybe not. 

One of many hilarious moments is when he told his audience that he was "uncancelable." He tells all the media scolds and woke Twitter idiots to fuck off. It's boss, heh.

Leftist won't let go, though Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has refused to cave. Maybe he still will, but I doubt it. Netflix has the power, not the ghoulish woke mob. Chappelle's show received sky-high viewer ratings on Dirty Rotten Tomatoes. Sarandos says the show's too popular to cancel. 

Anyway, just watch it for yourself. The cancel mobs make a lot of noise and they are very successful, but they can't bring down everyone, especially the biggest stars in the industry. 

The latest at NYT, "Netflix Loses Its Glow as Critics Target Chappelle Special":

It was looking like a great year for Netflix. It surpassed 200 million subscribers, won 44 Emmys and gave the world “Squid Game,” a South Korean series that became a sensation.

That’s all changed. Internally, the tech company that revolutionized Hollywood is now in an uproar as employees challenge the executives responsible for its success and accuse the streaming service of facilitating the spread of hate speech and perhaps inciting violence.

At the center of the unrest is “The Closer,” the much-anticipated special from the Emmy-winning comedian Dave Chappelle, which debuted on Oct. 5 and was the fourth-most-watched program on Netflix in the United States on Thursday. In the show, Mr. Chappelle comments mockingly on transgender people and aligns himself with the author J.K. Rowling as “Team TERF,” an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term used for a group of people who argue that a transgender woman’s biological sex determines her gender and can’t be changed.

“The Closer” has thrust Netflix into difficult cultural debates, generating the kind of critical news coverage that usually attends Facebook and Google.

Several organizations, including GLAAD, the organization that monitors the news media and entertainment companies for bias against the L.G.B.T.Q. community, have criticized the special as transphobic. Some on Netflix’s staff have argued that it could incite harm against trans people. This week, the company briefly suspended three employees who attended a virtual meeting of executives without permission, and a contingent of workers has planned a walkout for next week.

A discussion this week on an internal Netflix message board between Reed Hastings, a co-chief executive, and company employees suggested that the two sides remained far apart on the issue of Mr. Chappelle’s special. A transcript of the wide-ranging online chat, in which Mr. Hastings expressed his views on free speech and argued firmly against the comedian’s detractors, was obtained by The New York Times.

One employee questioned whether Netflix was “making the wrong historical choice around hate speech.” In reply, Mr. Hastings wrote: “To your macro question on being on the right side of history, we will always continue to reflect on the tensions between freedom and safety. I do believe that our commitment to artistic expression and pleasing our members is the right long term choice for Netflix, and that we are on the right side, but only time will tell.”

He also said Mr. Chappelle was very popular with Netflix subscribers, citing the “stickiness” of “The Closer” and noting how well it had scored on the entertainment ratings website Rotten Tomatoes. “The core strategy,” Mr. Hastings wrote, “is to please our members.”

Replying to an employee who argued that Mr. Chappelle’s words were harmful, Mr. Hastings wrote: “In stand-up comedy, comedians say lots of outrageous things for effect. Some people like the art form, or at least particular comedians, and others do not.”

When another employee expressed an opinion that Mr. Chappelle had a history of homophobia and bigotry, Mr. Hastings said he disagreed, and would welcome the comedian back to Netflix.

“We disagree with your characterization and we’ll continue to work with Dave Chappelle in the future,” he said. “We see him as a unique voice, but can understand if you or others never want to watch his show.”

He added, “We do not see Dave Chappelle as harmful, or in need of any offset, which we obviously and respectfully disagree on.”

In a note to employees this week, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s other co-chief executive, expressed his unwavering support for Mr. Chappelle and struck back at the argument that the comic’s statements could lead to violence...

More.

 

We Got Here Because of Cowardice

 From Bari Weiss, at Commentary, "We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage":

I'm in @Commentary. @louweiss can die happy. https://t.co/TZnKkY4cb3

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 14, 2021

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon...

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully.

In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. It is why statues of Grant and Washington are being torn down. And it is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out loud in class.

In this ideology, intentions don’t matter. That is why Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic utility worker at San Diego Gas and Electric, was fired for making what someone said he thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture—when in fact he was cracking his knuckles out of his car window.

In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective. Thus, the argument to get rid of the SAT. Or the admissions tests for public schools like Stuyvesant in New York or Lowell in San Francisco.

In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class. That is why third-graders in Cupertino, California, were asked to rate themselves in terms of their power and privilege. In third grade.

In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted. This is why, one high-schooler in New York tells me, students in his school are told, “If you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as “not racist.”

Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism.

