Maintaining Brainpower
The Theatre Of The Mind is the name of an expo that David Byrne, he of Talking Heads fame, is having in Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune, one of the less evil-and-stupid of the old dinosaur-media establishments, as it turns out, though maybe my opinion will worsen of them the more I become familiar with them.
I like seeing someone who maintains creative activity well into elderhood. I have no hope of seeing this exhibition owing to the tyranny of distance, but it’s reassuring to know about all the same.
In a similar vein, Joe Rogan was interviewing a young (to me, he was 28) boxer by the name of Shakur Stevenson on his podcast recently. He made the point that longevity in professional fighting is really about discipline. Joe also spoke about Buster Douglas, a talented fighter whom he regarded as largely lacking the work commitment to be successful longterm, but who worked hard for one fight in particular: his famous upset win against Iron Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1989.
Discipline is the key, in every discipline.
His Name Is Jesse (Jackson… RIP)
Though I bear no ill-will and know of him well enough, if im being honest, 90% of what i know about him comes from the following hiphop track by Grandmaster Melle Mel and his version of the furious five.
It's kind-of hard to say where Grandmaster Flash ends and Melle Mel begins. Thankfully I purchased a greatest-hits Cd in my teen years that took care of all that and put them under one umbrella.
Track four is a song called Jesse, in homage to Jesse Jackson who was then at the height of his fame. The lyrics say it all. I always liked it even though I’ve always been a Reaganite.
About all else I remember of Jesse Jackson was that he was in a prayer circle once that also included Slobodan Milosevic.
There's been heaps of articles written about him this week but i can’t be stuffed reading them because the song and the praying photo told me what i need to know and i have been too sleep deprived and time-poor this week. The power of art and music over mere commentary manifest.
The aforementioned track is also one of the great all-time applications of that 80s electro-curiosity known as the vocoder. Here's a live version if you really want the double dose. The furious five were great visual performers, though im not keen on swapping out the choruses (“get out and vote” is dropped for some blahblah about love).
Nevertheless, one can compare the brilliance of all concerned with the lowness of Mark Zuckerberg and reflect on how far we’ve fallen. No matter how much money he has and how hard he tries, he can never get public approval, because his life’s work has been about destroying human society and everyone knows it.