Best Past Posts

The Wrong Badge I was watching Oliver! The musical from 1968 And I think Dickens's book, on which it is based, would have escaped the book burnings of the early 1930's in Germany. They'd have wanted to preserve the character of Fagin. He was precisely the kind of threat that they were warning about: underworld deviants with long beards, who played the panpipes, and corrupted children. In the book, Fagin goes to the gallows for his part in Nancy's murder by lying to Bill Sykes and saying that she had informed on them. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice would also have probably survived that time: 'Right, Shylock, that was a charming soliloquy, worthy of Orson Welles, but just how do you intend to collect that pound of human flesh you are owed?' Anyway, after that I watched a DVD of Star Trek - because I can't stand nasty manipulating broadcast signals - and the captain said something that upset me. He told these people whose planet he'd...

Controlling Interest You know, you learn a lot from studying history, like how women celebrated each advance towards equal rights by shedding articles of clothing. They started by ditching their hoop skirts in the 1920's, as soon as they won the right to vote. Then, with the civil rights successes of the 1960's, they went really wild. Since my adolescence, I have always been strongly compelled to support their liberation. Today, however, I have another thought on my mind. I have been trying figure out why the broadcasters hated me when I created so much music and comedy that was commercially successful on their networks and radio stations. You'd think they'd love an artist who writes such popular work, but instead, for most of the last twenty years, they have devoted themselves to my destruction at the hands of frauds. Why? I think it's because of what they may fear the most: powerlessness. Did you ever see the Star Trek episode where the children ...