…from an utterly non-Irish guy.

Here’s my present to you:

I got this via email from a friend in Minneapolis:

Cam Winton posted about this on Facebook. The current city overseers do not want single family dwellings. They have said as much. We are not in their vision for the future. Our little happy lives living in single family homes is destroying their view of the world.

I rode the bus this morning with a neighbor today who shared his story of increased taxes, I shared mine, he told me of neighbors with huge jumps. At work I talked to another county employee who is ready to sell her house which is located about 4 blocks from mine. Reason…unbelievable hikes in taxes.

This is nuts. We are about to get rolled big time.

We certainly are.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul are indulging in several parallel liberal conceits:

1. “Progressives” do, in fact, believe that there’s always a few more bucks they can wring out of any population.  The correspondent wrote that, suddenly, home valuations are skyrocketing in parts of South Minneapolis.  The idea is “pay up, or move away and let us get at all that choice property!”
2. The idea that they know better than the free market how people want to live.  The essence of the free market is that if people don’t like, or want, a product, service or idea, they just say “no”.   As long as we have a free market for homes, people will choose what they want, and say “no” to what they don’t.  As Minneapolis is not New York or San Francisco (whatever its pretensions) – it’s built in an place with lots of land – most people eventually will look for some kind of breathing room.

Joel Kotkin predicts that at some point, “cities” as we know them today will become playgrounds for the very wealthy, and warehouses for the very poor, surrounded by…not so much “suburbs”, but exurbs and smaller communities where actual people will hold actual jobs.  I think Minneapolis is well on the way.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The reason we have so many potholes is not that the St. Paul City Council pisses away money on frivolous projects while the streets decay; it’s the state and federal government’s fault.
“There’s a lot of potholes out there, and it’s kind of indicative of the condition of the street as a whole … the last time it was reconstructed or overlaid,” said [St. Paul City Engineer Jerry] Maczko, who added that state and federal lawmakers share some blame for potholes. “And it’s amazing how people don’t make that connection.  We’ve got our usual suspects in our streets that are old streets that need to be reconstructed,” Maczko continued. “At the federal level, at the state level, engineers have been saying we need funding for our infrastructure. Well, it’s not happening. … It’s a safety issue for the drivers and for our employees to be out there fixing that stuff.”
But the State Legislature is controlled by Democrats, as is the Federal Congress.  Democrats Care About People so it can’t be their fault. There’s only one conclusion:

Damn that George Bush!

Joe Doakes

There’ve been a lot of “think tanks” and “non-profits” touting “studies” about the “need for infrastructure investment”. They all sound a little like the Samoan Lawyer in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in the studio today from 1-3.  I’ll have Senator Roger Chamberlain on, regarding the dueling Bullying Bills.  Then, we’ll talk with Kim Crockett about the “Minnesota Exodus”, all of companies leaving Minnesota over taxes. (oops – that’s next week…)
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Tomorrow,  Brad Carlson is on “The Closer”!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

It’s gonna be a huge show tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network. 

First, I’ll be interviewing Senator Roger Chamberlain about the dueling bullying bills, and why it’s an important battle even if you don’t have kids in the public school system.

Then, I’ll be talking with Kim Crockett about the number of companies leaving Minnesota over taxes.

Tune in 1-3 tomorrow on AM1280 The Patriot!

Senator Roger Chamberlain has been leading the push to try to replace Senator Dibble’s “bullying bill”, HF 826, with a bill that addresses bullying rather than serves as a bludgeon of indoctrination.

He wrote a piece on Facebook (among, I’m sure, other places) earlier this week that I think sums things up well.  I’m going to excerpt it below, with a few bits of emphasis added by me:

———-

I need to be blunt. HF 826 will turn our schools into indoctrination camps; it will create a climate of fear. Our children will be stripped of their innocence and humanity; HF 826 looks at children as nothing more than programmable machinery. Parents will lose more control, school districts lose control, and communities will lose control.
Another sad and disturbing fact is some elected officials and lobbyists do not care about the larger issue, the overall harm the bill will cause to children and parents. They will work to cut deals with the bill’s author and when they achieve their specific objective, and then they will walk away. One lobbyist said they will simply live with the results of the session.

What happened to the idea of doing what is right? Unfortunately it’s a fairly rare concept in government.

There is an alternative, senate file 2411 (SF 2411) it is based on North Dakota law, which, in 2011, was endorsed by our Attorney General Lori Swanson. It is short, 4 pages not 20 pages, clarifies the issue but most importantly it protects all kids equally, retains parental rights and local control.