What we call “cancel culture” is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next.

It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.

“I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way.

If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work.

The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America.

Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army...

More.

 

Hot Fun In the Summertime (VIDEO)

Good stuff, from 1969.

Sly and the Family Stone.

'Bridge Over Troubled Water'

The Concert in Central Park, from 1981. 

Simon and Garfunkel:

When you're weary Feeling small

When tears are in your eyes

I'll dry them all

I'm on your side

Oh, when times get rough

And friends just can't be found

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

When you're down and out

When you're on the street

When evening falls so hard

I will comfort you

I'll take your part

Oh, when darkness comes

And pain is all around

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

Sail on silver girl

Sail on by

Your time has come to shine

All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine

Oh, if you need a friend

I'm sailing right behind

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will ease your mind

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will ease your mind

'Call Me'

I was out and about this afternoon, and Blondie came over the radio. 

Fourteen months and this is what makes my day. *Eye-roll.*

Color me Color me your color, baby 

Color me your car

Color me your color, darling

I know who you are

Come up off your color chart

I know where you're coming from

Call me (call me) on the line

Call me, call me any, anytime

Call me (call me) I'll arrive

You can call me any day or night

Call me

Cover me with kisses, baby

Cover me with love

Roll me in designer sheets

I'll never get enough

Emotions come, I don't know why

Cover up love's alibi

Call me (call me) on the line

Call me, call me any, anytime

Call me (call me) I'll arrive

When you're ready we can share the wine

Call me

Oooh, he speaks the languages of love

Oooh, amore, chiamami, chiamami

Oooh, appelle-moi mon cheri, appelle-moi

Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any way

Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any day, any way

Call me

Take…

'Both Sides Now'

I woke up singing this song. I don't know why. I also don't remember Mama Cass having her own show, but I was only 8-years-old in 1969, so I'ma cut myself some slack there, heh.

Joni Mitchell. What a beauty:

I Forgot Maxine Nightingale!

Well, following-up on my post the other day, "Ooh Woo ... I Feel It Still (VIDEO)."

It turns out I'd forgotten about Maxine Nightingale, whose song, "Right Back Where We Started From," used to come on all the time at K-EARTH 101 Los Angeles. 

(And the same goes for Junior Walker and the All Stars, "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)?," which I've posted to this blog more than once; and that's not to mention the Bellamy Brothers, and a few other "oldies buy goodies" kind of folks.)

In any case, here she is, and looking good too. She's apparently still active, according to her Wikipedia entry.

Ooh Woo ... I Feel It Still (VIDEO)

So, I'm just back from Cerritos, where I came from visiting my young son, who was hospitalized this last week (due to a psyche breakdown dealing with his A.S.D.). He's coming home tomorrow, so I don't need to say too much more about that, other than, "Thank God," because working with these numbskull so-called "professionals" at such places is a nightmare.

Okay, in any case, driving back down the 91 freeway to I-5 South, I did have on 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, and it turns out they've screwed up their website, and I can't find the "playlist" of recent songs just aired, like I used to post back in the days of my regular "drive-time" musical updates. (I guess the station had to "consolidate" with some others on "radio.com," or some such bull, but no matter, at least it's still on, shoot.) 

I mean, 95.5 KLOS Los Angeles is still going strong, since back in the day when I was in high school, and K-EARTH 101 Los Angeles, which 20 years ago was an "oldies but goodies" station, playing everything from the Beach Boys to the Beatles to Sam Cooke to Dobie Gray to Elvis to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles to the Temptations, and more. Now it's just, basically, another "classic rock" channel, with a few 80s "new wave" hits thrown in, which is okay, but I miss KKLQ 100.3 FM "The Sound" Los Angeles, which, frankly, was just as good, and even better, when you figure in the nostalgia, as the old KMET Los Angeles, a.k.a., the "Might Met," which used to have D.J.s like Jim Ladd, who used to smoke "doobies" while on air, as well as Cynthia Fox, who years later, was back "spinning" the classics, at "The Sound."

The one other radio station I really miss was the Long Beach-based "Pure Rock" 105.5 KNAC, which used to have the most hilarious morning D.J., Norm McBride, who after I'd had a couple of "tokes" in the morning, my eyes would be watering and my stomach aching, non-stop, because I'd get the "lolz" bad. 

In any case, it's all iTunes and whatever the f*ck nowadays, so who really gives a rat's ass? Most of the old "classic rockers" are starting to kick the bucket now anyway (R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen), so I know I'm getting too old for this stuff anyway.

