Ahhktober!

While the post-publishing euphoria slowly subsides, I’ve been locked away Cantina Minor (the name of my office/studio) conversing with Emily Miller and making other music.  The multitask season is upon me!  Okay, I did take a little rest.  That’s okay, right?  Before I get started on the discussions de jour, a word or two about Bolita.

For the time being, the novel is available exclusively at Lulu.com in two formats: hard cover and eBook.  I have the hard cover priced at a rock-bottom $24.99, but the eBook is only $5.99  That’s right, five little bucks for a 438 page novel.  That’s it!  Still holding out for the paperback?  You’ll have a lengthy wait.  There are no plans to release Bolita in that format until perhaps this time next year. Can’t wait?  Get the eBook.  Read it?  Please give it your rating and a review!

Hall of Lame, Shame, and Any Other Simile That Rhymes and Means Utterly Pathetic Dung Heap

Any Rush fans around?  How about Kiss?  Foreigner?  Def Leppard?  What do these artists have in common?  Every year the so-called “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum” inducts a few bands into its ring of honor.  Unfortunately, these bands are not uniformly selected by a rigid published criteria set.  They are inducted arbitrarily by a seemingly closed society of hand-selected industry professionals.  Read about their process HERE.  After poking around I found that they attempted to answer why some bands, particularly progressive rock bands like Yes, haven’t made into their fold yet.  You can read the blog article for yourself, but the gist of it is that the writer attempts to explain that progressive rock received mixed reception over the years by critics, and that critics said prog strayed away from rock’s African-American roots.  Critics?  Which ones?  Are these the same folks that passed over the Moody Blues for ABBA?  Now I’m going to make your head explode.  Journey.  The Hall of Fame doesn’t include Journey, folks.  In a word, stupefying.  Here’s a partial list of the Hall’s infamous brush-offs:

AC/DC	Iron Butterfly	Phil Collins
A-ha	Iron Maiden	Rush
Bad Company	Jethro Tull	Steppenwolf
Barry White	Jimmy Buffet	Steve Miller Band
Blue Oyster Cult	Joan Baez	Stevie Ray Vaughn
Bon Jovi	Joan Jett	Supertramp
Bryan Adams	Joe Cocker	Ted Nugent
Cheap Trick	Journey	The B-52s
Cher	Judas Priest	The Carpenters
Chicago	Kansas	The Cars
Deep Purple	KC and the SB	The Clash
Def Leppard	King Crimson	The Cure
Depeche Mode	KISS	The Doobie Brothers
Devo	Kool and the Gang	The Guess Who
Dire Straits	Little Feat	The Moody Blues
Duran Duran	Meatloaf	The Scorpions
ELO	Motley Crue	Thin Lizzy
ELP	Motorhead	Toto
Eurythmics	Ozzy Osbourne	UB40
Foreigner	Pat Benetar	Warren Zevon
George Thorogood+	Pet Shop Boys	Yes
Gloria Estefan	Peter Frampton	Had enough?
Hall and Oates	Peter Gabriel

“Hot funk, cool punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock and roll to me..”  Perhaps the Hall should listen to one of their own.

The Marketer

Many news pundits have stated unilaterally that Steve Jobs “invented this” and “developed that”, and that he single-handedly changed the world for all of us.  I’ve read and heard news reports deifying him as the Edison or Da Vinci of our time, and others crying that he was an insufferable tyrant that wanted you to believe he could walk on water, but he was instead walking on the backs of other engineers drowning just below the water’s surface.  Whatever you choose to believe, as a casual observer and non-user of Apple products, I can tell you this—Steve Jobs was a Grand Facilitator that knew the technology people wanted and how to put it in their hands.  Apple died when he was thrown out of the company, and resurrected with a vengeance shortly after his return.  What more proof do you need?  He may not have been the technical genius that the mass media would have you believe, but he was indeed a genius—a marketing genius—and we are all better off because of him.  RIP, Mr. Jobs.

Cars, The Reprise

As promised, I have a follow-up on my daughter’s massive test-drive campaign in search for her perfect compact sedan.  The results are not what you’d expect, however.

We drove almost every compact car available in the United States:  Chevy Cruze, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Kia Forte, Mazda 3, Nissan Sentra, and the Toyota Corolla.  She (and I) liked the Kia best, with the Honda a close second.  Some of the others were formidable candidates, but they lacked certain features or had a mediocre ride; some were utter trash.  One problem.  The Kia trim level she wants isn't available in blue.  Only if you buy their most expensive model can you have it in blue.  Has blue become the true color of royalty all of the sudden?  Or, has it become so unpopular a color, only the desperate must want it?  All I know is that Kia and a couple other manufacturers missed a sale on this account.  No, she didn’t go to another model, she decided not to buy a car at all.  Bold decision for a youngster with additional freedom on the mind.  Any other blue car snobs out there?  What do you think?