HF 826 is not just another law people will learn to live with, it’s not MNSure, and these are children, your children and not some abstraction. People have no idea the damage this will cause; they have no idea what they are asking for.

———-

If you take action on no other issue this session (and I know this blog’s audience is prone to taking action on political issues), do it for this one.

I have a shot at throwing a get-together involving…:

1. Guns, and 
2. Beer

…in that order, and that order alone.   It’d be on a Saturday afternoon, sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Just thought I’d throw out a trial balloon to see if anyone’s interested?

I’ve never worked at Target.

Sure, not the retail operation – but sometimes I feel like I’m one of few people in Twin Cities information technology contracting/consulting circles that hasn’t done at least a brief hitch doing something at the Minneapolis-based retail behemoth.

Target, of course, was beset over the holidays by a massive data breach. (more…)

Not to joke about the death of young Anand Baskanan, a Long Island transplant who came to Minnesota to work at 3M, and brought his passion for very fast racing motorcyles with him…

…to I394 this past weekend, where he apparently dumped it while racing at 100-120mph one night.  Baskanan died at the scene.  My condolences to his friends and family.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Al Franken sends me an electronic newsletter periodically, letting me know what he’s up to. It’s the digital equivalent of the Franking Privilege. Let’s see how he’s been doing, shall we?

“What Will Comcast-Time Warner Deal Mean For Your Cable Bill?” The Senator is worried that Comcast is getting too big, that consumers will have fewer choices, higher costs and poorer service. He wants a Senate hearing to jaw-jaw about it, the implication being maybe government should block the deal so consumers would have more choice and the free market competition would force competitors to provide better service at lower cost. Great theory, Senator, except the City Council has already pre-empted you by granting Comcast a monopoly on cable television service in this city. Not seeing a federal problem here nor a federal power to regulate it. You’re wasting your time holding hearings.

“Helping Alleviate the Propane Shortage.” It’s cold, more people are using propane for home heat, increased demand is forcing prices up which people complained about to Senator Franken and he passed along those complaints. In response, the administration ordered pipeline operators to divert propane shipments and also relaxed trucking regulations so propane delivery truck drivers could drive longer hours. In other words, there are no more cubic feet of propane than before you butted into the free market, but you helped relocate the shortage while making the highways less safe. Looks as if the government intervened to make things worse.

“Protecting Minnesotans Right to Privacy.” Senator Franken wrote: “I believe Americans have a fundamental right to privacy, and that right includes the ability to control who is getting your personal information and who it’s being shared with.” I was excited to read that – finally, a Democrat who thinks the NSA is overstepping its bounds and Obama-care is a data privacy disaster. But no, he’s worried that somebody wearing Google Glass can run a facial recognition app that will identify strangers on the street and search the web for information about that person such as phone number, address and possibly dating preferences. Geez, Al, my brain runs a facial recognition app 24/7 and when it sees somebody it recognizes, my memory searches for their phone number and address while my GayDar detects dating preferences. The difference is the Google system is far more reliable than my aging brain. Not really seeing an Article I power here, I suggest you concentrate on oversight duties by protecting Minnesotans’ fundamental right to privacy . . . from the government.

“Farm Bill is Finally Law.” Yes, Comrade, we have a new Trillion Dollar Five Year Plan to Increase Agricultural Production. And I’m certain it will work as well as any of its predecessors to funnel money into winners’ pockets while shucking money from losers. It’s too early to tell who will be the winners. What we know for sure is the American taxpayer will be $1,000,000,000,000.00 poorer at the end of it. On the other hand, being just 83 miles from Eau Claire won’t affect my milk price anymore, so that’s a step in the right direction. I’m reserving judgment on the new plan until we see just how good or bad it turns out to be.

Joe Doakes

Since I started blogging, I can’t read through politicians’ communications without tearing ’em apart, either.

It’s one of those lines conservatives have been using for a decade, maybe two; the “progressive” left wants to move people out of single-family homes with yards and driveways, and into high-density housing.

Only it’s not a “line”.  It’s here, and it’s in Minneapolis right now.

Without warning, on Friday March 7th, 2014 the Minneapolis City Council passed a Moratorium(a full stop) on all new construction and certain remodeling projects EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY in the Southwest Minneapolis neighborhoods of Linden Hills, Fulton, Armatage, Lynnhurst, and Kenny. This Moratorium prohibits anyone without a completed permit from starting construction on a project for up to one year from the effective date.