But I like Portugal. The Man, so I guess I should count my blessings that I'm still here, and I never O.D.'d on some damn stupid coke-cocktail, or some such dumb sh*t (heroin, f*ck, hated the "junk" myself, holy motherf*cker, and I only tried it once, and that was once too many, jeez), that some of my long lost buddies, from back in the day, succumbed to. 

And pfft, don't even get me going about "KROQ," as, frankly, with folks like "Darby Crash," former alcoholic lead singer of the "Germs," now also dead, I don't need to relive the experience; and Rodney Bingenheimer, the stuck up old c*nt, used to spin records at the "Starwood" punk nightclub, in West Hollywood, at the time, when I wasn't so smart as I am now. No need to relive that sh*t, sheesh.

Thanks for checking back in at this old fart's old blog.

Can't keep my hands to myself

Think I'll dust 'em off, put 'em back up on the shelf

In case my little baby girl is in need

Am I coming out of left field?

Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now

I been feeling it since 1966, now

Might be over now, but I feel it still

Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now

Let me kick it like it's 1986, now

Might be over now, but I feel it still

Got another mouth to feed

Leave her with a baby sitter, mama, call the grave digger

Gone with the fallen leaves

Am I coming out of left field?

Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now

I been feeling it since 1966, now

Might've had your fill, but you feel it still

Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now

I been feeling it since 1966, now

Might've had your fill, but you feel it still

We could fight a war for peace

Is it coming?

Is it coming?

Ellie Goulding, "Lights" (VIDEO)

Following-up on my previous entry, "Ellie Goulding Enhanced (PHOTOS)," here's a music video featuring the lovely lass, snagged from the Other McCain:

Ellie Goulding Enhanced (PHOTOS)

 Way back when, about 9 years ago, the Other McCain posted about Ellie Goulding, where he writes:

Speaking of new theme songs . . . while I was riding with Ali Akbar to the Romney event Friday in Abingdon, Virginia, Ali was doing the usual thing he does when we’re traveling in his car: Playing crappy pop music from his smartphone through the car stereo system at top volume and singing along at the top of lungs, off-key.

Seriously, we’re like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, except that Ali’s not old enough to know who Oscar and Felix were. We get on each other’s nerves something awful and it’s really amazing that we’ve been friends for three years. Anyway . . .

So Ali was cranking out his wretched music when, amid the noise rotation, I heard a song that wasn’t quite as awful as the rest. In fact, it was kinda catchy. A pulsing bass riff in a minor key with some techno stuff in the treble and a chick singer with a keening falsetto. “Hey, man, play that again,” I said.

Intriguing. There was something spooky about the lyrics — lights and sleeping and “constant calling me home” — although I couldn’t understand them clearly enough to make out every word. And what was it about that voice? The chick had a weird Celtic-folk quaver going on, with a little bit Stevie Nicks, and also a little bit Cyndi Lauper. (Ali: “Cyndi who?”)

So I looked up the lyrics and the singer, a British chick named Ellie Goulding, and thereby learned...

Well, I personally don't have any such muscially-moving reminiscences, but I do have this:

At Celeb Jihad, "Ellie Goulding Selfies Set Remastered and Enhanced."

She does it all, music, (no-clothes) selfies, or whatever, and that's worth dancing over, for sure. 

Skateboard Legend Jeff Grosso (VIDEO)

I didn't know him well. 

He was sorta crass, actually. But he was a great skater, and extremely well-loved in the skate community.

The LA. Times has a big write up, "Jeff Grosso: The life and death of skateboarding’s soul":

Jeff Grosso’s first skateboard wasn’t much.

It was a hand-me-down miniature-sized banana board he got from his mom’s boss when he was 8 years old. Even for 1977, it was antiquated, with rickety old clay wheels and worn-out bearings. Grosso barely knew how to stand on the thing, struggling to keep his balance without toppling to the ground.

But for a curious boy whose childhood home was next to a steep hill, there was an instant connection. He would sit on his back or lie flat on his stomach and let gravity take over. Every time he bombed down the street, he fell more in love with the feeling.

“Initially, it was the rush of going down a hill, and the wind in your hair,” Grosso once said. “Poetic nonsense.”

The skateboarding world looks much different now than it did then. Its ever-increasing popularity is pulling the fundamentally subversive sport into the mainstream. Formerly relegated to back alleys and sparse concrete parks, it is now set to debut on the Olympic stage during this summer’s Tokyo Games.

But somewhere at its core, the lust for that poetic nonsense remains.

No one understood it quite like Grosso.

“He was the gatekeeper to why skateboarding was cool,” said skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.