They passed it unanimously.

The moratorium hurts everyone (except progressive planners), especially taxpayers in Minneapolis:

The reduced potential property tax base and permit revenue lost from the moratorium will cause property taxes on residents to go up yet again. So the question you should ask is, “Why should I pay the same tax rates now with a moratorium that I paid when I could fully use my property?”

Dear (mostly) relentlessly PC liberals of South Minneapolis:

This was the sort of thing that, 240 years ago, impelled a bunch of other impeccable liberals to throw a…

…dare I say it? A Tea Party.

In recent weeks, especially with the convention ouster of Dave Fitzsimmons from the candidacy for the MN House seat in Wright County, and the challenge to Jennifer Loon in the southwest subs, both over their votes on gay marriage in the last session, the “liberty” crowd has adopted a new kick-toy – the “SocialCon”, or social conservative.

I’d like to take a moment to get some of them to think a moment.

Social conservatism tends to get linked to two issues – abortion and marriage.  Those are the highest profile issues, of course;  one is social conservatism’s most emotional issue (and, despite infanticide’s hideous death toll, arguably social conservatism’s greatest non-legislative victory; the abortion rate has been dropping, largely due to indirect means.  It’s a start), and the other, same sex marriage, is the MNGOP (and the state’s) biggest bloody nose in recent years.   It’s the issue that has led to the biggest single whiff of acrimony – the Loon and Fitzsimmons battles – in the GOP so far in this cycle.

But there is much more to being a social conservative – because there are many, many more social issues than just abortion and gay marriage.  And all of them are important, most of them haven’t been decided yet, and some of them have the potential – if the MNGOP can just shed that whole “stupid party full of single-issue voters” thing – to transform Minnesota politics and make the Republican party a flaming screaming electoral juggernaut.  That is, of course, a huge “if”.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”

So let’s talk about the rest of the whole, wide, social conservative world:

Education:  Yep.  Education is social issue.  Here in Minnesota it is, in fact, by far the most expensive social issue.

And our education system is failing, and it’s failing for reasons that are inextricably tied to progressivism; in a society where no two people’s cell phones are the same, we’re to expect that a single national curriculum and methodology is supposed to effectively teach tens of millions of different children a year?

Conservative notions of…not just “the free market”, but of choice, of the ability to say “no” to a failing school or system or methodology, the way they said “no” to Pepsi Clear or Ashley Simpson or the Edsel or horse meat or any other thing that doesn’t serve the consumer’s needs perfectly enough, is the only way education is going to be saved.

And while some political thinkers and consultants say conservatives waste their time going after traditional Democrat constituencies like the inner city, it is the education issue that gives conservatism its best long-term chance of cracking that monopoly – if the GOP develops the skill to play chess rather than checkers.

But whether we look at it as matter of winning votes in the future or not, the fact is that it’s a fiscal issue as well; the current system of education (which is really more a system of political patronage with a little indoctrination mixed in) is getting more and more expensive, and is unsustainable.  And things that can’t be sustained, won’t be.

Either way, it’s a social issue.

Immigration:  Yep.  It’s a social issue.   One that has the potential to change society.

And there is ample evidence that Latinos favor an approach that is in many ways more conservative than most conservatives favor; the “high fence and wide gate”.  Make illegal immigration hard, but make legal immigration much easier and more transparent.  Along with that, cut down on the talk of mass deportations; most Latinos, even Latinos whose families have been here for longer than most of us honkies, have some corner of their family tree that crossed over without bothering excessively with getting their paperwork stamped.

Again, not a few checkers-playing consultants and pundits say that the issue isn’t going to win the 2016 election for the GOP.  Perhaps.  But it has the potential to blunt the Democrats’ overwhelming lead among Latinos.

And it’s a social issue.

Welfare, Poverty and the Family:  While the DFL roots and scrabbles around with deckchair-rearranging feel-good measures like trying to raise the minimum wage, they are also fueling an inflationary cycle – via minimum wage hikes, but especially via untrammeled deficit spending – that  devalues everyone’s paycheck.

Worse, Democrat policies over the past few years have made it harder for people to get out of the lowest economic classes; while social spending makes grinding poverty a viable lifestyle, only work, and the opportunity hard work leads to, actually gets people and families out of poverty.

But Democrat policies kneecap Horatio Alger at every turn.  One of the surest ways to ensure you’re out of poverty by your thirties is to finish high school and not have a baby before you’re with a stable, long-term partner (social conservatives think of this in terms of “marriage”, and with good reason – it works better than cohabitation).  But the welfare state subsidizes the exact opposite – and it is a truism that when you pay people to do things, even stupid counterproductive things, they’ll do them.

And the Democrats are doing their best to marginalize work; their latest spin, that Obamacare will “give people more free time”, is just slapping a happy coat of paint on selling the idea of personal economic stagnation to people.    If you’re upper middle class, cutting hours is a nice fantasy.  If you’re struggling to get out of poverty, it’s a financial death sentence.

Republicans, especially the conservative ones, should own this issue – which, in its own way, is the mother (single, with three kids) of all social issues.

Healthcare:  It’s not just a fiscal issue.  How society deals with health insurance for those who can’t afford it (or don’t want to pay for it) is, obviously, a huge issue.

Conservatives have many plans – none of them is a panacaea, like Obamacare and Hillarycare both claimed to be; any of them would have done a better job.  Some still could.

Crime:  If there’s an issue that the Democrats have lost, but Conservatives are too stupid to know it, it’s crime.  Conservative policies – tougher sentencing, visible law enforcement, allowing and encouraging the law-abiding to arm themselves – have lowered the crime rate; the islands of high crime are the ones dominated by Democrats and their policies.

———-

Social conservatism. It’s about a lot more than gays and abortion.

In fact, it needs to be.

Glenn Reynolds:  “America’s political class, take note. If you hate the Tea Party movement, you’llreally hate what comes after it if it fails.”

A Louisiana man released from Death Row because…

…he didn’t commit the crime for which he spent 26 years on Death Row:

State District Judge Ramona Emanuel on Monday took the step of voiding Ford’s conviction and sentence based on new information that corroborated his claim that he was not present or involved in Rozeman’s death, Ford’s attorneys said. Ford was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in 1984 and sentenced to death.

“We are very pleased to see Glenn Ford finally exonerated, and we are particularly grateful that the prosecution and the court moved ahead so decisively to set Mr. Ford free,” said a statement from Gary Clements and Aaron Novod, the attorneys for Ford from the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana.

And why did Ford spend over a quarter century on Death Row? 

They said Ford’s trial had been “profoundly compromised by inexperienced counsel and by the unconstitutional suppression of evidence, including information from an informant.” They also cited what they said was a suppressed police report related to the time of the crime and evidence involving the murder weapon.

That may be the second-biggest problem with the death penalty (right behind “it’s irreversible”); since it’s usually involved in intensely emotional cases, and intense emotions mean lots of votes for district attorneys, these cases are often an invitation to cut corners on things like “due process” and stuff. 

The kicker?  This isn’t even rare.

I’d like to address this to this blog’s Democrat readers – especially of the “Progressive” variety.

You’ve got to be bummed.

I mean, your guy Obama was elected in 2008 – but he got elected in large part because he positioned himself as a “moderate”. 

And what are you looking at in 2016?  Hillary?  A moderate, Democrat-Leadership-Conference holdover!

If you care about true progressivism, your one true choice is clear. 

Bernie Sanders For President. 

And I am here to help you. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We’re winning. The Obama administration is repealing Obama-care for us, one rule at a time.

Pretty soon, it’ll almost be like there was nothing really there all these years. 

Like…an empty suit or something. 

Yeah.  That’s it.

How much reporting could conservatives save by simply referring to Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds” – to explain “progressive” efforts to slander/”attack” conservatives, their organizations, and their supporters? 

Hard to say.  Lots.

That said, it’s good to get the details.

James Taranto chronicles the left’s current assault on  the Koch Brothers – who, along with the tiny think tank “ALEC” and the NRA are the the repository of most lefty boogeyman-mongering – and finds it a troubling variant on a standard “progressive” tactic…:

We’re torn between finding this effort sinister and ridiculous, and the truth is it’s both. Alinskyite tactics were meant to be applied against the powerful by the powerless. When applied by powerful men, like Reid, who are supposed to be public servants, they take on the character of tyranny rather than rebellion.

…as well as a classic case of Berg’s Seventh Law in action (

No doubt the Kochs can take it, but note that his attack aimed not only at them but also at ordinary Americans who have been victimized by ObamaCare and spoken out about it. The aim is clearly to intimidate others and thereby suppress information about ObamaCare’s failures.

Not to mention make dissenting from the “progressive” narrative too painful for non-billionaires to carry on.  See also “Joe the Plumber”.