Grosso looked an unlikely figure for such a role. He didn’t have a long pro career, flaming out at the end of the 1980s, hardly spanning the decade. He battled drug addiction and suicidal depression. By his late 20s, it seemed like his life had bottomed out.

But then he rebounded, embodying the resiliency that has defined the entire history of his sport.

Grosso became an ambassador, speaking for skateboarding’s soul through his beloved “Loveletters to Skateboarding” YouTube show. He was a guardian and a helping hand to skateboarding’s newest generation.

In many ways, he was like a north star, his effervescent personality and endearing pertinacity emitting a guiding light through the sport’s most transitional times.

And when he died unexpectedly last March of an accidental drug overdose, it left a void the skateboarding world is still trying to fill.

To best understand skateboarding — its counter-culture roots, its rise to the Olympics, its helter-skelter tale of competing styles, clashing customs and self-sabotaging plot twists — it’s best to understand someone like Jeff Grosso.

Complicated. Flawed. But an authentic source of joy to the end.  

“It’s a total rush. It’s the feeling that when you go out there with your board, it’s a no-hero type of thing. And you either accomplish something or you don’t.” — Jeff Grosso, to the St. Louis Dispatch in 1986.

The rarest sight in skateboarding might be a frown.

Even after a failed trick or nasty wipeout, most skaters are wired to smile, laugh, shake off the dust, and climb back on their boards.

That carefree disposition is what initially captured Grosso’s interest. A stubborn and expressive freckle-faced kid born in Glendale in 1968, he felt like an outcast from a young age. He liked to draw, read “Lord of the Rings” and listen to punk rock. He picked contrarian arguments during conversations simply to spark a debate. And he moved around a lot as a kid: from the hillside house in Eagle Rock, to Las Vegas for a year with his mom, and then to Arcadia for the start of fifth grade.

Though he was naturally athletic, he found the structured pressure of team sports arbitrary and suffocating.

Only when he was on a skateboard did Grosso truly feel free.

“You have this culture of kids that need that,” said his mother, Rae Williams. “They need to go and do this and be creative and come up with new tricks and try different things.”

The newly opened parks soon faltered under liability issues and financial distress, and the young demographic of riders once fueling the boom grew up and moved on. By the time Grosso discovered the sport at the end of the ‘70s, only a small community of self-willed skaters remained.

“Skateboarders were very rare at that time,” said Grosso’s childhood friend Eric Nash, the only other kid at their Camino Grove Elementary School who matched Grosso’s passion for the sport. “Jeff enjoyed that rebel spirit. I think that’s who he was.”

Grosso and Nash spent almost every weekend at one of the few Southland skate parks that were left. Grosso was a perfectionist — at home he was constantly rearranging the furniture in his bedroom — and practiced for hours to perfect a trick. Skate City in Whittier became their home base, though sometimes they snuck away to more secluded spots — a cement ditch behind a church in Glendale, an empty washway nicknamed the “V bowl” in Irwindale.

One of their friends, future pro skater Lance Mountain, had a ramp in the backyard of his Alhambra home where the group would spend hours together honing their technique and embracing a recalcitrant culture few others could comprehend. “We were a bunch of nerds, we were weirdos, we were social outcasts,” Grosso said in a 2015 episode of his “Loveletters” series. “We were the people that nobody wanted to be, doing things that nobody wanted to, and that nobody understood. … We were the freaks. That’s how you rolled. That’s how it was. That’s what drew us to skateboarding.”

“The little wooden toy is a kiss and a curse. It’s everything. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me, all rolled up into one.” — Jeff Grosso, to Juice Magazine in 2006.

Like any good parent, Williams tried to get her son to think about his future as he went through grade school. Skateboarding, she told him, “is fun and can be a pastime, but you can’t make a career out of it.”

Reliving the memory during an interview, Williams stopped herself and laughed.

“Boy, were we wrong.”

Instead, as Grosso went through his teenage years in the mid-1980s, the sport became cool again...

There's still losts more at the link.

The thing about the "counterculture" aspects of the old skating scene is certainly the punk rock and drugs --- lots of drugs. 

Three of my best friends from back in the day are dead, one from a heroin O.D. years ago, and two of my other best buddies died of drug-related illnesses more recently, especially liver disease. 

That Grosso overdosed himself is extremely sad, but not surprising at all. His death is loss for the sport, but he leaves a great legacy of commitment to the genre.

I'll leave off here with a photo of myself (below), from around 1980, at the Upland Pipeline skatepark, back when the old "pay to play" parks were the big thing. But because I had won so many amateur contests (like the one at the photo, where that "layback" finale scored well with the judges), I had an "all parks" pass to skate for free, at any SoCal skatepark; and in 1984 I turned pro for just one contest, where I was killing it in the banked slalom, but on my first run I lost control going around the third cone, and tumbled badly, breaking my wrist. I didn't quit the contest, though. I got up and completed my second run, and you only get two runs through the course, so that salvaged my self-esteem, and a few folks came up after to praise me for my hard-charging style. 