…but I noticed an interesting pattern in the voting in the Shot In The Dark straw poll yesterday.

Scott Walker jumped out to a sharp lead, early in the morning, closely followed by Ted Cruz 

Then – along about noon or so – Rand Paul put on a surge, at one point tying Cruz for second place.   This surge ended in the wee hours of this morning.

Then, early in the AM, Walker got another surge. 

Not saying this says anything about relative demographics.  But some people might.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“All the news that’s fit to print” has been replaced with “all the news we want you to know.” I didn’t realize that news in America is on a need-to-know basis. The media decides what we need to know and who we need to hear it from.

That’s thoughtful. Screening the information I’m given avoids confusing me with troubling thoughts and all that messy thinking for myself. Makes pulling the level for “D” much easier. Reminds me of my youthful Catholic catechism. The nuns flat-out said “Don’t read the Bible: the Pope already read it. We’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Today, network anchors act as if they’re the Pope, telling me only what I need to know.

Works for me.

Joe Doakes

 

I suppose that makes Lori Sturdevant “doctrinally infallible”…

…but then, other than a brief stretch when the Jamestown district rented a couple rooms at the local Catholic school when our school was being torn down, I’ve never really had any Catholic education.

Media catechism, on the other hand…

The DFL’s “bullying bill” is a special interest sop; it creates protected classes against whom bullying is double dog bad.   It’s a type of bill that seems, elsewhere in the country, to have the effect of increasing bullying of the kids they’re intended to protect – not to mention increasing the official “bullying” and censorship of dissent.    It might be better called the “Stasi Bill”.

Of course, the real reason the DFL supports it is that it creates yet another well-paid, unionized bureaucracy to staff with members of the political class.

The GOP, thankfully, is offering an alternative – a bill that offers to-the-point protection of actual victims, rather than a generalized snitching system that can be used as a cudgel against pretty much anyone doing anything:

Republican senators Monday afternoon announced the “Stamp Out Bullying” bill, which is modeled after legislation that’s been successful in other states and receives a top rating from a national anti-bullying group…State Sen. Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, a leading critic of Dibble’s bill, said in a news release that he expects the alternative anti-bullying bill to receive bipartisan support. He said his legislation will protect students while allowing school districts to maintain local control.

“This proposal keeps school resources in the classroom where they belong, and doesn’t place an added burden on school districts already struggling with tight budgets. It protects all students, keeps parents informed, and gives school districts a solid framework to develop solutions that work for their communities,” Chamberlain said.

Being realistic?  I’d say the GOP’s best hope is to get Republicans and not-insane DFLers to push either for Chamberlain’s bill, or to amend Dibble’s ‘bill to strip out the objectionable stuff like the Stasi provisions and the protected classes…

…which is the stuff that the Metro DFL wants, which makes them poison pills.

Such is politics in the minority.

Elections have consequences.

You know what I can’t stand?  Chinese violin and piano players.  [1]

The violin (as we understand the instrument today) and especially the piano are utterly western inventions.  They are utterly inseparable with the development of western music, and thus art, and thus culture. 

Ditto Japanese blues guitarists, and Arabic hip-hop artists and African opera singers, and the like.   [2]

When, say, Asian or African or Arabic people put on tuxedoes and sit in philharmonic orchestras, and do art assocated with western civilization, while not being actual westerners who grew up thoroughly marinated in the culture, they are essentially playing in “whiteface”, pretending to be western.  They have no concept of these artifacts of western culture – they don’t gather for jam session in garages, they don’t sit on street corners in the Bronx, they don’t know the feeling of Renaissance-era Italy. 

“Wait”, you say – “adopting parts of other languages and cultures into one’s own is an essential part of humanity!”

Huh.

OK.  I guess you could say so. 

But tell it to this joyless slagathor at the apparently-racist, nativist rag Salon.  Who has, by the way, adopted a form of communication – the “opinion piece” – that is not native to her ethnic culture.  Why is she turning my culture into a white-face minstrel show?  [3]

[1] Not really . This is satire.

[2] See 1, above.

[3] It’s her logic, not mine.

…of the Instapundit straw poll that showed a convincing (if meaningless) lead for a ticket I’ve quietly dreamed about, I figure that’s an idea I should copy.

So here we go; the first Shot In The Dark Straw Poll.

(and not likely the last one of this campaign).

Who would you like to see running for President?

Polls open until probably tomorrow sometime.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minnesota is having the worst winter in 30 years.  Meanwhile, Australia just had its hottest Summer.  Plainly, the Aussies are no allies: they’re heat thieves.  They’ve stolen our global warming and I, for one, want it back.