Nowadays, I still skate once in a while, most recently at the Redlands skatepark a few weeks back, although I mostly putter around the "freestyle" area, like the old man I am. 

  

Time's Up Golden Globes?

This is exactly why I didn't watch the stupid Golden Globes last night: all the overwrought and stupid hand-wringing about "not enough diversity."

And here I am, an actual diverse guy, with an actually diverse family, to boot. 

Interesting, though, I did watch "Nomadland" last night, starring the phenomenal Frances McDormand. And you know what? It's a freakin' conservative movie! Yep. The film is almost all platitudes to rugged individualism, with all kinds of settings in rustic, "small-town" America, and "Fern" (McDormand) gives a raw and compelling performance that is indeed deep, genuine, and award-worthy. And the kicker is that the director, Chloé Zhao, is freakin' Chinese! I mean, you can't make this up. Zhao is a woman and an ethnic minority, but oh! That's not enough --- it's never enough for the gouging nobodies who put on these idiotic awards shows. 

And these dolts with their stupid hashtags, like "#TimesUpGlobes," are whining about not enough blacks, waah! Well, if they wanted more blacks, why the f*ck did they have ultra-white babes Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler hosting? You'd think someone, somebody, anybody, might have asked, ahead of time, "Aren't there any beautiful black women on T.V. we could have host the program?" I'm dyin' over here. *Shrugs.* 

Again, I think it's just best to watch shows that might interest you, rather than pay attention to the stupid media people who rag endlessly at these showbiz [slash[ media orgs, like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. These are stupid, un-self-aware elites, who don't deserve the attention they so desperately crave. 

And no surprise, the self-flagellating story is at the Los Angeles Times (FWIW, really!), "‘Nomadland’ and ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ win at Golden Globes, as HFPA tries to move past controversy."

'Greatest of All Tom'

That's the headline for the L.A. Times' Super Bowl coverage this morning. You may not like Tom Brady, and I'm not a particularly big fan, as I think the Patriots under Belichick and Brady were ruthless at winning, and weren't, by any means, beneath cheating to do it.

But Brady broke all previous boundaries (again, really) at Raymond James Stadium last night, with a socially distanced crowd of just 25,000, with 7,500 of those seats reserved (and deserved) for Covid pandemic "front-line workers." 

In any case, at LAT, "Tom Brady wins seventh Super Bowl as Buccaneers crush Chiefs 31-9."

And from Bill Plaschke, "No more doubt about it: Tom Brady is the GOAT of GOATs":

Tom Brady screamed to the sky. He barked into facemasks. He pounded his palms.

Then, when his magnificent moment was clinched midway through the third quarter, he ran off the field with the loudest gesture of all, the silent waving of a single finger that stood for a legacy.

Of seven Super Bowl wins, this was his most enduring.

Of Super Bowl wins spanning three different decades, this was his most eternal.

For the GOAT, this was the greatest.

To Tom Brady, I ultimately bow.

In Tom Brady, I finally believe.

I picked against him, and I’ve never looked more foolish. The majority of bettors picked against his team, and they’ve never appeared more broke.

It wasn’t supposed to happen, it couldn’t happen, it shouldn’t happen, but on a historic night at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, Tom Brady even outdid Tom Brady.

The greatest quarterback ever became the greatest football player ever, and arguably the greatest American team sports athlete ever, as he led his Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a stunning 31-9 rout of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV...

More.

 

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism

At Amazon, Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations.

Allie Beth Stuckey, You're Not Enough (And That's Okay)

Allie Beth Stuckey, You're Not Enough (And That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love.

More Belle

Following-up, "Belle Delphine."

I've never heard of this lady until today, but I can see why she's a sensation. Watch: "I'M BACK -belle delphine."

She's a 21-year-old South African-born British fashion model, social media celebrity (influencer), and banned YouTuber with an "Only Fans" nude page. She's also posted nude videos to Porn Hub. 

Now she's all over the news, "Belle Delphine Says Her YouTube Account Was Terminated 'Without Warning' Over 'Sexual Content'."

Here's Belle's "snap-chat sex tape" from a couple of years ago --- they start 'em young these days! 

More later. It's hard out there for a blogger!

Risque Kate Mara 'Doggy Style' Scene From the New Hulu Series, 'A Teacher' (VIDEO)

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