I say we invade at once, at least through April; then we can call it off and be home in time for the fishing opener.

Joe Doakes

Minnesotans who are that upset about weather could at least rehearse an invasion…

Got this via email:

Who benefits the most from a minimum wage increase?

Here are some back of an envelope calculations:
40 hrs a week X 52 weeks = 2080 hrs

FICA: employee tax = 6.2%, employer = 6.2%, total 12.4%
SECA: employee = 1.45%, employer 1.45% total 2.9%

total FICA/SECA combined = 15.3%

current govt take
2080 x $7.25 = $15,080.00 x 0.153 = $2,307.24

proposed govt take
2080 x $10.10 =$21,008.00 x 0.153 = $3,214.224

Net gain for govt = $906.984

now just for fun lets index the minimum wage to the rate of inflation, who else gets an automatic raise with that?

Government Union members!

I first heard about the B-52s in probably tenth grade.

“They’re so fun!”, I was told.  “They’re, like, a party band!”

I was directed to listen to “Rock Lobster”.  They were indeed a party band.

I hated party bands. And I hated the B52s.

“But Mitch!”, you might respond, “how could you possibly hate the B-52s?  They were fun!”

Music wasn’t supposed to be fun.  Not to me, anyway. I was an over-tall, under-coordinated, anti-popular kid, a fish-out-of-water, sick of high school cliques and pecking orders, all hormoned-up with no place to go, already banging my head against the bars of small-town life.

Music for me was about channelling explosive adolescent rage.  I listened to the Who, and the Clash and Generation X and the Sex Pistols (and the bleeding passion of Beethoven and the crusader-esque purposefulness of Händel and the over the top expressionism of Tchaikowski, for that matter), and Springsteen in my rare introspective moments.  For me, music wasn’t about dancing; it was about breaking things and people, and furious adolescent angst.  The sound in my imagination at age 15 was me windmilling an open A5 chord on a Les Paul Standard through four Marshall stacks cranked to 11.  No wussy third tones.  No subtlety.  No shelter.  Certainly no murtha-farging “parties”.  Just pure un-subtle angry noise, blowing away the things that broke my heart and the lies that left me lost and brokenhearted…

…whatever they were.    It was a song, so they weren’t so much something I “knew” as “felt”. 

And I didn’t feel “party”. 

But I’m digressing.

The B-52s?  Yeah, they were “fun”.  And I was not.  I was very, very un-fun.  They played intentionally cheesed-up Farfisa organs, and I was all about the teeth-clenched throb of a Hammond B3 through an overdriven Leslie speaker.   They were lightweight, eggheaded college kids, and I was not.  They went to parties, and God knows I was never invited to parties.  Screw ’em.

Oh, yeah.  Lead singer Fred Schneider’s voice annoyed the bejeebers out of me.  No, it wasn’t “homophobia”; at that age, I literally didn’t know what “gay” meant (and even if I did know what it meant?  I loved Freddy Mercury’s voice).   I didn’t actually know that guys could dig guys until college.  (Note to my 3-4 high school friends who, it turns out, were gay?  Even though you were all the girls’ best friends, and you actually did sit by the piano before play practice playing show tunes?  Hand to God, never figured it out until after high school.  And figuring it out didn’t make me like y’all any less – or show tunes any more).  So no, it wasn’t that Schneider was gay, even if I had known at the time what that meant.  No, it was that his voice annoyed me like few other sounds ever have.  I could literally listen to fingernails scraping on chalkboards all day long – but Schneider’s voice sent me racing for the volume knob.   And it still does.

But time went on.  My tastes in music broadened.  I lived a little more life.  Moved to the big city, started a career, ended a career, maybe mellowed out ever so slightly, knocked around, worked in bars…

…when “Love Shack” came out:

Nope. Still hated the B-52s. Part of it was residual disdain for “Party…” anything.

Part of it was that I had to play the damn song so ungodly often. I was at KDWB at the time; we’d play it every couple of hours on the air. Then I’d work my money gig, at the bars, and play it at least once a night, 4-6 nights a week, sometimes more. But then I played a lot of music way too much back then; I actually bought a car that had no radio, I was so sick of music.

But even with that context, the B52s still annoyed me half to death.  That voice.  That beat.  That contrived retro-sixies triviality.  Blech. 

And they still do.

Except for anything involving Kate Pierson.

Then, all is forgiven.

That is all.